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Dorrance Dance The Nutcracker Suite


  • Zellerbach Hall 101 Zellerbach Hall Berkeley, CA, 94720 United States (map)

Explosive tap dance meets hot jazz rhythms in acclaimed company Dorrance Dance’s intoxicating production of the holiday classic. Danced to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s marvelously inventive 1960 reinterpretation of the classic Tchaikovsky score, The Nutcracker Suite boogies, slides, struts, and dives through the magical story of a young girl and her fantastical Christmas adventure. Along with collaborators Hannah Heller and Josette Wiggan, Artistic Director Michelle Dorrance transforms the Sugar Plum Fairy into a slinky Sugar Rum Cherry, the “March of the Toy Soldiers” becomes a swinging brass “Peanut Brittle Brigade” romp, and the original ballet’s pageant of national dances gets a fresh new 21st-century twist. “The orchestrations are playful, surprising, imaginative. Ms. Dorrance and her collaborators…have responded in kind” (The New York Times).

Earlier Event: December 14
Valley Dance Theatre: The Nutcracker
Later Event: December 15
My Very First Nutcracker