Feature Stories

Creating a New Nutcracker at Home in San Francisco

Helgi Tomasson’s new production of Nutcracker—which had its premiere last season—is the artistic director’s most ambitious full-length project to date. With all-new choreography and scenery, 172 costumes, a cast of 73 Company members and 91 School students, this new Nutcracker is the largest production San Francisco Ballet has ever undertaken in its 73-year history.

From the time he seriously considered creating a new Nutcracker three years ago, Tomasson knew he wanted a production with which San Francisco audiences could identify. “Placing the production in Germany no longer worked for me,” Tomasson says. “For San Franciscans, there was no immediate identification with mid-nineteenth century Germany. That’s an old European idea.”

Tomasson decided that the next best place to set his production was in early twentieth-century San Francisco. Not only would that make the production unique, but it would also serve as a tribute to the city. “The first American production of Nutcracker was staged by San Francisco Ballet in 1944,” says Tomasson, “so it seemed fitting to place it here.”

San Francisco as Setting
In San Francisco, one is continuously reminded of the city’s rich cultural history. From cable cars climbing Nob Hill, to its breathtaking Ferry Building and Golden Gate Bridge, to its colorful Victorian “Painted Ladies” and culturally diverse neighborhoods, San Franciscans pride themselves on preserving the city’s charming and colorful past. International travelers who visit the city are always struck by its magical quality.

And “magical” is how Tomasson describes his vision for this production, an idea he took into planning sessions with Set Designer Michael Yeargan, and Costume and Lighting Designers Martin Pakledinaz and James F. Ingalls. “I wanted a production that not only transported children, but also adults into a realm of the magical and the fantastical,” he says.

“The location of an American story and a story set in San Francisco became the most important element,” Costume Designer Martin Pakledinaz says. “In creating a new production of Nutcracker, you’re always afraid that you’ll end up making it look like someone else’s. I believe we broke through that barrier when we made the decision to get out of nineteenth-century Biedermeier Germany.”

Furthermore, Yeargan says that setting Nutcracker in San Francisco made the production more magical. “It made Clara’s fantasy of snow real. Living in San Francisco, she’d probably never seen snow. “And by placing the work in the twentieth century,” Yeargan says, “lighting took on new meaning because at the time, electricity existed.”

From the beginning Tomasson and his creative team had strong ideas about the first act of Nutcracker. During the prologue the curtain features a Victorian scrapbook with snippets of items from Clara’s memory—postcards and other mementos—and in the middle projections of early twentieth-century San Francisco locations. “Instead of a snow scene outside Drosslmeyer’s shop,” Yeargan says, “you see his windows through the fog. “

Conducting historical research on San Francisco architecture after the 1906 earthquake, Yeargan was able recreate a street approaching the Stahlbaum’s house, “with wonderful Victorian steps leading up to the front door, wreathes and candles in the windows,” he says. Even the Stahlbaum’s stylized drawing room with its Victorian staircase and huge Bay window, which emphasize sweeping views of San Francisco, was based on photographs and books published on the time period.

Costume Designer Martin Pakledinaz was inspired by a number of sources for the hundreds of costumes he designed. A 2002 exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. which featured folk art of the late nineteenth century, was an early influence, but his research also included reviewing old photographs of American circus costumes and Sears catalogs from the early twentieth century. For the battle scene, he reached back into American history to old West Point and Civil War uniforms. “The gray colors” he says, “inspired my designs of the Mouse King and other characters.”

Choreographically Speaking
As artistic director of a Nutcracker production last choreographed in 1986, Tomasson had been thinking for some time about how to approach a new production. But it wasn’t until three summers ago when he began listening to Tchaikovsky’s score that he envisioned something entirely new.

“It took me three weeks before I was able to begin erasing my history with the music,” he says. “I had directed Nutcracker at San Francisco Ballet for 20 years, danced Balanchine’s version at New York City Ballet, and had done various productions elsewhere. I had to get rid of all those ideas from my head.”

For three weeks Tomasson listened to the score over and over. By that time, he says, “I began listening to the music for what it was and for the first time I was no longer seeing images of what I had done and been part of.” When he started out listening to Tchaikovsky, Tomasson didn’t know that he would create entirely new choreography, “but one thing led to another and what ended up choreographically is the way I heard the music; what the music told me,” he says.

From Sugarland to San Francisco
While setting Act I in San Francisco was a slightly easier undertaking for the creative team, Act II proved to be more challenging. Tomasson’s other source of inspiration was the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition—at the time a $50 million, nine-month celebration that was created by purposefully building up the mud flats with landfill at the northern end of the city, today known as the Marina district. At the time, much of the landfill consisted of debris from the 1906 earthquake, and the international exposition, when completed, occupied 76 city blocks and featured exhibits from all over the world.

The Pan Pacific International Exposition was intended to celebrate the opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914. Connecting the Gulf of Panama in the Pacific Ocean, with the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic, the exposition was meant to commemorate the human achievement of linking Eastern and Western world economies. In 1911, San Francisco was chosen over New Orleans as the location of the 1915 celebration. Hundreds of buildings and pavilions were built in the classical style or architecture of other cultures—but were built with wood foundations and plaster exteriors—intended to last only through the end of the exposition.

Though the exposition was a formal celebration of the completed Panama Canal, one of the greatest engineering accomplishments of the time, the Pan Pacific International Exposition was more importantly a sign to the world that following the 1906 earthquake and fire which consumed most of the city, San Franciscans had found the faith to rebuild. By 1915, much of the city had undergone an architectural renaissance.

At the exposition in the Marina district, much of the architecture found its inspiration in the Orient and the Moorish age of Spain. With 1,500 sculptures, 30,000 imported plants, trees, and flowers, and featuring new technology of electric, colored searchlights, the exposition took on a magical quality at night. Today, the Palace of Fine Arts, rebuilt in the 1960s after falling into ruins, is a magnificent, but lone reminder of what the 625-acre exposition looked like.

“Looking at photographs of the exposition, I can’t imagine what it must have been like,” Tomasson says. “It must have been absolutely incredible. I thought, ‘Why not use the concept of one of those beautiful pavilions at the Pan Pacific Exposition—in a very loose way of course—to suggest the time period in Act II?”

For Tomasson, the idea of a Clara transported to “Sugarland” as he calls past productions of Act II, never worked for him. “No one seems to know what or where Sugarland is,” he says laughing. “Why can’t Clara imagine that her fantasy is taking place in her own city in one of those incredible pavilions?”

The pavilions at the Pan Pacific International Exposition, full of exotic exhibits and people from all over the world, and the international dances in Act II, connected for Tomasson.

In Yeargan’s opinion, one of the problems with past productions of Nutcracker is that all of the story is in the first part. “Clara goes to sleep, has this dream, and that’s the second act. In other productions, it’s just this series of wonderful and beautiful tour de force dances,” he says. “In our story conferences about the new work. Helgi wanted us to create more rationale for the second act,” Yeargan explains. Many of the toys that you see Act I—the Chinese doll, a Russian doll for example—find their way into the second act.”

Tomasson says that while the exposition began as the inspiration for Act II, “it went so far from reality that the audience may not recognize it as such.” But the idea of a glass pavilion backdrop was the design impetus. “I didn’t want to be ‘stuck’ with the same backdrop for the entire second act. “The glass pavilion backdrop is much more a blank canvas,” he says. “I wanted to be able make changes to the scenery for each different dance and choreography.” For each divertissement, Yeargan created scenery that reflects the international flavor of the choreography. The result is a greater integration of story, scenery, and choreography.

One of the last issues Tomasson’s tackled was the ending of Nutcracker. In the Company’s past production, the production ends with Clara and the Nutcracker Prince flying away in a golden swan boat. In the new production, Tomasson felt strongly about creating a greater sense of resolution—having the ballet return to the Stahlbaums’s home where the audience discovers Clara has just awakened in the drawing room, and it’s Christmas morning.

Daryl Carr is publications and web editor for San Francisco Ballet.

Photo captions and credits:

For his new production of Nutcracker, San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson created all-new choreography. © ERIK TOMASSON