By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
In December, 2019, Sophia Jarrell and Hayley Havener realized a dreams by staging Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker.”
Both had performed in the classic as young dancers, and ben fans ever since.
Now as the directors of the Black Swamp of School for the Arts, they set about staging the classic ballet, giving it their own touch. The school’s version featured Misha as the heroine, and set it in 1816 Russia, a nod to when the story that inspired it, E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” was written and to the composer’s native Russia. This year the setting will be Northwest Ohio.
The show has evolved over the years, and persisted through the pandemic when it was staged in summer.
In 2022, the school made a major switch bringing the ballet to a larger stage at the Marathon Center for the Performing Art in Findlay.
This year for one performance the dancers will get to do four sections with live music provided by the Perrysburg Symphony Orchestra, on Friday, Dec. 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the Perrysburg High School auditorium. Click for tickets.
The orchestra will play “The Nutcracker Suite,” and the Black Swamp School for the Arts dancers will join them for the coffee, tea, marzipan, and sugar plum movements.
“It’s really amazing opportunity for kids to dance with a live orchestra,” Havener said.
Havener and Jarrell have added a new twist to the setting. This year’s production will be “Mina and the Nutcracker” set in Northwest Ohio in 1820.
“We realized culturally we wanted to dig deeper into our party scene, and people having family traditions,” Havener, the dance director, said. “A lot of the holiday traditions have Germanic roots.”
The Germans and Polish immigrants who settled Northwest Ohio brought with them their traditions of Christmas trees and St, Nicholas with them. So the parents in the party scene will stuff shoes with chocolates and oranges.
“We just wanted to lean into that,” Havener said.
For the first time, Jarrell, who founded and directs the school, will join the company on stage in the role of the mother. Her husband has been portraying the father.
Gratitude Performing Arts, a new adult dance company directed by Rebekah Proshek, Jarrell’s younger sister, will perform the Waltz of the Flowers.
The company rehearses in the Black Swamp School of Arts facility. “They’re a fantastic addition to our environment,” Havener said.
“Mina and the Nutcracker” will be staged three times at Findlay’s Marathon Center on Saturday, Dec. 21. Click for ticket information.
There will be a matinee performance at 3 p.m. followed by an evening show at 7 p.m,
Earlier in the day at 1 p.m., the company will present an abbreviated, 45-minute version for toddlers and those with sensitivity to stimulus. The music will be softer and the house lights will remain partially on.
“We love it,” Havener said. Nobody minds the toddlers talking, and being a little bit noisy, engaging in theater in their own way.
Havener said last year, one of the sugar plum fairies came off the stage during the toddler show and said she didn’t want to perform for anyone else. She loved she could hear the gasps in the audience and the tiny voices exclaiming “she’s so beautiful.”
.
