Kennedy Center recently released its 2009-2010 ballet season and very curiously City Ballet is scheduled to perform there from December 9-13, 2009. Could it be City Ballet is not doing Nutcracker in New York this year?! It goes without mentioning the Nutcracker season is vital to any comapny's overall income during any given season but it would seem all the more necessary given the current economic climate. I looked on City Ballet's website and couldn't find any information suggesting they weren't doing Nutcracker this year but then again there isn't any information about any performances beyond the spring season. Has anybody heard anything concerning this topic?

Hi, Maitland, and welcome to BalletTalk.

The Kennedy Center website describes the program this way:

New York City Ballet performs two programs of mixed repertory with works by Balanchine, Martins, and Robbins, including Mozartiana, Les Gentilhommes, Dances at a Gathering, and more.

These ballets use fairly small casts, and Les Gents would give some of NYCB's men (who are extremely underutilized in the Balanchine Nut) a chance to "do something" during this week.

This shouldn't affect the company's ability -- even with 11 fewer corps dancers -- to do a month's worth of Nuts at home. In fact, I think it is an ingenious way to insure that, for once, DC doesn't get a season of performances by fatigued dancers after their 14-week run in New York.

But doesn't NYCB have to travel with the orchestra and their special (bouncy) floor? How can they split the orchestra?

According to what I've read in the press: NYCB has a tricky situation with the Kennedy Center because NYCB's orchestra's contract requires them to play whenever the company is touring within a 250-mile radius of NYC, and the Kennedy Center orchestra's contract requires them to play for visiting companies. They have, fortunately, worked out an arrangement: NYCB's orchestra plays one tour, and the KC's orchestra plays the next.

Wow, that sounds complicated. But I guess some kind of logic prevailed in the end.

During the NYCB open rehearsal at the Kennedy Center two weeks ago, someone from NYCB came out to talk to us (I can't remember who, off the top of my head). He said the KC couldn't accommodate NYCB during the usual first week of March (I think because the Kirov had already booked the Opera House), but offered December instead. They didn't want to skip a season because that would throw off the alternating NYCB/KC-orchestra system. (Next season will be a KC orchestra year.)

Someone in the audience asked if next year's schedule meant that "we won't be getting any principals," and the response was that several principals will indeed be making the trip to DC.