PLEASE NOTE: This archived event page is for the 2007/08 Season presentation
of The Hard Nut. If you are looking for the current 2009/10 Season presentation, please visit this page
Mark Morris' The Hard Nut
A Look Back
Featuring exclusive interviews with choreographer Mark Morris, performance footage, and more!
Hard Nut TV ad(Quicktime)
"This year's performances of The Hard Nut in Berkeley mark my 9th year playing the role of Marie. Revisiting her each year allows me to delve deeper into the part, hopefully bringing more nuance to a role that has been a highlight of my career. As a bonus, my task of falling in love with the Nutcracker is made easy by the fact that he is played by my husband, David Leventhal. The smiles, gazes, swoons and kisses are all real." — Lauren Grant (MMDG dancer who performs the role of Marie)
Johan Henckens, our wonderful technical director, has the enormous responsibility of calling every show, which means telling technicians in various parts of the theater when to hit the next light cue, raise the curtain, or move scenery. Timing is crucial: huge set pieces move in and out of a crowded, dark space populated by distracted dancers, many of whom are wearing masks or headpieces that limit their ability to see. Johan's timing is impeccable, but sometimes the crew doesn't follow through properly. At the end of the battle scene, a huge scrim with an explosion design falls inches upstage of where I'm standing. That's scary enough. Then, at the beginning of my duet with Drosselmeyer, I run across the stage in a curve at the same time that the scrim flies up so I can meet Craig Biesecker in the middle of the stage. But in one performance I'll never forget, the drop never flew and I found myself about to careen into it like a fly to a web. As in a bad accident, the brain slows down what it sees while it goes into overdrive. Trying to remain in character, I reached down as gracefully as I could to pull the heavy scrim up over my head and run under it. To fend off internal embarrassment, I tried to think of my lift and tuck move as the Nutcracker's final challenge before he's allowed to become a young man. And I've always hoped the audience that night had the same interpretation." — David Leventhal (MMDG dancer who performs the Nutcracker/Young Drosselmeier roles)
This revitalized "Nutcracker" is a feast for the ears and a visual delight for the eyes as it dazzles all the way through the familiar Tchaikovsky score. My favorite character is the house maid — she is mesmerizing from the moment she/he appears. I've shared The Hard Nut with my all the special people in my life and can't wait till December to share in the splendor, spectacle and laughter once again!" — Carolyn Nichols, Cal Performances Patron
The end of Act One is one of the most brilliant ensemble pieces I've ever seen. It looks very funny, but it's also very complicated. Sometimes the dancers are up in the air on the downbeat, and you see how Mark understood this phenomenon in the music of working across the beats. It's very surprising, and a brilliant theatrical stroke."
— Hard Nut conductor (and Cal Performances Director) Robert Cole, as quoted in the San Francisco Examiner, 1999.
Hearing the complete Tchaikovsky score performed by the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra is heavenly, especially so when accompanied by the live Children's Chorus. Add to that the ridiculously brilliant musical choreography of the genius Mark Morris, and it's an evening's worth of great dance entertainment unsurpassed in Bay Area history.— Richard Goldman, Cal Performances Patron
My wife, Jodi, and I have attended The Hard Nut several times over the past 10 years and never grow tired of it. It is wildly imaginative and highly entertaining, especially the dance of the snowflakes. Mark Morris' interpretation of this wonderful ballet classic has grown into our own holiday tradition!" — Michael Dickens, Cal Performances Patron
" Mr. Morris's handsome, witty and moving production...remains as savvy as it is theatrically winning...as time passes, his idiosyncratic staging stands to become as famous and lasting as Balanchine's traditional rendering."— Wall Street Journal
If there is a more joy full celebration of baby boomer Christmas's past I haven't found it. Mark Morris's The Hard Nut takes the cultural icons of a 60's suburban childhood mixes them with a wild times 70's sensibility adds choreography both hilarious and dazzling and never misses a note of Tchaikovsky's original score. Charles Burns sets are perfection. Sheer sugar plum heaven! (and those snow flakes are transcendent!)
— Mary Glassanos, Cal Performances Patron
" Oh, my God! I LOVE The Hard Nut! I've seen it three times and would love to go again. Mark Morris puts on an outstanding production. The dancers are incredibly talented, the costumes and sets absolutely beautiful, and the live orchestra is indispensable. It's funny, it's engaging, it's great theatre." — Marsha Simpson, Cal Performances Patron
There's one thing that always catches me off guard while watching The Hard Nut. I expect Mark Morris to make me laugh; I don't expect to be moved to tears by the breathtaking snowflake scene. That scene alone keeps me coming back every year." — Curtis Salinas, Cal Performances Patron
This is ballet vérité. It's not pretend. It's theatrical and broad and big. But the story is really plain and simple and true. — Mark Morris, The New York Times,
December 1992
A COLLAGE OF 'HARD NUT' MEMORIES...
The 6:00 pm make-up call/gossip session/gender reassignment with artist Sara Beukers; Mark Morris leading us in a round of Christmas carols at Wendy Lesser's post-performance party; the unimpressed employees of "Nails" on 28th Street, where I go for Mrs. Stahlbaum's pink extensions (its not pink; its "ballet slipper"); choking on a snowflake wrapped in costume rat fur (Hard Nut sushi); dancing the "Waltz of the Flowers"; The Great Stomach Virus of 1998; screaming with joy the first time I saw the climax of "Snow"; June Omura's (Fritz) wonderful annual Christmas present: an envelope for each cast member filled with photographs taken throughout the year. This excellent tradition is the one between the final matinee and evening performances, when we all sit around and look at each other's gift pictures." — John Heginbotham (MMDG dancer who performs the Mrs. Stahlbaum/Queen roles)
I've seen The Hard Nut several times. The last time, as I walked in, I wondered if I would ever go again. When I left, smiling and feeling good, I realized that I'll go every time. It's wacky, completely irreverent, and wonderful. — Fraser Bonnell, Cal Performances Patron
My kids could never sit through a traditional Nutcracker, but Mark Morris had them captivated start to finish — it's become *our* traditional holiday ballet, and I can't think of a more beautiful, magic, and purely fun way to celebrate. Bring on the snowflakes!"— Alison Polkinhorne, Cal Performances Patron
" Here, the sweetness of its final moments contrasts with the sleezy boisterousness of its 1970s party...One of the beauties of Morris's initially flippant, joke filled work, in addition to the multigendered dances for energetically drifting Snowflakes and lush flowers, is that everyone in the ballet works to bring these two together, they are lifted by hordes of Chinese dancers and rats and soldiers and snowflakes and flowers and more, pouring onstage like waves of love to wash them into each other's arms" — Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
Special thanks from Cal Performances to all patrons who were willing to share their Hard Nut memories with us. And congratulations to Jamienne Studley, Lawrence Banka and Judith Gordon, Sara Hildebrandt and Marilyn Graham who each won a pair of tickets to see The Hard Nut in a random drawing of entrants!
![There are dance experiences that generate awe, and there are dance experiences that inspire affection. But there are far fewer that automatically make the lips curl in a broad smile, even at the very thought. Mark Morris' The Hard Nut, the Bay Area's most offbeat and most rejuvenating holiday dance tradition, falls into that special category... [A] reasonably modern, deceptively irreverent, strikingly designed, peerlessly musical and unexpectedly touching reconsideration of Nutcracker -- Allan Ulrich, San Francisco Chronicle](template/the_snowflakes_quote_1.jpg)
I've seen The Hard Nut several times. The last time, as I walked in, I wondered if I would ever go again. When I left, smiling and feeling good, I realized that I'll go every time. It's wacky, completely irreverent, and wonderful. — Fraser Bonnell, Cal Performances Patron
