Australian Ballet opens the Nutcracker to a wider audience with $40 tickets
Watching as a nine-year-old dancer, David Hallberg ‘felt the magic’ during a performance of The Nutcracker. Now The Australian Ballet’s artistic director shares the enchantment.
Long before he assumed creative director status of the Australian Ballet, a nine-year-old David Hallberg stood in the wings of his local theatre in Phoenix, Arizona, begging his mother to watch the second act of The Nutcracker after finishing his ensemble performance for the show.
“My childhood impression of The Nutcracker has lasted well into adulthood,” he laughs, admitting to The Australian the cliched nature of remaining enchanted by the Christmas classic.
“I remember standing there, feeling this kind of magic – witnessing the way the dancers prepared to go on stage, the kind of silence that they were in, the nerves that they were feeling. I was completely transfixed.”
The former American Ballet principal dancer was captivated by purple trims and velvet leotards twirling along a Christmas ornamented stage, a fixation he now brings to the masses with an initiative to make the ballet more affordable.
Patrons will be given a chance to see a series of shows – The Nutcracker included – through a ticket ballot for $40, in an initiative subsidised by Telstra in celebration of the telco’s four decades-long relationship with the national ballet company.
The move follows Hallberg’s push to democratise the art form, with the company’s Let’s Dance initiative, announced earlier in the year aiming ignite a love for the classical craft among regional students, blurring boundaries between stage and scrub.
The magical show, originally choreographed by Sir Peter Wright and composed by Pyotr Tchaikovsky in the 19th century, will open up the Sydney Opera House and theatres across the country to an audience, Hallberg admits, is not commonly seated to watch the ballet.
“There’s always a sense that the ballet is too expensive – but as leaders of this dance, we can and should open the doors to more than just a certain crowd,” he says.
“If I’m going to be an artistic director of this time and ensure this art form exists in our culture today, then I do go back to my first inspiration and I tell the dancers often that they should remember there’s always someone in the audience who’s never been to the ballet before.”
A stint of the affordable ballet ballot was trialled in Melbourne’s September run of Oscar and Etudes/Circle Electric, prompting the partnership to extend the offer across the 2025 season.
The city-by-city nomination process opens for a fortnight, first in NSW from November 2 to 15, offering two $40 tickets to each recipient.
Resurrecting the ballet last performed in 2019 to sell out success, the stage will be enlivened by whirling snowflakes, a floor-to-ceiling Christmas tree and a sugar plum fairy in luscious candy-floss pink. Hallberg notes recreating the classic, however, is as much about balancing the hallmark “magic” of the story while constructing a sense-igniting modern interpretation of Clara’s snowscape fantasy.
“I think my job is to not make this a museum piece where we just turn the lights on and perform a ballet that’s been done now for decades,” Hallberg says.
It’s a sentiment that foreshadows the upcoming ballet season, as Hallberg points to the grand narratives he seeks to reimagine in the new year.
“We have a responsibility to tell these big stories,” he says, citing productions slated over the next 12 months: Nijinsky, about the famed dancer; Manon, a love story on par with Romeo and Juliet; and culminating with a performance of Sleeping Beauty.
“Bringing these shows to life for more people is integral to what our company stands for, and how audiences connect to the art form for years to come,” Hallberg says.