A driving force for the relocation is VMFA’s plans for a $190 million expansion and renovation project to its facilities, which includes improvements to the museum’s Leslie Cheek Theater, where the ballet will perform.
Company dancers and trainees spend three weeks in November rehearsing for
The Nutcracker . The final product includes masterful and delicate motions as seen here during the Act 2 of the 2019 performance.
(Photo: Sarah Ferguson/Richmond Ballet)
The Nutcracker was the first show Stoner Winslett choreographed as Richmond Ballet’s artistic director. For the next 39 Decembers, she heard cheerful laughter and inspiring music throughout the studio. Her 41st December would prove challenging with COVID-19 halting any normalcy in the art world.
“When we were talking with dancers, and we were all trying to decide whether we should go for trying to be together in the studio and do performances in this unknown environment, we kept coming back to that mission of awakening and uplifting the human spirit for both dancers and audience,” Winslett said. “We just felt in the COVID time and the time of social unrest that we re all in - the isolation time - that it was not the ti