He was pleasantly surprised to hear, a few weeks later, that a “Nutcracker” was precisely what Ms. Dorrance had in mind. “I’ve loved the score forever,” she said recently, “and I realized that now’s the time. Each of the three programs Dorrance Dance is presenting through Jan. 5 will include Ms. Dorrance’s new holiday piece, “ … The Nutcracker Suite….” The shows will be rounded out by recent works, a different combination each week. The score that Ms. Dorrance was referring to was not Tchaikovsky’s familiar one — though she loves that too — but the jazz reinterpretation by Duke Ellington and his collaborator and arranger Billy Strayhorn, recorded by Ellington’s band in 1960. The nine-part suite is about 30 minutes long, each number a riff on a familiar section of the original.

Source: New York Times December 16, 2019 16:18 UTC