DORRANCE DANCE: The Nutcracker Suite

Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn, arrangement

Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky, composer

Thu Dec 12 | 8PM

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Event details

Tap shoes kick pointe shoes aside in this American version of the holiday classic, The Nutcracker Suite. Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn reimagined Tchaikovsky’s score in 1960, providing today’s preeminent tap company a platform to jazz up the holidays. The colorful fantasy was featured as the nation’s Nutcracker in 2023 with appearances at the Kennedy Center.

Thu Dec 12 | 8PM

*Price includes all fees.

Ticket prices

$48 - $118

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About the Artist

Michelle Dorrance

New York City-based artist. Mentored by Gene Medler (North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble),she was fortunate to study under many of the last master hoofers. Career highlights include: STOMP, Derick Grant’s Imagine Tap!, Jason Samuels Smith’s Charlie’s Angels/Chasing the Bird, Ayodele Casel’s Diary of a Tap Dancer, Mable Lee’s Dancing Ladies, and playing the bass for Darwin Deez. Company work includes: Savion Glover’s Ti Dii, Manhattan Tap, Barbara Duffy and Co., JazzTap Ensemble, and Rumba Tap. Solo work ranges from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to commissions for the Martha Graham Dance Company, Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre, and New York City Center. Michelle made her Broadway choreographic debut with James Lapine’s Flying Over Sunset at Lincoln Center Theater in 2021. A 2018 Doris Duke Artist, 2017 Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellow, and 2015 MacArthur Fellow, Dorrance is humbled to have been acknowledged and supported by United States Artists, The Joyce Theater, the Alpert Awards, Jacob’s Pillow, Princess Grace Foundation-USA, The Field, American Tap Dance Foundation, and the Bessie Awards. Dorrance holds a B.A. from New York University and is a Capezio Athlete.

Josette Wiggan

has a love for performing that was fostered by Paul and Arlene Kennedy in Los Angeles . A graduate of UCLA, Josette’s career highlights include, the 2001 Spotlight Award winner in non-classical dance, the 1st National Broadway Tour of 42nd Street, movies Idlewild and Princess and the Frog and studying with Germaine Acogny at L’ecole les Sables in Toubab Dialaw, Senegal. Alongside her brother, she was a part of two original casts of Cirque du Soleil’s Banana Shpeel and Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour from 2009-2013. The duo has also been seen in Tireless, a curated show by Michelle Dorrance that had its debut at Jacob’s Pillow in 2017. In addition, Josette is a part of Dorrance’s all woman quartet, Until the Real Comes Along and All Good Things Must Come to an End and currently co-created along with Michelle Dorrance and Hannah Heller, a new work entitled, …The Nutcracker Suite… in 2019. Josette is a sought after educator, choreographer and performer and has dedicated her life to the perpetuation of African American Vernacular Jazz Dance.

Hannah Heller

was a founding member of Savion Glover’s Ti Dii and has appeared with Dorrance Dance,Jane Comfort and Co., and Grand Lady Dance House. New York theater credits include Elements of Oz (3LD), Emily Climbs: Machine Mechànte (The Brick), The World is Round (BAM), The Reception (HERE Arts Center), Evelyn (Bushwick Starr). Film/Television credits include Lemon (Magnolia Pictures/Killer Films), Hard World For Small Things (WEVR), and Jeff and Some Aliens (Comedy Central).

About Dorrance Dance

Dorrance Dance is an award-winning tap dance company based in New York City celebrating its 10th Anniversary! Led by Michelle Dorrance, the company supports dancers and musicians who embody and push the dynamic range that tap dance has to offer. The company’s mission is to engage with audiences on a musical and emotional level, and to share the complex history and powerful legacy of this Black American art form through performance and education. The company’s inaugural performance garnered a Bessie Award for “blasting open our notions of tap” and the company continues its passionate commitment to expanding the audience of tap dance, an original American art form.

Founded in 2011 by artistic director and 2015 MacArthur Fellow, Michelle Dorrance, the company has received countless accolades, rave reviews and performed for packed houses at venues including The Joyce Theater, New York City Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Lincoln Center Out of Doors (New York, NY), Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (Becket, MA), The Kennedy Center (Washington, DC), Vail Dance Festival (Vail, CO), Carolina Performing Arts (Chapel Hill, NC), Cal Performances (Berkeley, CA), Spoleto Festival (Charleston, SC), among many others colleges and universities across the US, and including international venues in Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, England, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

“A recent rehearsal at Gibney studios in Manhattan was remarkable for several reasons, not least of which was the sense of inclusiveness and, well, joy in the room. It was filled with dancers of all types, body shapes and races. Their diversity was also reflected in their dancing; though all were obviously good tappers, each had his or her own way of moving — looser or more streamlined, lower to the ground or lighter on the feet. Chorus line-like uniformity was clearly not the goal. And yet somehow they became a coherent whole, at one
with the music.” – Marina Harss, The New York Times