Part of Something Bigger than Myself

Please tell us about your background. Do you have a history with dance? 

I started dancing, as many of us do, as a two-year-old, and most of my earliest memories in life are in a ballet studio—some from Nutcracker—and it was pretty much all ballet from there on out. I never really considered anything else. When I finished high school and it came time to choose what I was going to do with my life, I knew that I really, really loved ballet, but I was not obsessed with performing. I’ve never been someone that needed to be the center of attention. I loved the process, I loved rehearsals, I loved taking class every day, I loved the ritual and the culture. I loved the structure and the community of it all. But I felt performing was not quite right. 

I went to college and got a BA in dance; I was thinking, “I can't imagine doing anything else in my life, but I also don't want to be a professional dancer. Surely there's something I can do with all this information that I have.” When I started college, I thought I was going to focus on education; I was really passionate about teaching and did a lot of research into the way that we teach ballet to young children. Maybe someday I'll get back to that—it’s something I'm still passionate about. At the same time, I discovered production and stage management and immediately thought, “Oh yes, this is it. This is all of the things that I love about dance.” When I'm stage managing, I feel like I'm using all of my skills to the best of my ability. It allows me to use all of the sensibility and musicality I had as a dancer. And, having the perspective of having been a dancer makes me an empathetic stage manager, because I’m able to understand what it's like to be a dancer. 

How did you come to this position with NYCB?

The most influential experiences I had that specifically led me to this position were at the Vail Dance Festival. I started as an intern right out of college, and I was extremely green and young, and I've come back every single summer since, working my way up through the ranks to stage manager. The Festival is run in part by New York City Ballet alums—Damien Woetzel, Heather Watts, and Russell Kaiser—and it's the only place I've ever worked that resembles NYCB in the way that we work, how quickly everyone works, and the amount of rep that we do in such a short amount of time. The first time I saw City Ballet perform live was also in Vail, with the NYCB MOVES tour. Most importantly, I met Nicole Mitchell there, who's my predecessor in this position with the company, and Betsy Ayer, who's a former City Ballet stage manager. Those are the connections that led me most directly to this role, and those two women have been very influential on my career.

I started at NYCB in the fall of 2023. My very first show with the company was the opening night performance of the 75th Anniversary Season. The first show I ever called was the night when we had all of the alums in attendance—all of the iconic City Ballet alums passing me by onstage…. It was incredible.

Can you describe your current role as Stage Manager as you see it?

The primary role of a stage manager is calling ballets from backstage. I often equate it to the way that a maestro conducts the orchestra. You're cueing everyone: every time the curtain goes out, every time a light changes, scenery moves, a follow spot picks someone up, any video projection, sound effects, even the orchestra tuning or the maestro entering the pit. Anytime something happens, it's because we're saying, “Go.”

That's the primary function, and we follow either the music or the movement or both to accomplish it. Sometimes we're following a score, other times we're just listening and following along. It feels like the closest thing to performing without being onstage that I've ever experienced—you're in the moment, and timing is very important. It's the same adrenaline rush, and very high pressure, but without anyone [in the audience] knowing. If you do it correctly, no one notices you're there. People only notice when things go horribly wrong. It provides a very quiet sense of satisfaction when a show goes really well; I feel like I helped make that show happen. I like being a part of something bigger than myself.

The role also involves a lot of people management backstage; leading up to the start of the performance, we're making time calls, letting everyone know how much time is left before we start. We ensure that we have everyone and everything that we need to start—that all the dancers are there and dressed, the musicians are there, we’re checking props, confirming that everything is where it needs to be, that we have the correct scenery, and that all the necessary crew members are standing by. 

One thing that's specific to New York City Ballet stage management is that I order all of the supplies for the season; that's anything from bobby pins to thread and needle, gaff tape and floor cleaning solution to props—any prop that is needed for a new ballet that's a purchased item (meaning not something that's going to be built in a scenic shop or from an existing ballet that needs to be replaced). 

We’re in the midst of performances of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker^®. What are some of the unique challenges and special moments of this production?

Something that's both special about Nutcracker and makes it uniquely challenging is how many children are in the cast. The kids are fun and exciting, and they’re always a wild card; you never really know what a child is going to do onstage or off. We trust them with a lot of responsibility—some of these kids are onstage for a long time, and expecting a less-than-10-year-old to stay focused for that long is a big ask. During a student matinee, for example, the kids in the audience were making a lot of noise; when the prologue drop went out, I'm not sure if the dancer who's playing Marie couldn’t hear her music, or if she just zoned out and did not wake up, but she missed her cue. Things like that happen all the time—you just never know what a kid will do.

The thing that I love most about Nutcracker is that it lends itself to a lot of opportunities for dancers that don't always get to dance featured roles. At other times of the year, each ballet usually gets just four to six shows, so the featured roles are usually performed by principal dancers and soloists. There are also a lot of shorter featured roles in Nutcracker, like the Dolls and the Soldier in Act I; Tea is also often danced by very young people in the company. You get to see young corps members, even apprentices, for the first time. I feel like this is often when I get to know the newest people in the company. I always say that the debuts are the thing that gets me through.

One way in which this ballet is singular is the use of many props, particularly the ballet's namesake! Can you share your involvement with these essential production elements?

As the ballet is being put away, I take inventory of the condition that everything's in. For example, if I see that all of the party hats are broken because the kids were really rough on them this year, then I know that we need to buy more hats; and the snow that falls during the snow scene—I purchase all of that. Sometimes it's easy and straightforward; we know every year we have to buy snow, and I know where to get it. Other times, it's something like the vintage trumpets—they're actual toys from the ‘60s, and there are only so many of them in existence.

Sometimes I’ll run into problems, like when, for example, they stopped making the Angels’ Christmas trees, and I needed to find a replacement. I ordered every 12-inch Christmas tree I could find and auditioned them all—which ones are the right size, which ones are the right color? How closely can we match the old ones? When you have a show that runs every year, for decades, things go out of stock or are discontinued altogether. I always try to stay as close as possible to whatever the existing version was. It feels really important to me because these props can be in use for 30 years—a prop might outlive my time in this organization, and it’s going to be what the next person tries to replicate. I think carefully anytime I'm purchasing something that's going to be onstage because I don't want to lose that history.

This year I redid all of the Christmas presents that sit under the tree in the party scene. They're pretty insignificant in the show—most of the time there are dancers standing in front of them, nobody ever picks them up or interacts with them, and they're attached to the carpet. They’re really just set dressing. But they hadn't been done in literal decades and they were looking rough. Since they were last redone in the early 2000s, or maybe even the ‘90s, those exact wrapping paper prints don’t exist anymore—I could never find them. If I know that I'm not going to be able to match something exactly, I try to find out what the intention was. Did the last person just go to the Hallmark store and pick whatever was there? Were these prints picked by Balanchine himself? Are the colors important? Are the patterns important? I went to Marquerite [Mehler, Senior Director of Operations] because I assumed she was here the last time they’d gotten redone, and she confirmed they were just whatever was available then. I spent a long time looking for wrapping paper that had similar color values so that it would have the same overall look and feel period appropriate. They had to be neutral and vintage looking. Everyone that passed by the office was like, “You're still looking at wrapping paper?!” But it's part of the whole package, right? And you know someone else is going to refer to it down the road.

Can you share any standout memories—times when something went especially well or when bloopers happened?

Chaos happens all the time. There are certain things in The Nutcracker that just have a tendency to go wrong. Sometimes the bed will go nuts—it is a child under there! They will either go too far when they first enter and crash into the portal; or when they're doing the big cross right before the snow scene, they can't see, they're counting tape on the floor—it is a very hard job! Sometimes they keep going too far downstage, and that's when we start yelling at them. There's a stage manager in the portal watching them, and if they get close to danger, we start screaming. But when it's really good, it's really good, and then you're so happy for the dancers.

And then there are the crazy occurrences. One performance last year, the Prince went to get out of the sleigh at the end of the show to bow, and there's a guide line behind it—a string that comes off the back of the sleigh to help it stay straight—and he got so caught up in it that he could not get out. He did the first bow still stuck in it. I was thinking, “He's not going to be able to get offstage. He’s gonna take everybody out with this string.” Marquerite was there, and she ran out with a pair of scissors and cut the boy free. That was a weird one.

There’s a trap door in the floor for the tree, and once the tree grows and the trap door comes up, there is a little gap in the floor. During intermission, our props crew lays gaff tape over the seam to make it safer for all the dancing in Act II. One night, during the greetings at the top of Act II, one of the dancers caught the tape with their shoe and started pulling it up, so there was just a mess of tape in the middle of the floor. During Hot Chocolate, one of the men got his foot stuck in it. He tried to remain in character and just keep going, but it’s a long stretch of tape that just kept getting worse and worse. He finally stopped dancing, ripped the whole piece of tape up, ran it off stage, and then went right back to the variation like nothing had ever happened. At that point, it was obvious to the audience, and when he returned, he got thunderous applause. Ever since that day, I always take a look at the trap before we start Act II to make sure the tape is smooth and stuck down as well as possible. I also always keep a pair of scissors in the drawer of the calling desk since the day we had to cut the Prince out of the sleigh lines. I try to learn something from these little moments of chaos.

Are there any ballets that you get more nervous or excited about?

We all have personal favorites in the rep, but I think the most exciting works we get to do are new ballets. It's a special kind of nervousness you get when you call a world premiere because it feels so important—that ballet is never going to have another world premiere. And, they're oftentimes some of the more complicated ballets to call, just by the nature of changing technology and lighting design, for example. Many of the ballets in our existing rep are difficult to call, but we also have a lot of ballets that are straightforward, like the black and white Balanchine ballets—they're not very technically complicated for a stage manager. But one of the most exciting things is to be part of the process and to see a ballet come together for the first time, and hear the intentions of the choreographer and the designers firsthand—to be in the room where it happens. Some premieres become iconic staples in the rep, and you get to say, “I called the first one.”

_{Photos by Ella Spruill © New York City Ballet}