Ballet Ireland will be hitting the road for the next six weeks on a nationwide tour with its unique Irish version of the classic 'The Nutcracker' ballet show, starting with an opening show tomorrow night.
The famous ballet by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, which was first performed in December 1892, has been produced on stages across the world ever since.
For the Ballet Ireland version though they wanted to do something different with the story so the creative team of artistic director Anne Maher and choreographer Morgan Runacre Temple decided to use the traditional Clerys Department store as their inspiration.
"A show like this with an Irish twist can continue to open people’s eyes to the importance of ballet culturally for Ireland," Ms Maher explains.
The classic fairy tale centres on a young girl, Clara, and her younger brother Fritz, whose toys magically come to life, but in Ballet Ireland’s version, the main characters have been changed to Cliona and Fionn.
For their storyline, the children go shopping to the department store with their parents, but amidst the hustle and bustle, they get distracted and disappear off to have their own adventures.
The store comes to life during the show, and one of the key characters in the story is the store manager, Mrs Drosselmeyer.
Traditionally, Mrs Drosselmeyer is Clara’s godfather, a magician whose role is usually performed by a male dancer but in Ballet Ireland’s version, the character is brought to life by Niamh O’Flanagan, a dancer from Dún Laoghaire in Dublin.
Ms O’Flanagan started her ballet training when she was just five years old and loved it from the early years. She said that ballet became more serious for her around age eleven and by the age of 15, she had moved to England to immerse fully in her training.
When her training was completed, she embarked on her professional career and this has led to a number of roles, leading to this current performance in this show.
Ms O’Flanagan told RTÉ News that "it’s a great fun role to play", and that she is really looking forward to bringing the production on the road across Ireland.
"We really want to make ballet accessible to everyone," she explained.
For Ruaidhri Maguire, who performs the role of the ‘Sugar plum fairy’s Cavalier’, his ballet career began later in life.
Ruaidhri grew up in a family where Irish dancing was a more familiar style of dance, but when he was sixteen years old, he saw the famous dancer Carlos Acosta in action in a video, "something clicked inside me and so I began training in classical ballet."
The Derry man has had a wide and varied professional career, including six years as a principal dancer and soloist in the Baltic Opera Ballet in Poland.
He told RTÉ News that he is passionate about broadening the appeal of ballet to both dancers and audiences.
Mr Maguire explained that "I was raised in a working class family and they really supported me but it was hard on them. My mum had finished up her work due to a disability and although I got scholarships for ballet training, by the time I got to London, it was a real struggle and I had to borrow, beg or steal to make it happen."
Mr Maguire went on to say that there should be more supports available for dancers, explaining his view that ballet is viewed "as a high-end art form so working class people like me don’t think it is accessible. The training is so expensive and that leads to the tickets being expensive so dance needs to get more supports to include more people," Mr Maguire said.
"I know there are wonderful dancers right across Belfast for example, but as they can’t afford the training, they lose out on opportunities and that shouldn’t be the case," he added.
Anne Maher, Artistic Director of Ballet Ireland, believes that broadening access to ballet is key, and part of her mission as an ambassador for dance is to shine a light on gaps in funding from the State.
Ms Maher shared concerns over support for ballet dancers expressing that she is well aware of the financial realities of juggling a dance career with the realities of life.
"Dancers have bills and needs too, just like everyone else," she added.
For Mr Maguire, he says that it is very different here in Ireland to his experiences in places like Poland where he lived and worked for six years as "a fully paid up civil servant as a ballet dancer."
Meanwhile, final preparations are being made ahead of opening night and when the lights go on and the dancers file on stage, there are no disagreements on what fuels the performances, the thrill of a live audience driving them onwards.
Nutcracker Sweeties runs until 14 December in venues nationwide.
