Suite sounds of nostalgia Nutcracker score an indelible part of the season By: Jen Zoratti Posted: 4:27 PM CST Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025 Last Modified: 4:20 PM CST Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025 Updates

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It was Tchaikovsky’s singular Nutcracker score that made Marco Lo Presti want to become a professional ballet dancer, but the Royal Winnipeg Ballet second soloist didn’t first encounter it at the ballet.

Rather, the iconic Nutcracker Suite sequence in Disney’s 1940 anthology film Fantasia is what captured his imagination as a child in Rome.

Animated to the Tchaikovsky, the short depicts the changing of the seasons with a cast of magical woodland creatures. (Fantasia is widely credited with popularizing the score — and therefore the ballet — with audiences in America.)

“My parents had a VHS copy and I remember being hypnotized by Russian Dance performed by the flowers, or the fish for the Arabian Dance, dancing with the veils. And I would watch it over and over again. It was like, I want to do what the flowers do.”

Lo Presti has been with the RWB since 2023, so this year’s performances of Nutcracker, which begin Friday at the Centennial Concert Hall, are not his first. He will, however, be dancing in the role of the Nutcracker Prince for the first time with the company.

“It’s very exciting because it’s a very challenging role. There’s many technical things about it, like the partnering,” he says. For Lo Presti, it’s an ideal combination of stamina and artistry.

And being able to perform to the music he grew up loving, well, that’s just tinsel on the tree. When the RWB tours its production of Nutcracker, the company often has to perform to a recorded score. In Winnipeg, the music is performed live by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

For Lo Presti, there’s no question which is better.

“Oh my God, it changes completely. There’s an energy that comes from the pit and we respond with our energy.”

While there are many versions of the ballet — the RWB’s Canadiana-flavoured one, choreographed by Galina Yordanova and Nina Menon, has been performed since 1999 — the throughline is the music.

And 133 years after it first premièred, what is arguably Tchaikovsky’s most famous composition isn’t just the score for the ballet. It’s the soundtrack of the season.

“It’s synonymous with Christmas itself.”

“It’s synonymous with Christmas itself,” says Monica Chen, assistant conductor of the WSO, who will be leading the orchestra in the pit for Nutcracker. “It’s become so prevalent that it’s seeped into media of all sorts. Anyone would recognize (Dance of the) Sugar Plum Fairy.”

Indeed, “Nutcracker music,” so ubiquitous it’s its own genre, turns up everywhere, from a 2005 episode of The Simpsons — “this time of year, everybody does it, ’cause you don’t have to pay for the music rights,” Lisa tells Homer, which makes the rest of Springfield break into song to the tune of the March of the Toy Soldiers — to the title screen of the 1989 version of Nintendo’s Tetris, which features an 8-bit version of Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.

“And not only is it so iconic in that way, it’s also exquisitely beautiful writing from the musical side,” Chen says. “Tchaikovsky was a fantastic composer, and he was really, really hard on himself. This is still one of those works that is still a classic. It’s timeless.”

Lo Presti, too, has great admiration for the technicality of the music.

“I was talking about the score with Julian Pellicano, our musical director, a while ago, and he was explaining to me how perfect it is. How it’s like a Swiss watch in that if you take out just one little part, it would fall apart, because it’s a perfect machine that works from the beginning till the end.”

Chen loves conducting both the Snow Pas De Deux and the Grand Pas De Deux because she can really feel the music-dancer connection.

“When it’s soloists on stage, there’s such a flexibility that the music requires to really accompany and support the dancers and give them the space, the energy and the musicality to really express themselves at their best comfort level,” she says. “It’s really the best kind of combination — and collaboration — of two art forms coming together as one.”

The biggest consideration the WSO needs to make to best support what’s happening onstage is tempo, Chen says.

“There’s kind of an ideal pocket where this music would sit and for the dancers to really feel comfortable to fully execute the choreography,” she says.

If the music is too fast, the dancers might feel rushed. If it’s too slow, they could be stuck holding poses for too long and be more tired than they should be by the end of the show.

But because the score is performed live by human beings, it’s naturally going to be a little different show to show, which requires adaptation on the part of the dancers.

“You have to be a little more attentive, but in a good way, because it makes it more interesting,” Lo Presti says. “Maybe one day is lower, and you can try to do one more pirouette. Maybe one day is faster, and you can try to maybe do the double tour a little faster, and maybe it works better than the night before, because it’s just faster. I think it’s very interesting.”

Like Chen, Lo Presti loves the Grand Pas De Deux with its grand orchestral swells.

“It gives me the goosebumps… There’s the whole crescendo in the lift section that is such a glorious moment that every time, like the adrenaline goes beyond the normal. Just the score gives you more energy on stage to perform and to push more than that you would usually do.”

Energy is definitely required: for two hours, Tchaikovsky puts everyone through their paces.

“The score gives you more energy on stage to perform.”

“Because it’s done for so many shows at the end of the year, it doesn’t get nearly as much rehearsal time as the music probably deserves, because it’s not an easy score by any means,” Chen says.

And so, the orchestra does their own little end-of-run celebration.

“I’ll let you in on a little WSO tradition. For the very final number in the final show, (the musicians) turn off their lights,” Chen says.

“So, if anyone’s going to the last show, keep an eye out for the pit when the lights go out as we celebrate the last show in darkness. We play the very end completely memorized because we’ve already done it 10 times.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca