Scottish Ballet dancer Layla Harrison gives us a look behind the scenes on The Nutcracker tour. 
There is darning thread everywhere! The Christmas season has arrived at Scottish Ballet and the dancers are preparing themselves. With five and a half weeks to get the production ready and nine extra dancers on board, the rehearsal days are long but productive. The scenes aretaught quickly with Amanda Eyles, Maria Jimenez, Nicolas Blanc and Hope Muir (our Ballet staff) working flat out, and the whole company and crew are hard at work all day, every day. As with most full length, story ballets, The Nutcracker involves large scenery and lots of lavish costumes. The Wardrobe have a huge amount of work on their hands as they steam clean, repair and in some cases, remake costumes for the revival. The new Scottish Ballet building is buzzing.
There are often lots of props involved in story ballets and Ashley Page’s The Nutcracker certainly has its fair share. For the past few weeks the rehearsal studios have been adorned with all sorts of objects including necklaces, books, dolls, plants, pretend presents, cats, cloaks, potties(!) and of course, the all important Nutcracker doll. The Stage Management team mark out a plan on the studio floor (using coloured gaffer tape) to show where the various pieces of scenery will be set. This forms a sort of map of the stage and has to be changed depending on which theatre we’re rehearsing for. As the size of the stage alters, so does the position of the scenery and the company members need to know when they might be dancing into something! As we reach December, the Company makes time for some mince pies and hot drinks after class one day, though it was rather hard for the dancers to go back into rehearsal once we’d got settled onto the sofas in the ‘social space’ and were chatting away about the fast approaching festivities!
On 4th December, Scottish Ballet said farewell to Amanda Eyles who has been the Company’s ballet mistress for a number of years. Although Amanda will be back in Glasgow to help stage various productions for the company, she has decided to move back down south to pursue other dreams. We were very sad to see her go but wish her all the best for whatever comes next.
Amanda being given her leaving gifts in the Tramway cafe.
The dancers are still sewing ballet shoes! In this production of The Nutcracker, the girls of the company wear either traditional pink pointe shoes or black ones. Each dancer has to prepare several pairs of each type. The male principal dancers of the company have to start practicing in their white, leather boots and of course, all the men also have to sew their elastics onto their shoes.
While we rehearse in the studio, some of the girls like to wear practice tutus. It can be helpful (particularly while rehearsing partner work) to get used to the feel of the choreography in costume. Besides which, putting on a tutu can make even the most experienced ballerina feel lovely!
Tutus in the studio.
As with any physical career, injury is always a possibility. In the run up to opening night, there was a very strange week when five dancers fell in rehearsals but luckily, all were fine. It is sadly quite usual in a dance company for one or two dancers to be off work with an injury at any one time and this season is no different for Scottish Ballet. The roles are shared out among the remaining dancers (who are injury free) so that some people do more than they might have been originally cast for.
Before we head into the theatre for production week, the dancers tend to stock up on various necessities. I made a (very expensive) trip to Boots to buy some false eyelashes, Compeed for my toes, make up remover wipes and most importantly of all, Berrocca! This is an effervescent type of vitamin which dancers seem to find particularly efficient at keeping head‐colds at bay! Of course, we still all suffer from time to time but it’s always a good idea to do anything you can to prevent yourself catching something. It is particularly unpleasant to have a blocked nose when you have to don a mouse head (as we do in The Nutcracker!)... I found I couldn’t breathe well at all!
The technical rehearsals and dress runs went really well and it was so nice for us all to feel the ballet coming together after everyone’s hard work in the run up. Performing on stage is a wonderful feeling and when the curtain went up on opening night, there was a real sense of excitement backstage. The dancers seemed to be extra supportive of each other and the atmosphere in the wings during the whole show was electric. Such a big production commands a real team effort and makes it all the more thrilling to pull off! Because there are lots of different roles in a big ballet like Nutcracker, dancers double up, treble up and even sometimes (in my case, on opening night) do four roles per show! Some of the roles, like mice, mean only spending a couple of minutes onstage but all the costume, hair & make up changes mean you can be busy for the duration of the performance.
^ Some of us play children in the show
< Claire prepares her shoes with resin
For the Christmas season in Glasgow, the Company normally lays a sprung floor down, which means the dancers are not dancing on a concrete base and it is much better for our bodies. Unfortunately, the scenery for The Nutcracker is so heavy that we are told at the beginning of the run that it would go straight through a sprung floor, so we have to make do with the hard floor on this occasion. The audience will not notice this at all but it does mean the dancers have to take greater care of their warm ups and take it easy when rehearsing a lot of jumps.
After the show on opening night, we have a party for the whole Company which is always welcome! Lots of us venture across the road to Dragon‐I to eat large amounts of noodles amd discuss the show over drinks. The show gets rave reviews the next day and we continue into a run of sold out shows!
Presents under our tree
Santa and his little helper!
Each Christmas, the Company arranges a ‘secret santa’ where everyone who wishes to, puts their names into a hat. We draw the names out randomly and with a £5 limit, buy our fellow company/crew member a Christmas gift. This always provides much entertainment and with Victor Zarallo volunteering once again to be santa for the day (along with an elf helper!), we gather on the stage between shows on the 23rd December to give our presents!
For the few days before Christmas, the snowy weather is a worry for those aiming to travel home on 24th December. Dancers and crew are constantly checking the met forecast and iphones are used to check pending flight cancellations etc. There is a real feeling of will we/won’t we in the theatre but in the end, all is well and everyone who lives close enough to go home makes it. It is always tough for the dancers who simply cannot fly home in the few hours after the show on Christmas Eve, but they all make the most of it, either joining up with friends, or going somewhere exciting for the few days off.
Richard and Michael, our festive musicians!
One thing struck me as being funny during the snowy period. Because of the weather, it is a real achievement to actually get to work at all and to see the dancers file into the changing rooms, bedraggled and miserably cold seemed such a far cry from the glamorous, costumed dancers that took to the stage a few hours later. What a transformation!
Amy sews the ribbons on her shoes on to make sure they don’t come undone onstage
Before rounding up the Glasgow shows, I would like to mention our dressers. Alongside the amazing Scottish Ballet wardrobe team, our dressing room had two wonderful ladies looking after us! Lucy and Ann looked after our costumes, made us pretty Christmas decorations and even baked us delicious cakes!! They were both so great and it made our work as dancers so much easier knowing that they would always help with our quick costume changes etc.
Bethany livens up the dressing room with festive cheer!
This year, the dancers had decided on having a cleaning rota for our tour fridge! Two dancers were assigned to clean it out before leaving each venue and guess who was first on the list?! Paul Liburd and I were on duty to clean it on New Year’s Eve but because we were both dashing off to get home in time for the celebrations, we actually had to clean it during the show!
Ann (our dresser) couldn’t resist taking a photo of me cleaning out the fridge during the show!
...Whoever said touring was glamorous?!