Jon Upleger

Artistic Director Paul Vasterling has set Nashville's Nutcracker with the Nashville Symphony at the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition. Here, Drosselmeyer introduces Clara to the magical imagination and diversity of Nashville. In the ballet's opening, Clara sees a Nutcracker doll made by a German Toy Maker. Following the expo at Centennial Park, Vasterling creates a snowy scene of figure skating at Shelby Bottoms as partygoers head towards the Stahlbaum home. Among other Nashville nuances, Vasterling expands the battle scene to include American Infantry, Native American Soldiers, and Frontier Soldiers, all working together to defeat the Mouse King. The Sugar Plum Fairy holds court in the Parthenon Garden as a final homage to Nashville's branding as the “Athens of the South.'

I last saw Duo Concertant in 2017, for former New York City Ballet dancer Robbie Fairchild's retirement. Seeing Balanchine's work away from his home excitingly challenged this company. Nashville Ballet dancers are grounded, pliable, almost earthy at times in their approach. Here, they embraced the speed, lightness, and attack required by Balanchine, tag-teamed with the complexity of Stravinsky's score.

As difficult as it may be to comprehend, Nashville's Nutcracker - Paul Vasterling's beautiful and evocative holiday gift to his adopted hometown - first debuted in 2008 and its return in 2018 only enhances the already stellar reputation of Nashville Ballet as the city's leading arts entity and adds more luster to the glittering resume of its artistic director, who this season celebrates his 20th anniversary leading the company.

Always finding unique ways to tell the stories of the world, the Nashville Ballet offered the SEVEN DEADLY SINS for the second year in a row, artistically exploring the darkest depths of our souls.

There's something magical about the Nashville Ballet and that statement rang true during the 2018 Nashville Ballet Ball at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

Some 90 captivating minutes of creative, imaginative movement, Light/The Holocaust & Humanity Project features the superb dancers of Nashville Ballet at their finest, bringing to life history in such a way that left their audiences rapt, riveted to the smallest of moments and the largest of themes as they are conveyed onstage to a stunning, stirring musical score.

Nashville Ballet dancers took to the aisles of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Polk Theater for Lizzie Borden with The Raven, Thursday, October 26th. Principal dancer Christopher Stuart's interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe's seminal work led the evening, sharing an ominous closing motif with Artistic Director Paul Vasterling's rendition of Lizzie Borden's complicated life.

Nashville Ballet will open its performance season with one of the most beloved ballets of all time, The Sleeping Beauty, September 23-24, 2017, at TPAC's Jackson Hall.

Pride. Greed. Envy. Sloth. Gluttony. Lust. Wrath. Collectively, they are the seven deadly sins - the cardinal sins, the antitheses of the seven virtues. Creatively, they are the inspiration for choreographer Christopher Stuart's most recent work, 7 Deadly Sins featuring music by the Nashville-based collective known as Ten Out of Tenn, and now brought to life by Nashville Ballet in a twin-bill that closes out the company's 2016-17 season on a resounding note of artistic achievement.

Ballet is always beautiful, but too often it also feels inaccessible and outdated. With Ballet Across America, The Kennedy Center banishes these concerns with a program full of relevance and joy. Misty Copeland has brought together three diverse companies who differ in style but share an impressive level of talent and passion. The cumulative effect is a vivid reminder of how effecting ballet can be.

GOOD MORNING, THEATERATI! And a gracious good morning to Kate Adams Kramer, our very first Theaterati cover girl! Today we are pondering the theatrical question of 'Kevin Spacey...Tony Awards host...what the hell?' Perhaps you might opine about that bit of news and share your impressions with us: we promise not to tell a soul!

The Nashville Ballet's 2017 production of ATTITUDE brought a host of grace, edge and even a bit of history to TPAC's James K. Polk Theatre on Thurs., Feb. 9.

Since its debut in 2008, Nashville's Nutcracker – choreographer Paul Vasterling's holiday-scented love letter to his adopted hometown – has delighted thousands of audience members eager to experience this particularly rapturous paean to this most wonderful time of the year. Eager to set off on a journey of wonder and delight, to be swept away to a fanciful world of dashing princes and beautiful fairy princesses brought to life vivdly by the accomplished dancers of Nashville Ballet's various companies, audiences for nine successive years now have allowed themselves to be caught up in the spectacle of the production which never fails to enthrall and to entertain.

From the very first moment - when principal guest conductor Nathan Fifield raises his baton and the musicians of the Nashville Symphony play the very first notes of Prokofiev's lush score - it becomes apparent that Nashville Ballet's Cinderella is going to be something very special. And so it goes for the next two-and-one-half-hours: All the way to the final tableau in which the lovely young woman (danced with power and grace by the always-superb Kayla Rowser) finds herself upon a swing in an altogether bucolic setting, with the comforting and loving arm of her dashing prince (Judson Veach, handsome and steadfast) gently caressing her.

Nashville Ballet brings the magical fairytale Cinderella to life September 16-18, 2016, at TPAC's Polk Theater as the opening performance of its 2016-2017 season. The family friendly classical ballet features a Cinderella who's not afraid to take fate into her own hands, two stepsisters hilariously played by men and an adorable youth cast of 5 to 7 year olds.

Nashville Ballet announces the launch of its Young Men's Scholarship Program beginning August 2016, which will provide comprehensive ballet training for males age 6-18 of all experience levels. The program will offer students one full academic year of tuition-free training, followed by merit-based scholarships.

Nashville Ballet brings its 30th anniversary season to a close with two works choreographed by artistic director and CEO Paul Vasterlling:  a dazzlingly intricate and grand revival of Carmina Burana, set to the timeless music of Carl Orff, and the world premiere of Layla & The Majnun, which features the music of composer Richard Danielpour, which recreates one of the world's oldest love stories from Persian culture.

Without doubt, excessive exaggeration or hyperbole, Nashville is a veritable 'city of dreams,' a place where creativity thrives and collaboration is a way of life. Perhaps in no other way is this synergy expressed more artfully than in Nashville Ballet's Attitude series - playing through Valentine's Day at TPAC's James K. Polk Theatre - which captures the very essence of Music City, encapsulating it in the music of local songwriters and then translating it for an audience via the ephemeral nature of dance.

Case in point: Today's subject of Where Are They Now?, our regular feature in which we catch-up with those people who once called Nashville home but who are now reaching for their dreams all over the creative world. Dancer Garrett Marks first came to Nashville in 2009 to study at Belmont University and, in the process, became Belmont's first student to earn a BFA in Dance, creating his own line of study when one barely seemed to exist on a campus filled to the brim with talented young people.

Darkly sensual and broodingly sexy, Paul Vasterling's balletic interpretation of Bram Stoker's legendary anti-hero Dracula (first presented in 1999 and revived in 2007) remains as potent and as stirring as ever, richly conceived and beautifully performed by the dancers of Nashville Ballet, who offer  audiences a spine-tingling seasonal adventure.