Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Atlanta Ballet’s drive-in Nutcracker: an alternative holiday tradition
By Bo Emerson
24 September 2020
Everything has changed this year and the holidays will change as well.
Door-to-door for Halloween? The CDC recommends against it. Getting the whole crowd together for Thanksgiving? That could be tricky.
And what of “The Nutcracker,” the wintertime staple that pays the rest of the year’s bills for the Atlanta Ballet?
Just assembling the dancers on stage and the orchestra in the pit would pose some challenges, say ballet officials. Plus, the new home of “The Nutcracker,” the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, has postponed all events until the new year.
But the Atlanta Ballet refuses to be stopped, and on Dec. 2-6 will go outside the footlights.
For five nights the ballet company will construct a pop-up drive-in movie theater on the Cobb Energy Centre’s surface parking lot, and will welcome patrons at $100 a carload ($150 for the front-row parking spaces).
On the screen will be a video version of Tchaikovsky’s marvelous music and Yuri Possokhov’s choreography, telling the story of an enchanted tree, a dreamlike journey and a climactic battle. The film will feature the new staging of “The Nutcracker,” with its outsize sets and startling video projections, introduced to Atlanta audiences in 2018 by artistic director Gennadi Nedvigin.
Read the full article here.