Natascha Mair, Principal Dancer, on “Sugar Hill:” “We all inspired each other!”

Natascha Mair rehearsing *Sugar Hill*. Photo by Jon Taylor

Natascha Mair, principal dancer, is gearing up for a very different Nutcracker: from 20 until 30 December 2023, her fans will be able to watch her in Chicago in Sugar Hill, a show choreographed to Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s The Nutcracker Suite, a jazz interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker. For the past few months, the Viennese-born former principal dancer with Vienna State Ballet and English National Ballet has been based in New York, joining a cast of 34 dancers to create some jazzy Christmas magic in a production that combines various dance styles, from hip hop, jazz and swing to ballet. Sugar Hill is set in the 1930s in New York and tells the story of Lena, the rebellious daughter a high-society Black family and her fantastic dreamworld in the Sugar Hill neighbourhood of Harlem. Hopefully, the show will tour across the US and other countries in 2024. TWoA talked to Natascha about Sugar Hill and about some of the most memorable Nutcracker moments in her career.

Tell us a bit about Sugar Hill.

Basically, it’s a new version of The Nutcracker. It has a twist; the story is a bit different. The whole musical score is by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. They made this jazz version of the Nutcracker score. You can recognize some of the pieces, but it is still more jazzy. I think the production team added a few other songs by Ellington and Strayhorn to the score. The show has all the different dance styles: there is jazz, hip hop, classical and there are different choreographers for each style. The classical solo that I do is choreographed by Jade Hale-Christofi. The role that I do is called Floreadores, which is basically the music of the Flower Waltz, but a jazz version.

What is the storyline of Sugar Hill?

The librettist, Jessica Swan wrote a story about this little girl Lena on New York’s Upper West Side. She doesn’t like a party she is attending with her parents and escapes into this other world, into this secret jazz club. The story is based on the music. The Nutcracker is a musician, a trumpet player. There are hooligans who beat him up and break his teeth, so he can’t play the trumpet anymore. That turns him into the Nutcracker. Lena is trying to lift him up and throughout her dream, she is trying to get him to play the trumpet again.

How does your character fit into the plot?

My character Floreadores is choreographed to the musical equivalent of the Flower Waltz. I appear in Lena’s dream. When Lena dreams about this whole world that she creates in her dream, there are different animals. Sugar Plum, for example, is a cat and they call her Sugar Rum Cherry. All the different dances are different animals. My character is the last one of those characters, kind of like the Flower Waltz in the traditional production. Floreadores is a cricket. It’s a classical solo, but it’s burlesque at times. Because of the jazz music, Jade choreographed it in a way that it’s a bit different. Lena is dreaming, and she sees the different characters, and every character inspires her to find out who she is.

The show is mixing different styles of dancing. What has it been like to work with such a stylistically diverse cast?

There are four guys, we call them Boogz ensemble. John Boogz is a really famous hip hop dancer. He choreographed those four guys. They are “New Yorkers” and many other roles throughout the show. They do hip hop in everything they do, which is really cool. We have jazz dancers and swing dance, which is choreographed by Caleb Teicher. I am also doing some swing dance in the first act. We all have our different dance styles, but we also all come together and do things that are more jazzy, swing. It’s really fun.

Throughout the process, we all inspired each other. It was an amazing environment. In a ballet company, we all just do one thing. In this production, the hip hop guys would try to do some ballet steps, and we would try to learn something from them. Not that I would do hip hop in the production, but we just had this great environment in the studio, everyone just trying stuff and incorporating stuff in the choreography. We had this great learning place where everyone admires each other because no one could do what someone else can do. In ballet, you can admire someone, but you can also do it, it’s all in the same world. But in this show, I could never do what any of the other dancers can do in their field, and they could never do what I can do. So, everyone is cheering for each other and creating this great environment. The main girl, Lena, she is supposed to be a young kid and she does a bit of everything because she goes through the story. She does a little bit of jazz, she does her solo on pointe, she does a dance with the hip hop boys. She does a little bit of everything.

What other styles are you doing in the show?

I’m doing a little bit of jazz and I’m doing some swing dance. In the first act, all the characters come together for the party scene and the secret jazz club. That is where we all just do the choreography no matter what dance style we come from; we all have learned those scenes. Caleb Teicher, who choreographed the swing dance, would come in with his people and teach all of us, because even though everyone has their dance style they are good at, none of us are swing dancers. We all had to learn it, which was super fun.

What is the most exciting thing about this production for the audience? Especially in the US, everybody is doing The Nutcracker – what is different and special about this production?

There are basically the best dancers from every field, doing different dance styles. If someone is really interested in just classical ballet they will enjoy a classical show, but I think the majority of the audience nowadays don’t actually know just one dance style, they just want to have a good time. People sometimes get easily bored watching one thing. If you just watch a full-on jazz show, it’s kind of repetitive, and if you just watch a full-on classical show, unless you are a complete ballet lover, it’s not exciting after a while, everything starts looking the same. I feel in this Nutcracker, you never get to that point because you watch one thing and you go: wow, that was really cool, and then in the next scene it’s something very different. It’s all very flavourful in that sense. The music is absolutely amazing. The band that was playing in the studio – we had a few days with the full band that we will have for the shows – it was incredible! Jazz music live with so many people in the orchestra is insane. You can recognise the original Nutcracker score, but it has this fun jazz element to it - it’s exciting!

Could you share some Nutcracker memories from the past with us? What is your first Nutcracker memory?

Actually, it’s really funny, because The Nutcracker happens to be my career piece, in a way. My very first performance ever as a kid was The Nutcracker, in Vienna, I think I was maybe seven years old; I was just one of the kids in it. That was the first show I had on a big stage. And then my first performance with the company when I got hired in Vienna with seventeen was The Nutcracker as well. My first ever principal role was in Nureyev’s The Nutcracker in Vienna when I was eighteen. My first show with English National Ballet was also The Nutcracker, and actually the show in Vienna when I was promoted to principal was also The Nutcracker. So, I feel all the milestones in my life happened to be different Nutcrackers.

What was the most inspiring, most memorable Nutcracker moment in your career?

Probably when I got promoted to principal, because that was really touching. Manuel Legris, the director of the ballet, came on stage after the show with Dominique Meyer, the director of the Vienna State Opera, and they promoted me in front of the audience. It was a livestream as well. That was a very big moment for me, it was very emotional.

Did you know that you would be promoted that night or was it a surprise?

It was a surprise, but it was weird because Manuel is a really big family person and he was insisting for my family to watch that show, so I was wondering: “What is going on?!?!” But I didn’t want to think about the possibility of promotion because that would be too stressful. I was not really thinking about the chance of me getting promoted after this. But afterwards, it made sense, I thought: “I could have guessed that.” Because he had never asked me for certain shows to have my family come watch.

Have you had any funny Nutcracker moments?

I can’t really think of much. But I remember one show, when I was a kid still. When I was around fourteen, I did little Clara in one of the Nutcracker versions. It was actually my first main role as a kid. I forgot about that one! I remember doing the best show out of all the shows that I was doing. I was so happy, there was no mistake, everything went well. It was the best show I ever had. And then I slipped running out for the bow. I thought: “Wow! The ONE show where everything went right, and I am almost falling on the floor just for the bow!”

Sugar Hill, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, 20-30 December 2023