NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — A Music City holiday classic is making its Nashville TV debut.
“We came up with different ideas and one of them was filming Nashville’s Nutcracker for television,” said Paul Vasterling, Nashville Ballet's artistic director.
Audiences will get an up-close experience as the Nashville Ballet brings viewers on stage for Nashville's Nutcracker.
“So suddenly you’re like amongst the flowers or you’re standing there with the Snow Queen so yeah it’s a really unique way of looking at it,” said Vasterling.
Dancers traded in a stage for the company’s warehouse turned film set, instead performing for cameras rather than people. Rehearsals began at the end of August and filming started about a month later.
“So there were about 30 dancers and we split them up into three groups and they had to rehearse in three different spaces with video connections between them," Vasterling said. "So they actually never came in contact with each other.”
Masks were mandatory throughout the entire process. Dancers were tested for COVID-19 weekly and eventually daily.
“It took a while for the dancers to get used to wearing masks in the rehearsal process and the mask only came off on the very day of shooting and only when you were shooting,” Vasterling said.
The ballet’s youth cast was also filmed separately.
In the edit, we had to again get really creative about how we put the children’s roles into the film," Vasterling said.
That creativity became key to accomplishing the company’s mission of serving the Nashville community.
“We’re always trying to figure out workarounds and figure out new ways of getting into our home of Nashville,” Vasterling said.
Nashville's Nutcracker will air Friday at 7 p.m. on NewsChannel5. You can also see it on Roku, Fire TV and Apple TV in the NewsChannel5 app.
