You don’t mess with The Nutcracker, right? Not unless you are Derek Deane. The celebrated former dancer and acclaimed British choreographer feels that Queensland Ballet’s current iteration of the much-loved ballet – with that exquisite music by Tchaikovsky – needs a bit of a touch up.
The Nutcracker is a Christmas tradition introduced to QB by former artistic director Li Cunxin. He brought his mentor Ben Stevenson’s production to the company, where it has become a fixture of the silly season. (It’s on soon and this will be the finale of the Stevenson version.)
In a strange twist, current artistic director Ivan Gil-Ortega has brought his own mentor, Derek Deane, to Brisbane to reimagine the classic ballet.
He’s not blowing it up entirely but Deane is changing it substantially. There are news sets and costumes coming too. He has been here working with the dancers for the past couple of months on his new version of The Nutcracker, which will premiere later in 2026.
“When Ivan asked me to do The Nutcracker, I was a little reticent,” Deane explains when we meet at the Thomas Dixon Centre at West End. He is fashionably late (just a tad) because he has been, well, having a swim in the pool at the apartment complex nearby where he is staying with Gil-Ortega.
He is, he says, loving the warmth and sunshine and getting as much of it as he can before he goes home to a dreary winter in England. He lives at Brighton, an hour by train south of London.
He promises not to destroy The Nutcracker but is quite candid about making considerable changes.
“I have done three productions of The Nutcracker in my life and I thought unless I can do something else with it I didn’t want to do it at all. I wanted a way to make it different and interesting.”
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To help visualise that he brought in costume and set designer Lez Brotherston (both Deane and Brotherston have OBEs) who spent a month or so here working closely on re-imagining the look of the production.
“Lez has a great theatre sense,” Deane says. “He was my first choice. I felt we needed a new look and a way of doing things in a different way.”
But to fiddle with it would be tantamount to sacrilege, wouldn’t it? Well, not really, as Gil-Ortega explained recently.
“The tradition is good, I don’t want to change that,” he says. “Ben Stevenson’s production is great but I wanted something made specifically for the company. I want it to be created for the company and that’s what Derek Deane is doing right now.”
Gil-Ortega had worked closely internationally with Deane as his right-hand man for more than a decade. Losing Gil-Ortega to Queensland Ballet was a blow, Deane says, but he’s happy for his protégé and it means he has his own place in the sun now too.
Deane’s sojourn here is longer than it should have been. As well as creating, he been teaching classes and preparing dancers for the new version of The Nutcracker.
Deane’s work is well known to Brisbane audiences, mostly through his ballet Strictly Gershwin, which has been a massive hit for QB – twice.
His ballet credentials are impeccable. He is a former principal dancer with The Royal Ballet and former artistic director of English National Ballet. Previous credits include Swan Lake in-the-round (1997) and Romeo & Juliet (1998) at the Royal Albert Hall.
Deane has created work for The Royal Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Teatro alla Scala (Milan), Teatro San Carlo (Naples), Shanghai Ballet (China), Kobayashi Ballet (Tokyo), Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Toulouse Ballet and National Ballet of Zagreb.
He has worked with the greats including Kenneth MacMillan, George Balanchine and, among others, Rudolph Nureyev, who was (surprise, surprise) rather difficult.
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At 72, Dean wants to slow down a bit, in the sense that he wants to spend more time working on his ballets.
“I used to choreograph really quickly and then there were things I wanted to change and I never had time,” he reflects. “I wanted to spend more time making changes and improvements. I’m at a time in my life where I want to enjoy the process more.”
That means two trips to Brisbane next year, including a long visit later in the year preparing the new production, which will really be a global ballet event.
So what exactly is he doing to this beloved family ballet?
“Well, the main character for me is Herr Drosselmeyer,” Deane says. “He’s always played as this friendly uncle with an eye patch. I’ve gone right away from that. My Drosselmeyer is a ringmaster, a circus man, who brings his touring circus to the family.
“He’s a showman hired to entertain the children at Christmas and he does have these extra powers he uses throughout the production.”
Other tweaks include surreal touches, including featuring the rats as pirates.
“The rats eat the mother,” he says. “I wanted to go slightly weird, strange, surreal, and it’s very mixed emotionally. I’ve gone a bit extreme.”
Won’t this scare the children, I ask innocently enough.
“Why not?” Deane says. “But how can you scare children now?”
Good point. There will be other touches that will make this quite a departure.
“We wanted to get as far away from the current production as possible,” Deane says. “Otherwise, why bother? The music is glorious and there is no change to that at all. The differences are more visual than choreographic, but it’s still classic ballet.”
Queensland Ballet’s website tells us that we are entering “a magical new era of The Nutcracker at Christmas” and that Deane and Brotherston will “reimagine the cherished holiday tradition with elegance, theatrical flair and dazzling new designs.
“Clara’s enchanting journey unfolds with fresh characters, sumptuous costumes and breathtaking sets, all set to Tchaikovsky’s timeless score.
“After 14 years, Queensland Ballet ushers in a new chapter of festive wonder with this grand-scale production, created to delight families for generations to come.”
The Nutcracker (current version), December 5-13, Lyric Theatre, QPAC.