Spectacular New Nutcracker Backdrops

South Carolina Ballet's new Nutcracker backdrops
South Carolina Ballet’s new Nutcracker backdrops

We are thrilled to present to you our new backdrops for Nutcracker! Made possible through the generous support of McWhirter, Bellinger & Associates, and the South Carolina Arts Commission, these drops represent a years-long process of planning and manufacturing. They replace drops that we purchased 36 years ago and are designed to have even greater resilience than the previous ones.

In collaboration with Adirondack Studios of Argyle, New York, and Enhance a Colour Corporation of Danbury, Connecticut, Artistic Director William Starrett has been able to bring his artistic vision for these sets to life. The process was long and involved many people to make Starrett’s vision a reality. We can scarcely wait for you to see the results when the drops are revealed in our 2023 Nutcracker production. Meanwhile, we wanted to share some highlights of the processes involved in their creation.

First, careful financial planning was necessary to even begin to contemplate such a large capital expenditure. Thanks to the efforts of our CEO, CFO, Treasurer, and the support of our board, we were able to develop a plan that included important funding from the South Carolina Arts Commission and a significant gift from our friends Pat and Garland McWhirter and McWhirter, Bellinger & Associates. The next step was for William Starrett to conceptualize how he wanted the scenes to look. William wanted to produce scenes that resonated with our Southern roots, which were achieved using Georgian and Greek Revival architectural elements. He also wanted the sets to do a better job of bringing cohesiveness to the Nutcracker story. When the drops are revealed, you will instantly see new elements that accomplish these goals.

Once we arrived at a concept, we began to work with artists Tara Cook and Tory Shortway from Adirondack Studios. These exceptional artists produced initial black-and-white drawings based on William’s design brief. From there, changes in scale, positions of architectural elements, and coloration were determined. Next, the artists began to produce scaled color representations of each backdrop. More changes were made until all parties were satisfied with the artist’s renderings. Now, the work moved to Enhance a Colour Corporation where the first proofs were produced using the same materials as the final scrim and backdrops. Again, adjustments were made to coloration, shading, and so forth. Finally, we arrived at the production of the full-scale scrim and backdrop. It may be helpful at this point to offer some insight into what the specific components produced are. There is one scrim (the exterior of the Stahlbaum residence), which is a scene printed on a net-like material resulting in a translucent scene that can be manipulated through lighting allowing it to be seen clearly or fade away to reveal what is behind it. The drops on the other hand are printed on a muslin-type fabric which has incredible durability. The scrim is of particular excitement to us, because our previous scrim had completely disintegrated from continual use on our many tours throughout the past 30 years, so we are especially pleased to have this important feature included in the new sets.

Unique to our production, we also had new legs and borders manufactured, you will not find this elsewhere. In all, there is 1 scrim of the exterior of the Stahlbaum mansion, 4 drops (Stahlbaum’s Parlor, Paradise, Snow, and Land of the Sweets), 3 sets of legs and borders for Act 1, 4 sets of legs and borders for Snow, and 4 sets of legs and borders for Land of the Sweets. All these components are individually produced by professional artists and then reproduced using new techniques that infuse painterly techniques such as brush strokes and detail. Printed with dye sublimation inks, these drops have greater versatility with an ingenious design that easily allows for them to be resized for various theater venues.

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