With the arrival of the holiday season, many community organizations are staging the classic ballet The Nutcracker.The Louisville Ballet's new production of the Brown Forman Nutcracker begins this weekend at the Kentucky Center and a Louisville-area dance ensemble will present its adaptation of the ballet Saturday, December 4 at the Louisville Palace.Its called Nutcracker in a Nutshell (pictured) and will be performed by the non-profit ensemble, Making Art Grow in Children, or MAGIC. As the title suggests, it's a pared down version of the piece intended for a young audience."It's actually a luxury for a little child to be able to go to the stage and see someone close to their age and what they can accomplish," said Denise Gillman, MAGIC's founder and artistic director. "With the regular Nutcracker being quite a long length of two hours, there would be no way that a child could sit through that length. So i was just thinking, how about in a nutshell? So its the exact same story but we've just cut out mainly the music and little extra dancing that we didn't have to perform."Nutcracker in a Nutshell will be staged at 2:00 and 7:00pm Saturday, December 4 at the Louisville Palace. Performances of the Brown Forman Nutcracker begin on the same day and continue through December 19 at the Kentucky Center.
Rick Howlett was midday host and the host of LPM's weekly talk show, "In Conversation." He was with LPM from 2001-2023 and held many different titles, including Morning Edition host, Assignment Editor and Interim News Director. He died in August 2023. Read a remembrance of Rick here.
