Inside Columbus Ballet’s 29th Year of Holiday Magic

Images provided by the Columbus Ballet (@braxleestudios)

By Monica Jones

Each December, just as Columbus starts to glow with lights and wreaths, another kind of magic begins to stir at RiverCenter for the Performing Arts. Backstage, pointe shoes are being broken in, tutus sewn and resewn, and young dancers run their variations again and again until the counts live in their bones.

This year, that familiar ritual carries special weight. The Columbus Ballet’s 2025 production of The Nutcracker marks the company’s 29th annual staging of Tchaikovsky’s beloved holiday classic—nearly three decades of sugar plums, snowflakes, and Clara’s big, brave heart.

From December 12–14, the Bill Heard Theatre will transform once again into the Stahlbaum home, the Land of Snow, and the Kingdom of Sweets, with performances on Friday, December 12 at 10:30 a.m., Saturday, December 13 at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, December 14 at 2:30 p.m.

But if you think you already know this story, Artistic Director Ben Redding would like a word.

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For Redding, directing The Nutcracker in Columbus is personal. Long before he called the shots from the artistic director’s chair, he was a kid on this very stage—dancing in Columbus Ballet’s 2004 production, trying to figure out where his feet belonged in the snow.

His journey, though, really started in one of the RiverCenter’s seats.

As a middle-schooler, Redding saw a touring production of 42nd Street there and walked out changed. If he was going to be serious about performing, he realized, he needed ballet. That decision led him to enroll at The Columbus Ballet, and then on to a performing arts boarding school and a career which has made his name a constant presence in the local arts scene.

“Having the confidence to do ballet as a young man was incredibly difficult but fulfilling,” he says. That confidence, and a deep empathy for what dancers endure, is now baked into every choice he makes for The Nutcracker.

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If The Nutcracker is Columbus’ holiday ritual, the RiverCenter is its cathedral.

The 245,000-square-foot performing arts complex—home to the 2,000-seat Bill Heard Theatre, Legacy Hall, and Studio Theater—was conceived as a joint project of Columbus State University and the community, designed to bring world-class performance spaces to the Chattahoochee Valley.

Inside the Bill Heard, layers of balconies rise like golden ribbons, hugging the stage. When the house lights dim and the orchestra begins Tchaikovsky’s overture, the room feels less like a venue and more like a portal.

Redding doesn’t take that for granted. He knows that for a young dancer, stepping onto that stage—bathed in light, with a live orchestra from Schwob School of Music under renowned conductor Paul Hostetter in the pit—is the kind of moment that can reroute a life.

“This isn’t something we pulled from an album,” he reminds us. “Everything is live. No one is winging it, and those kids are busting their behinds for two hours straight.”

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Rehearsals for The Nutcracker began back in late August, with dancers gathering about ten hours a week—a deceptively small number considering how much work gets poured into those hours.

Most of the cast are students of The Columbus Ballet, working their way up through what Redding calls the “Nutcracker curriculum.” You don’t start as Clara. You start as a party child or a tiny mouse, then maybe if you get lucky you become one of Clara’s friends, or part of Fritz’s rowdy crew. From there, the goal is to climb into the ranks of elite roles: Dewdrop, Snow Queen, Green Tea, Coffee, Hot Chocolate, Marzipan—the glittering “gifts” of Act II.

Those roles are precious, and there are not many of them. “It can be heartbreaking,” Redding says. “You’re working your whole young life to get to this one place, and there’s only a few lead roles.”

The hierarchy is real, but so is the growth. Clara this year is danced by Nora Fivecoat, who is performing in her tenth Nutcracker—all of them here in Columbus. This season marks the first time she’s worked with Redding.

“He definitely brings a different, more theater aspect to it,” Nora says. “Especially in the party scene, which is more acting. He has that experience of making the story rather than just the dance moves themselves.”

Redding’s process with the dancers is blunt and demanding. Pointe shoes die after a few intense weeks. Rehearsals end not in applause, but in long lists of notes. “Ballet is more a mental game than it is a physical game,” he says. “You’re constantly working against what your body naturally wants to do. You have to be okay with not being good at it for a long time.”

His advice to young dancers? “Mental fortitude, period.”

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Redding is refreshingly honest about the ballet’s reputation.

“I’m very realistic about The Nutcracker in that I realize Act I is usually a total snooze fest,” he says, then pauses and laughs. “Okay, maybe not a snooze fest—but subtle. It takes a lot of appreciation to appreciate Act I.”

Historically, he notes, The Nutcracker has been an elitist experience—something that can shut out people who don’t already “speak” ballet. That’s not the version he’s interested in making.

“My role is to make something extremely accessible that people can enjoy, but also something that purists can appreciate,” he explains. “Storytelling comes first. Dance is a tool we use to tell the story—not the other way around.”

That philosophy shows up everywhere: in the slightly irreverent wiggles he builds into classical choreography; in the way each dancer is treated as a character with a specific journey; and in the miniature soap opera he’s written into the adults at the Act I party.

There’s Grandmother Stahlbaum, grand and disapproving. There’s a best friend who parties just a little too hard. There’s a mother-in-law who is very involved. They’re the kind of details that give adults in the audience someone to recognize…and maybe laugh a little nervously about.

“It’s important that adults see themselves reflected in this production,” he says. “There are little Easter eggs for them, too.”

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The RiverCenter performances are the centerpiece, but the 2025 Nutcracker is bigger than one weekend.

In the week leading up to the show, Columbus Ballet will take an abridged version to Manchester’s President’s Theatre, put on a special performance for local schoolchildren, and visit ten elementary schools to talk with students about the ballet. They discuss not just music and movement, but force, motion, timing, and the math that underpins every count.

Meanwhile, a special military families’ performance serves as both final dress rehearsal and a thank-you to a community that’s deeply woven into the fabric of Columbus.

For performer Manuel Abreu, who appears in a track crafted specifically for him as Drosselmeyer’s assistant and Nutcracker Prince, the joy is in sharing it all.

“I’m really excited to share the love of Christmas with everybody through ballet,” he says. “It’s a fun, different medium to experiment with as a performer.”

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So what can first-time audiences expect?

For one thing, a tight, fast-moving show. Act I runs just under an hour, Act II about fifty minutes, with a 20-minute intermission in between. “It’s all in the delivery,” Redding says. “If it feels long, something’s wrong.”

For another, they can expect athleticism that borders on Olympic. Ballet may look effortless, but anyone who’s seen a dancer’s feet after weeks in pointe shoes knows the truth. “It’s not just turning and looking pretty,” Redding says.

Mostly, though, they can expect heart.

In an era where Nutcracker music hums from every commercial and shopping playlist, it’s easy to forget that when Tchaikovsky wrote this score, people might hear it once in their entire lives. It would have felt like the Super Bowl. Today, we live in a world where it’s become background noise—and productions like Columbus Ballet’s are a reminder of the astonishing craft behind that familiarity.

“This is not just a community recital,” Redding says. “It’s an effort at perfection. And perfection doesn’t exist—which is exactly why it’s so beautiful to watch people reach for it.”

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The Columbus Ballet’s 29th annual production of The Nutcracker will be staged at the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts (900 Broadway, Columbus). Performances are scheduled for Friday, December 12, for military families at 10:30 a.m.; Saturday, December 13, at 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday, December 14, at 2:30 p.m.

Because you deserve, for two hours, to sit in the dark with your people, let a live orchestra and a stage full of brave, exhausted dancers carry you away, and remember what it feels like to choose joy.