Nestled inside a cardboard box on a riser in the Westside Theater is a collection of mice. Compact, yellow, wind-up racing mice made of imitation wood.
It’s Bare Bait Dance’s first full rehearsal for the Missoula-based dance company’s winter show, The Night Before. But before they begin their stumble through (as BBD’s executive artistic director, Joy French, calls it), the dancers need to test the mice. They each grab one from the box, set them on the floor, and pull them backward so that when they let the mice go, the toys race forward on their own.
Once the mice are tested, the dancers place them in their spots behind the curtain, ready for the show. They’ll make a few appearances: In one scene, dancers sit on the floor to wind up mice, while other dancers use flashlights to track their progress across the stage. In another scene, a dancer travels across the stage doing cartwheels, backbends and lunges while a different dancer traces the mouse across her limber body.
The toy mice of BBD’s The Night Before are allusions to two treasured Christmas stories: The Nutcracker and “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The Nutcracker—a short story made famous by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s music and a classical two-act ballet—takes place on Christmas Eve inside a child’s imagination. The Mouse King and his army of mice battle the Nutcracker’s soldiers, until the Mouse King’s ultimate demise. In Clement Clark Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (commonly known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”), “not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.”
Bare red hoop skirts, made by Bare Bait costume designer Ashley Zhinin, allude to the party scene in The Nutcracker, with the adults all dressed up in their voluminous skirts, dancing Christmas Eve away before the story turns to Clara, the main character, and her dream.
Bare Bait’s show even begins with dancers sporting Christmas gifts and Christmas trees strapped to their heads as a nod to both stories, in which trees with presents stuffed under their boughs play a central role. But BBD’s take on the season is its own. French, who choreographed The Night Before, says she has been interested over the past couple of years in what a winter holiday show could look like from a professional modern/contemporary dance company. She wanted to figure out how she could use things like presents and mice with some ownership, not just producing The Nutcracker with a few tweaks.
French says she likes to work within tight creative constructs. And she enjoys a theme. For The Night Before, she decided she would use Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s dynamic interpretation of “The Nutcracker Suite” along with the classic “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” poem. She wanted it to be fun and festive, but with a bit of an edge. It was a creative challenge.
“I felt like I didn’t have to choose one or the other, I could just kind of blend with this show,” French says.
Last year, Bare Bait performed their first winter show, Hello Winter. French choreographed about a third of it, partnering with other choreographers for the rest. For that production, she was interested in a retelling of A Christmas Carol, but she’s not sure anyone in the audience really got the reference. Hello Winter was more campy, French says, and The Night Before is more silly. But, Hello Winter gave French the springboard to her own holiday show.
“When it comes to choreography, I like some playful moments,” French says.
The Nutcracker Suite album was perfect for what she was going for—something jazzy and fun and inspired. And French feels more confident the audience will get the references this time around, especially since the Ellington/Strayhorn interpretation of the original Tchaikovsky score is so familiar.
Other music featured in The Night Before includes singer/YouTube star Todrick Hall, a piece from A Charlie Brown Christmas, Calvin Emery’s “Bells Will Be Ringing,” legendary composer Danny Elfman (of Edward Scissorhands and A Nightmare Before Christmas fame), and original scoring by Travis Yost.
When working on putting the show together, French and the company talked about everyone’s experience with The Nutcracker.
As a dancer, there are almost two camps you fall into: You’ve done The Nutcracker every year since you were 5, and remember every role you’ve ever held, while desperately coveting the year you get to be Clara. Or you’ve never performed in The Nutcracker because your studio was more focused on competitions or contemporary dance. (Middle ground exists, of course.)
French was never in The Nutcracker. First-year company member Hannah Dusek has never even seen it. As Dusek talked with the company and started rehearsing The Night Before, she learned The Nutcracker through an alternative lens, like with Ellington’s “Sugar Rum Cherry”—a riff on “Sugar Plum Fairy” in The Nutcracker.
“I think the show is so fun—learning about The Nutcracker in kind of a twisted way,” Dusek says.
Four-year BBD company member Tiki Preston is in the middle ground. She didn’t have a huge Nutcracker upbringing, but did play a “Russian dancer” in a production when she was young. And she loves going to watch the seasonal productions.
Everyone who celebrates Christmas has their own way of celebrating it, but there are shared experiences and imagery—like Christmas trees and gifts wrapped in bows. And even if people aren’t familiar with The Nutcracker or “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” (and the mice referenced within those stories), Preston says The Night Before is funny enough to carry the audience through.
“[Joy] likes to say ‘Make ‘em laugh, and then make ‘em cry,’” she says.
The Night Before continues Friday, Dec. 1 through Saturday Dec. 2 and Friday, Dec. 8 through Sunday, Dec. 10 at the Westside Theater. More info at BBD. Purchase tickets here.
