- Pretty much everybody, even if they've never seen
another ballet, even if they don't know
anything about ballet,
The Nutcracker is literally the entrée point
for most American dancers onto the big stage.
It's often the first ballet you ever go to see,
your parents take you.
In America it's a huge holiday tradition.
There just was such an opportunity to expand
on what I danced as a child for sure.
[To dancers] I would like a little more interaction...
- So we are definitely a departure from
the traditional Nutcracker.
- Flatbush, Brooklyn, born and raised, 28 years.
My nickname is Floats.
It came from my style of dancing which is gliding.
I specialize in that.
- I actually had families in our school,
you know, children that were studying with Brooklyn Ballet,
Asian families,
because the Chinese dance
was so offensive.
- It's really way past due to really bring the beauty
of gorgeous Chinese classical dance onto the stage.
I mean,
Stay in the middle, Sira, stay in the middle.
Stay in the middle, yeah.
- When I moved to Brooklyn and founded the Brooklyn Ballet,
I started to think about a Brooklyn Nutcracker
and what that would look like,
and representing the community.
So many different groups of people that have
settled here and that are the fabric of the community
and of the borough of Brooklyn, I decided that,
I didn't know whether the ballet dancers
were the best representations of a Chinese dance
or a Spanish dance.
I wanted to add the Afro-Caribbean style,
and Afro-Modern style to parts of the ballet.
- To be quite honest, I didn't think I actually belonged.
I didn't think my style actually belonged anywhere.
What I would love to do is to put gliding and floating
to the forefront more often, because I feel like
it's an underrepresented style.
- I think the dance world does cling to its traditions.
These are master traditions and people want to participate
in those traditions, and we are all living here,
so why shouldn't everyone be able to participate?
It just adds to the texture
of a classical art form.
- There's light feet, there's animation, there's flexing,
and then of course there's ballet.
And I learned from every single one of them,
and it helps, in turn, me grow as a dancer
and as well as a person.
If we're just stuck in tradition, how are we
going to evolve?
And I feel like this is a first step in evolution.