Following Champaign Urbana Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker this weekend, there will be another (and very different) performance to see. On Monday night, December 8th, at 8 p.m., The Art Theater Co-op will present a screening of The Hard Nut.
Per the Art website:
”There are people who have grown up with The Hard Nut,” says Brooklyn-based dance legend Mark Morris about his 16 year-old re-imagining, both hip and heartwarming, of The Nutcracker. ”They came when they were six and now they’re 13. Kids love it, adults love it, teenagers love it. It’s interesting and fun and beautiful and tender.” Morris’ brilliant, irreverent, gender-bending 1991 ballet, set to the gorgeous music of Tchaikovsky, is now as much an annual holiday treat as any of the more conventional Nutcracker performances mounted by dance companies around the world as a prelude to Christmas. The Art Theater Co-op, with KCPA, proudly presents Morris’ weird and wonderful original 1991 production of The Hard Nut by the Mark Morris Dance Group, filmed at the opulent Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, where Morris and his dancers maintained a brief, and often stormy, residency nearly two decades ago.