Baltimore School for the Arts is kicking off the holiday season this weekend with its annual Nutcracker production that infuses the classic tale with Charm City staples.
For featured BSA seniors, the show serves as a marking post for the progress they’ve made throughout the years. And for some aspiring young artists, it's their first time hitting the stage — and the hopeful start to a long dancing career.
Senior London Connolly has performed in the end-of-year show for the past nine years. She made her debut as a student in BSA’s free after school program called TWIGS.
“It's definitely the most emotional performance for me, because you can see what roles you get every year,” Connolly said. “You can really see how your trajectory flows. I can see little dancers in the same roles that I was in like five years ago, and really feel a connection to them in that way.”
TWIGS serves over 500 elementary and middle students each year, who apply and audition to work alongside “professionals at the top of the industry” in fields like theater, music and more, said Director Candace Dickens.
The goal of the almost 40-year-old program is to prepare Baltimore City students for BSA auditions. In 2023, around 60% of TWIGS students who auditioned gained admission. That’s one of the program's key measures of success, Dickens said.
“But there are the more anecdotal, intimate metrics of success that don't necessarily fit into an annual report,” she told WYPR. “Whether it's through telling the story of a character through a monologue, whether it's through how they play a note on the violin, I see success every single day.”
Connolly said when she first started TWIGS, she “was not disciplined at all.”
“I was very rowdy; I would talk while the teacher was talking,” she said. “TWIGS taught me those essential lessons of how to take in choreography, how to not speak when someone else is speaking, how to be where you're supposed to be on time. And those lessons have stayed with me through dance, but also through other things as well in life.”
Dickens says the annual Nutcracker performance helps younger TWIGS students by providing key opportunities for mentorship with seasoned dancers like Connolly.
“Our young TWIGS students who are nervous or excited, they are standing side by side with our veterans,” she said. “It's just a lovely safe space for our kids to not only have that opportunity to work in such a professional scope, but there's so much collaboration happening.”
Connolly said she hopes the performance gives the 35 TWIGS students cast in this year’s show “a foundational love for dance.”
“I feel like as I got older, as steps became more difficult or teachers were more stressful, it felt like I was losing the love for it a little bit,” she said. “But every time I’m in this production, I see people of all walks of life, of all ages, and I can really just feel a collective love for this production and for what we do as dancers.”
BSA’s Nutcracker opens Friday, Dec. 6 at 6 p.m. and runs through this weekend and the next.
