Ballet Hawaii presents a new version of ‘The Nutcracker’

Everyone, it seems, owns a piece of “The Nutcracker.”

A bourgeois German household was the original 19th-century setting when Tchaikovsky adapted E.T.A. Hoffman’s original tale, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King,” for the stage. In the 1990s, a British company reset it in an orphanage, a la Charles Dickens. And of course there are the ethnic dances: Spanish, Russian, Arabian and Chinese.

So it would seem natural to have a Hawaii version, and that’s what Ballet Hawaii has created for this season — and for years to come.

Its brand-new production is loaded with references to Hawaii. Locations include Washington Place and Mauna Kea; colorful characters represent plants and animals of the islands. The storyline is inspired by Hawaiian history and legend.

To get into the mood, you can hear some of the music at the Blaisdell Concert Hall lanai on Wednesday, when guest conductor Ann Krinitsky leads the Hawai‘i Symphony Orchestra in “A Nutcracker Sweet,” with excerpts of what she calls Tchaikovsky’s “magical” score, and some seasonal favorites “guaranteed to get everyone into the holiday spirit.”

The performance will be a preview of the music to be heard in the full presentation of “The Nutcracker.”

The ballet, opening Dec. 16 for a three-day run, has become a project of enormous scope for Ballet Hawaii, which is marking its 40th anniversary. To celebrate the occasion, artistic director Pam Taylor-Tongg originally wanted to bring in an outside production — “something amazing and spectacular” — to replace the version the company has presented the past 10 years.

Tongg researched many “Nutcracker” productions, but found all of them too expensive to bring here. She turned to former Washington Ballet director Septime Webre, who is well known to Hawaii balletomanes through stagings of his “Alice” and “Peter Pan” in recent years.

“He heard that we were searching for a new production, and he said, ‘I’d love to. I have so many ideas,’” Tongg said.

Webre had created a “Nutcracker” using historical references to Washington, D.C., and that production has been adapted for Ballet Hawaii. It will feature Webre’s choreography — all classical ballet, no hula — but Hawaii will be threaded throughout the story of Clara, a girl who receives a nutcracker for Christmas, falls asleep and travels through a magical land.

“What I love about ‘Nutcracker’ is it’s a coming-of-age story about a young girl, Clara, and her journey where she becomes an adult, but she’s able to retain a childlike wonderment about the world,” Webre said. “That kernel I wanted to retain in the story.”

On a visit here, Webre and Tongg visited Washington Place looking for a storyline. “We walked through the doors of Washington Place, and everything opened up to us,” Tongg said. “We found out that Mary (Dominis, widow of sailing Capt. John Dominis and first resident of the home) had to take in boarders, so that’s how the storyline will unfold.”

The resulting tale will blend historical fact with flights of fantasy. Mary Dominis’ boarders will be represented as guests at the 1858 Christmas Eve party at Washington Place, which is known as the occasion at which Hawaii’s first Christmas tree appeared.

Historical figures such as David Kalakaua, the future Merrie Monarch, and his sister Lydia, the future Queen Liliuokalani (and Dominis’ future daughter-in-law), will attend the party. Rebel leader Robert Wilcox appears as the nutcracker.

“We did extensive research to ensure that the people at the party could have been at the party, although of course we had to fictionalize a little bit,” said Webre, who originally studied history in college while pursuing his passion for dance. “And then afterwards, Clara dreams through time. The battle scene, the snow scene in Act 2 would be a fantasy, so we didn’t have the same criteria in terms of time and place.”

Hawaiiana specialists like Puakea Nogelmeier were consulted throughout the process to ensure the story was authentic. One instance of that involved the adaptation of the Arabian dance, a sultry pas de deux, which was originally envisioned as a dance for Pele. After that was deemed disrespectful, the romantic legend of the goddess Hi‘iaka and her handsome suitor Lohiau was used instead.

The visual appeaL of the set design and costuming also involved much research and effort.

Washington, D.C.-based designer Holly Highfill created sets that conjured up Washington Place and other fanciful sites around the islands.

For costuming, Ballet Hawaii looked both locally and nationally, and the effort wound up being international.

Hawaii’s Kini Zamora designed gowns for the opening party scene. He combined some traditional elements, like the “upside-down teacup” hooped skirts, with dramatic colors. The challenge, he said, was in creating the scale for the dresses without putting too much weight on the dancer, while keeping to the appropriate style.

“The hardest part was sticking with the time period and what they wore, but then again playing with color and not being too modern,” Zamora said.

His favorite designs are a beautiful chiffon ruffled dress for Lydia and a striking blue-and-orange number for a character called the Seafaring Mother.

“For the Liliuokalani dress, I love that we’re going into that time period,” he said. “She’s not the queen yet. She’s just a young teenager still, but I’m making her look like she’s going to be the queen.”

The children’s roles for “Nutcracker,” which have always made it a family favorite for the holidays, will also take on a distinctly Hawaiian flavor. The second act, which is set in the land of nature, features dances by sea turtles, crown flowers, Hawaiian warriors, clownfish, and other flora and fauna of Hawaii.

For those costumes and others in the dream sequence, New York-based costume designer Christine Darch was brought on. She’s been so busy trying to create more than 160 costumes that she had to recruit other designers — “anybody I knew who could make a costume” — to assist, even turning to Spain for a matador’s costume.

“We really looked into Hawaiian history and flora and fauna to make sure we were honoring the islands,” Darch said. Webre “wanted a butterfly, so we made sure it was the Kamehameha butterfly, a Blackburn’s blue butterfly, not just your generic beautiful blue butterfly.”

She’s especially enthusiastic about the Hi‘iaka costume, a green spiraled dress, because “it honors someone who’s specifically Hawaiian,” and the Sugar Plum fairy costume, which has been adapted to a Sugar Plumeria for this production.

“There’s a few flowers — orchids, hibiscus and plumeria,” she added. “Tutus look like flowers, so it will be fun to see those on stage.”

The dancing itself is certain to be first-rate.

Ballet Hawaii’s “Nutcracker” always attracts a slew of principal dancers fleeing mainland cold, and many this year are from New York.

Megan Fairchild of New York City Ballet returns to play the Sugar Plumeria fairy. Her colleague Joaquin De Luz returns to play her Cavalier.

Another colleague, Ana Sophie Scheller, will dance as the Snow Queen atop Mauna Kea.

Fairchild’s brother Robbie, star of Broadway’s “An American in Paris,” will be Lohiau, and his co-star Alison Walsh will be Hi‘iaka.

Tongg said Webre has packed so many details into the choreography that fans will want to come back year after year to see it all.

“It’s fun, it’s whimsical,” she said, “and the caliber of dancers that we have that are coming to do the lead roles are amazing in their own right.”