POCATELLO – Audiences will have a chance to witness a theatrical ballet performance of a classic Christmas story, adapted by Pocatello locals, on only one day this year.
The sixth annual “Scrooge’s Christmas – a Theatrical Ballet” is scheduled to show for two performances this Saturday, a matinee at 2 p.m. and one at 6 p.m. This ballet is an original adaptation of “A Christmas Carol,” created by Tiffin Bennent, the ballet director, with assistance from her husband, Geoffrey Bennett.
“This production continues to be a work in progress — as we expand to include new faces
and abilities — and we are incredibly proud of how hard all of our performers work to
share this classic story with the community,” writes Tiffin in a description of the ballet.
While Tiffin wasn’t available to be interviewed for this article, Geoffrey spoke with EastIdahoNews.com about how they adapted the timeless story to a ballet format.
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The way Geoffrey put it, the expectation from traditional ballets is that the story serves as a “backdrop” to complement the dancers. But Tiffin’s background was in Burch Mann’s American Folk Ballet, a company known for incorporating storytelling into its ballet.
“(In all of (the company’s) ballets, all of the dancers had characters. They were specific people and they were to embody those characters throughout,” Geoffrey explained. “And while the dance was always still high quality – these were all professional dancers- it was considered a failure if you didn’t get a feel for the character and for what was going on in it.”
Once Tiffin had started her own ballet company in Pocatello, called Miss Tiffin’s Ballet, her dancers wanted to do a holiday ballet. But they didn’t want to do The Nutcracker.
Geoffrey’s background was in theater, and he had done a one-man show of A Christmas Carol in the past.
“Our combined background that way was such that we are around Christmas Carol every year … so it’s very familiar to us,” Geoffrey said. “The more that she and I talked about it, and she and her partners talked about it, they went, ‘You know what? This would be an ideal ballet,'” Geoffrey said.
Because of this philosophy in the adaptation process, the audience members of Scrooge’s Christmas should expect a ballet with a clear narrative throughline.
Geoffrey said that the different themes explored with each of the story’s ghosts also allows them to, “show these big scenes and some smaller scenes that highlight different types of dance and different moods of dance as you move through his story to his ultimate redemption.”
The cast of the ballet is made up of a wide range of people in the community, including students of Miss Tiffin’s Ballet from ages six to eighteen, as well as young people who aren’t in the company and adults.
People who would like to see Scrooge’s Christmas – A Theatrical Ballet can click her to buy tickets at $21.75 per ticket, which grants access to the Festival of Trees as well as either of the two performances. A portion of the proceeds goes toward the Maria Neumann Memorial Scholarship Fund, helping children with special needs learn to ride bikes through Eastern Idaho Down Syndrome Family Connect.
Geoffrey emphasised that this isn’t an “elitist” show, or made only for ballet enjoyers.
“It is very approachable. It’s meant to be enjoyed by not just artists who understand this, but by everyone. … It’s just a really nice telling of the story, and the ballet lends itself as a great vehicle,” Geoffrey said.
