New production of “A Christmas Carol” to mark retirement of Grand Rapids Ballet power couple
With a new beginning planned with the Royal New Zealand Ballet as their new ballet masters, the pair’s last performances will be in “The Nutcracker” and “A Christmas Carol.”
It has been a year for change at Grand Rapids Ballet (GRB). In June, artistic director Patricia Barker announced she is leaving the company at the end of this season to direct the Royal New Zealand Ballet. In October, dancer Dawnell Dryja retired from the company after 15 years to join GRB’s artistic staff.
Now, GRB’s favorite dancer couple, Laura and Nicholas Schultz, are leaving to join Barker at the Royal New Zealand Ballet as their new ballet masters. The pair’s last performances will be in “The Nutcracker,” December 1–3 and 8–10 at DeVos Performance Hall, and in the brand new production of “A Christmas Carol,” December 22 & 23 at the company’s Peter Martin Wege Theatre.
The Schultzes both began their dance training at the Grand Rapids Ballet School at age 7. Laura Schultz, a Grand Rapids native, joined the school in 1989 and Nick Schultz, who was born in Rochester, Minnesota, joined in 1992. Both were members of the school’s junior and senior professional trainee programs. Laura, a few years older than Nick, then joined Grand Rapids Ballet’s main company as an apprentice in 1999 before leaving to study at the National Ballet School in Canada. She then danced with Saint Louis Ballet for two years before returning to Grand Rapids Ballet in 2003. Nick joined the company as an apprentice, and the couple began dating a year later. But as fellow culturedGR writer Marjorie Steele wrote in a December 2016 article on the pair (click here to read the full article), it wasn’t love at first sight:
“I would never think that I was going to date him,” says Laura. She can’t help but smile. “I mean, we grew up together. He was just a friend.”
“[And] I was 15 with a hair part and braces,” Nick laughs. “I definitely lost the braces,” he says.
Love prevailed however, and in 2008 the two were married and now have a 2-year-old daughter Arya.
Over their 14 years together in the company, the Schultzes have risen to become two of GRB’s leading dancers, with a slew of principal roles in ballets such as Olivier Wevers’ “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” George Balanchine’s “Who Cares?,” José Limón’s “The Moor’s Pavane,” and Mario Radacovsky’s “Black Swan White Swan.”
So what kept them at GRB for so many years?
“Grand Rapids Ballet kept evolving,” says Nick. “We were at a point with the previous director [Gordon Peirce Schmidt] right before he left of wanting something different ourselves and wanting to move on. He left and Patricia [Barker] took over and we got to be in a whole new company without having to leave.”
Under Pierce Schmidt, Grand Rapids Ballet’s professional company was smaller and did more theatrical works, says Nick. When Barker took over she increased the company’s dancer ranks from 18 to now 32 and the quality of work was raised to another level. Barker included more varied and contemporary dance works than under Schmidt, who only had the company perform his dance works.
The couple both say in their time under Barker’s directorship the amount of new and different dance works they did both excited and challenged them and kept them growing as artists.
Nick, age 33, and Laura, age 35, are arguably in the prime of their performing careers. So the choice to end dancing full time and transition to behind the scenes as ballet master and mistress, as well as relocate to the other side of the planet away from family and friends, was weighed very carefully.
“There was a lot to process,” says Nick. “Most of our free time away from dancing was spent with family and that is something we will miss tremendously.”
New Zealand’s natural beauty and topography may help soften the blow as it plays favorably into the Schultz’s outdoor hobbies like hiking and rock climbing. And the pair are excited about having their daughter experience another country.
The Schultzes say they had been thinking about retiring from dancing full time in the next few years and Barker’s offer to join RBZB’s artistic staff merely accelerated that plan. It was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
“It’s the next huge step in our careers and we are excited about the possibilities,” says Nick.
Barker’s decision to ask them to join her staff wasn’t out of the blue either. Nick says Barker told them in the past that if she left GRB for another posting she wanted to take them wherever she went—if not as dancers, as members of her staff.
“When we first arrived at Grand Rapids Ballet Michael [Auer] and I identified that Nick had the ability to not only learn his steps but everyone else’s in the room, know the music, and can actually sit on the floor reading a book and not be paying attention and still know what everyone is doing,” says Barker. “It’s definitely a unique skill and in our industry those people are hard to come by.”
Barker says with Nick’s almost photographic memory of choreography she felt he would make a great ballet master.
“Laura for us absorbed absolutely everything we taught her about technique and grew as a dancer,” says Barker. “She is dynamic in working with the younger dancers in the company and having them understand their purpose and how to get better.”
The Schultzes, along with GRB dancer Stephen Houser, have also for the past few years have taken on ballet master duties at GRB, such as giving company class and running rehearsals. This means they already have a familiarity with what will be expected of them at their new positions in New Zealand.
Nick and Laura Schultz join Clytie Campbell, and the three will be serving as the company’s permanent ballet master and mistresses. In recent years, RNZB has relied on a rotating cast of ballet masters and mistresses that changed annually. Barker says she wanted more continuity in those positions to better retain consistency and accuracy in the company’s repertory works.
And while the Schultzes will not be dancing full time anymore, stopping dancing completely is not something either is ready to do.
“We are not ready to be done done,” says Nick. “But we are okay mentally with not being full time performers.” The pair plan to do guest appearances and as with many ballet masters and mistresses in other ballet companies, they may even be called upon at RNZB to dance some character roles.
Nick will also return next February to guest with Grand Rapids Ballet as Romeo in their tour of Mario Radacovsky’s “Romeo & Juliet” to Notre Dame, Indiana’s DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.
But before the couple leaves for New Zealand, Grand Rapids audiences will have a few more opportunities to see the couple dance with GRB in December.
December 1–3 and 8–10 at DeVos Performance Hall the couple will perform various roles including Laura as Clara and Nick as her prince in GRB’s million dollar “The Nutcracker” production choreographed by Val Caniparoli and featuring production design and illustrations by Grand Rapids native Chris Van Allsburg, The Caldecott Award-winning illustrator and author of “The Polar Express” and “Jumanji” and set design by Tony Award-winning (Bernstein’s “Candide,” Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd,” “Wicked”) stage designer Eugene Lee.
The pair will also dance the lead roles of Bob Cratchit and his wife in Brian Enos’ world-premiere production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” December 22 & 23 at GRB’s Peter Martin Wege Theatre.
Grand Rapids audiences will remember Enos as the choreographer for GRB’s production of “Alice in Wonderland” last spring.
“We’re staying pretty true to the original story in terms of setting and time period,” says Enos of this new commission of an old holiday classic for the company. “I’ve paired down the cast of characters to streamline the story a bit, but all the major characters are there. I’ve also added an entourage of four ghosts that accompany Jacob Marley when he first appears which we’ve affectionately nicknamed ‘Marley’s Angels.’”
Like “Alice,” the all-Tchaikovsky score for the ballet is being compiled and arranged by Brendan Hollins. It will be performed live by a string quartet and piano at each performance.
In creating the 75-minute ballet for a cast of 30, Enos says he purposefully stayed away from dance adaptations of “A Christmas Carol” so as not to be influenced by them in his own creation.
“I wanted to see how the story unfolded naturally for me when I started creating,” says Enos. “I didn’t want to get too many ideas solidified in my mind as to how it ‘should’ look.”
As for the ballet being the Shultzes’ swan song?
“I feel extremely honored that Laura and Nick will be dancing their last production with GRB in ‘A Christmas Carol.’ They are such phenomenal artists and people and I’ve been really fortunate to be able and create some really fun roles with them over the years,” says Enos. “I wanted to give them a nice little pas de deux as Bob and Mrs. Cratchit in the production.”
Grand Rapids Ballet presents The Nutcracker, December 1–3 and 8–10 at DeVos Performance Hall, 303 Monroe Ave. NW., Grand Rapids. Tickets: $20–150. (616) 454–4771, grballet.org or Ticketmaster.
Grand Rapids Ballet presents A Christmas Carol, December 22 & 23 at the Peter Martin Wege Theatre, 341 Ellsworth SW, Grand Rapids. Tickets: $49. (616) 454–4771, grballet.org or Ticketmaster.
