Columbia Dance’s Nutcracker is Made for Vancouver -📍Vancouver, WA

Columbia Dance’s annual Nutcracker isn’t the typical holiday fare. This uniquely Vancouver production reimagines Tchaikovsky’s classic through the lens of local history, from Fort Vancouver’s fur traders to the Chinook “moon woman” Ilchi. Artistic Director Becky Moore and company dancer Ruby Dyer share how the nonprofit’s mission to enrich lives through dance extends beyond the stage, building community, inclusivity, athleticism, rigor and artistry in every step.

🗺️ Visit them at columbiadance.org | Facebook | Instagram

👀 For pictures, video, and more, visit the episode page.

🎉 This episode also celebrates:

• Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
• Fort Vancouver National Historic Site
• Josh Murry, Photographer
• Carlyn Hudson, Choreographer

✏️ AUDIENCE SURVEY

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📍 I'm Into This Place is Clark County, Washington's arts, culture, and heritage podcast. We take you behind the scenes with the artists, makers, and community leaders shaping our local culture - from art and music to food, history, and heritage. Find more at imintothisplace.com.

Transcript

Adriana: Is it the most wonderful time of the year yet? Well, if you're a fan of tradition or someone who was a ballerina as a kid, the answer is "yes" because it's Nutcracker time, babies, and there's nothing more spectacular than the feeling when those opening few measures of Tchaikovsky's music start. Clark County is blessed to have a number of Nutcracker productions all throughout the season, but today we're talking to the person behind the most innovative and yet historically accurate Nutcracker of all.

Becky Moore, the Artistic Director of Columbia Dance, has created a production set at Fort Vancouver in 1840, and each of the pieces of this most famous ballet have been translated to reference people or animals who actually lived right here. Mice are transformed into beavers. The snow queen is Ilchi, the Chinook Moon Woman, and the list goes on.

But Columbia Dance is so much more than its Nutcracker. It's a professional dance school, training young people to express themselves with athleticism, creativity, and rigor. Today we're also joined by Ruby Dyer, a Columbia Dance student and member of the Advanced Company. She joins us to talk about the INCLUDE Program, which offers dance classes designed for accessibility and equal participation for all students.

These dance classes promote an accessible environment that integrates the experiences of children with and without disabilities. This is a magical time, and Columbia Dance is a magical place. I can't wait for you to come behind the curtain with me.

Welcome to, I'm Into This Place. Your deep dive into the local arts, culture, and heritage of Clark County. From fabulous new restaurants to quirky art installations to the historical sites you never even knew to look for. We are inviting you along, whether you're a Clark County connoisseur or just starting to get to know her.

Get ready to fall. Head over heels for this place we call home. I am your host Adriana Baer, and I'm into this place. Let's go.

Becky Moore. Thank you so much for having me here today. So happy to have you here. I'm so excited to talk about Columbia Dance and also your upcoming Nutcracker, which I saw last year and loved and will be back this year of course.

But before we get into what's coming up, let's kind of look backwards. 

Becky: Absolutely. So Columbia Dance has been a nonprofit in Vancouver since 1989, and we have been in this building here, which is on 17th and Broadway since 2005, where we were renting it at first, and now we actually own the building as of 2019, which is very exciting.

Adriana: And what is the mission of Columbia Dance?

Becky: Yeah, so our mission is, is basically to enrich lives through dance. So that extends to all the students that are enrolled here, but also bringing dance out into the community and enriching lives outside of our building.

Adriana: So let's sort of trace a life of somebody at Columbia Dance. 

Becky: Our creative dance division when they're like three, four, and five.

Our goal is simple. We want them to feel energy in their body. We want them to feel the power of being expressive, and we wanna teach them etiquette. We want them to feel respected and respectful of the community they're in. But we're also then starting to gradually pass over this idea of "you are in charge of your body."

Like I'm going to tell you that this is what I'd like you to do, but you are the voice in your head that can make your body do that. And that that is very powerful. And so every year we kind of up the responsibility we place on them until they're in our company and they're here 15 hours a week. Five days a week. They're learning three, four, or five roles at any given time.

Um, most of them volunteer for us in another way. They volunteer as dance partners in our INCLUDE Program or as assistant teachers helping out with classes or even they can, they can be our board liaisons so they can learn how nonprofits run and interface with our Board of Trustees and hopefully play a part.

Of shaping them into amazing humans that are gonna go out into the world. So many of them go on to dance professionally, but a lot of them become doctors, educators, lawyers, anything they want. Hopefully we've given them a unique skillset that they might not have had if they didn't train that rigorously.

Adriana: The combination between creativity and community and rigor. You don't see it in a lot of other places. I mean, sports, yes, but ballet has that creative piece on top of the athleticism and the community that 

I think makes it somewhat unique.

Becky: We talk about this with our dancers all the time. You are an athlete, you are also an artist.

That athletic portion of it is such a big like stress release for kids, as is the creative outlet. So it just has that unique combination that you don't find in a lot of extracurriculars. So you know, when you see nurturing as a word in our mission statement, that doesn't mean easy. We are caring for our students, both their mental and their physical wellbeing, but we're also asking them to do hard things and encouraging them to fail sometimes, and to learn from that failure and grow from it.

Adriana: Yeah, absolutely. And I think you have this quite large company component where they're here 15 hours a week. You said there were 20

Becky: 23 of them this year.

Adriana: 23 students who are committing like their whole life to Yeah. Yeah. To this and their parents and their families as well of course.

Becky: It is an entire family.

Yeah. 'cause you're picking your kid up at nine o'clock at night, so you, the, the family has to buy in. 

Adriana: So we have one of Columbia Dance's company dancers with us, and somebody who also teaches in the INCLUDE Program. Ruby Dyer, welcome. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me. So excited to meet you today. Will you tell us a little bit about who you are and what your relationship with Columbia Dance is?

Ruby: Yeah, totally. I was, I think, seven years old when I started taking classes at Columbia Dance. And it's been almost 10 years now I've been at the studio and I've made it all the way up to company. That's awesome. What does it mean to be a company dancer? Oh, I mean, I think it means putting your dedication to the arts first. It's your time commitment. You show up literally almost every single day to say, "yeah, I love ballet and I'm gonna do this 'cause I love it." 

Adriana: So you are part of the INCLUDE Program here. Mm-hmm. And you teach in that program. Tell us all about. That program. 

Ruby: Ah, so Rebecca Rogo, who teaches and is an alumni at Mid Columbia Ballet, she was a dancer and she was later diagnosed with autism.

And so she knew that the dance world wasn't the most accessible to people with that diagnosis. So she made this program where it's specifically designed to help people. Either like on the spectrum or with a disability, get the most out of ballet that they can, but in a way that you know, meets their needs and

makes them feel seen and cared for and like they can thrive in this art form without, you know, so much struggle. We have a three to five group and then a six to 12 group, and then a 12 to whatever. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Whatever number. So it's structured in the way that we do the same thing every class, so we can have that repetition and structure that feels good.

We have a one-to-one, like a, a buddy to help with every kid. Oh, wow. Which I think is really special. You get to learn what they need physically, you know, like they need help with keeping their core muscles on, or this arm does something funny. You get to really know them in that regard, but you also get to know them like as a friend, and you just get to connect on that level, which I think makes it more, it gives them a reason to keep coming back to class as they get to see their friend.

You help give reminders. You help when they need a break, you, you are just there as an extra support when they need it. Yeah. 

Adriana: That's really special. So outside of these walls, you also have some outreach programs. Tell us about that. 

Becky: Historically, ballet has been very exclusive. It is available for the haves and not for the have nots, and we see firsthand every day the positive impact that our teaching has on the kids in our building.

And so going back to that mission of enriching lives through dance, we feel like we need to make ballet available to people that might not be able to get to Columbia Dance. So we are at Orchards Elementary School, which is a Title One school that last I checked was 93% low income families and um, all the way across town.

So probably not a group of kids that could get driven to our studios. So we're there every week. Um, one of our faculty members is there, she does a before school enrichment program, but she also teaches dance class during recess so the kids can choose to join Ms. Kelly and dance during recess. And on average, she has a hundred kids join her every week.

That's amazing. And then we also do Vancouver Public Schools. We have a partnership with them where every third grader in VPS, um, studies our Nutcracker in their dance classes. So they actually get to learn a piece of the choreography. They get to learn some of the pantomime and storytelling. Um, they learn about the history of our Nutcracker being infused with Fort Vancouver history, and then they get to, uh, be bused to our production.

And actually, right now, Columbia Dance covers the costs of the busing because we wanna make sure that every third grader can come and not just the ones who PTA managed to raise the money. So. 

Adriana: Wow, that's so exciting. And then they're all exposed to ballet, some of them for the first time. 

Becky: Yeah. And they're, they're the best audience of the weekend.

Adriana: I bet .

Becky: They are absolutely 100%. The most enthusiastic. They oo and they awe. They dance in their chairs. My favorite compliment that I get every year, I thought it was so funny the first year, but it's a repeat one, is this was the best movie ever.

Adriana: This was the best movie ever.

Becky: Yeah, because most of 'em haven't seen a live performance. You know, not many third graders are going to the theater these days. 

Adriana: A couple of years ago you decided to make a whole new Nutcracker. Tell us about the magic of Columbia Dance's Nutcracker.

Becky: Yeah. Yeah. So Columbia Dance, when I came, it had a really beautiful Nutcracker, very traditional, but they'd been doing that Nutcracker for over 20 years, and so costumes and sets were on their last legs.

So it was time to create something new. And I just so happened to take my son who was five at the time to Fort Vancouver National Historic Site. Being new to the area, we had just moved here for me to take this job and we're exploring and I was like blown away by the history. And there were all these, all these fun stories about this culture, and I had spent most of my professional career with Washington Ballet in DC and their Nutcracker being in the nation's capital was done to highlight Americana.

So we had, like George Washington was a character. Frederick Douglas was a character. Betsy Ross was running through the battle scene with her flag and kind of drawing from that, I thought we should do a nutcracker that highlights the history of Fort Vancouver. So I think the challenge was. "Okay, this still has to be magical."

It needs the traditional components that everyone loves, which is first and foremost, Tchaikovsky's music that everyone's humming for months. It needs magic. We're not gonna make this a documentary, but how fun to like bring in some historical elements. So we were very lucky that the Park Service actually partnered with us.

Gave us access to their curators and all their records and things. And you know, we stuck with the basic plot, but we just tweaked everything a little bit. So our party scene characters are all people who lived at Fort Vancouver in the 1840s. Our magic characters, Dr. McLaughlin, and he comes with his beaver top hat and he pulls

apples out of the hat, and that was a nod to the first apple tree in the Pacific Northwest being planted at Fort Vancouver. And all this magic starts, so you get to the battle scene normally Mice and soldiers. Of course we had to go beavers. Yeah. So we have all these beavers and fur trappers. Um, the beavers fight with their little gnawed off sticks and then the snow scene, this was where we were like, okay, what do we wanna do with that?

And I was, uh, interfacing with a number of cultural groups to weave their stories in. And I was talking to Sam Robinson, who was at the time Vice Chair of Chinook Indian Nation, and he was telling me about this woman called Ilchi. And in the 18 hundreds, if you were a woman, you maybe got in the history books by who you married, you know, so and so married to so and so and of your section in the history books.

But Ilchi, we knew more about. We knew that she was a healer, she was a shaman. Uh, she was a leader. Um, and she had these really awesome nicknames. Um, I think my favorite is "She who paddles her own canoe." Ooh. She did not need a man to paddle her own canoe. She did it herself. And here I am and I teach all these independent women.

You know, we have lots of boys at Columbia Dance, but we have even more girls. So I thought, oh, I love this. Her other nickname was the Moon Woman. So our costume designer who I was collaborating a lot with said, " What if we did a moonlit snow scene?" And there this, the main character, normally the snow queen calls out the moon, so she designed these costumes that look like snow glowing, iridescent in the moonlight.

And then in Act Two. You know, the way Tchaikovsky did his music, there's all these little short snippets. And so each of those little two to three minute snippets tell a different story about Vancouver's history. So my, my two favorites that the Castaways, which is the Spanish music, is a, about a true story of a ship that left Japan in the 1800s.

The Hojun-maru. And, um, at that time, Japan was completely closed to the outside world. They did no trading, so they didn't have ocean fairing ships. They were just using ships to get from one Japanese port to the other. But this ship got caught in a typhoon and it's rudder snapped, and somehow it floated across the ocean for 14 months and landed in Vancouver, Washington.

Adriana: What? I had no idea.

Becky: Yes. And so, um, there were three survivors. Wow. So three, three sailors survived and they ended up being brought to Fort Vancouver and entertained there for a short bit. So our Spanish scene is the castaway scene. And, um, you know, we tell their story that they're, they're, they're looking for land, they're trying to sight land, and the waves are knocking them down.

Adriana: Mm-hmm. 

Becky: The other, uh, the other one I'll tell you about is our stargazer scene. I was talking to a man who was with the Ke Kukui Foundation, and he was telling me that the Hawaiian settlers in Vancouver were very prized for their natural navigation skills. Mm-hmm. So they wanted them on ships because obviously no GPS.

But not even compasses were invented yet. And these Hawaiian sailors were really adept at reading the stars and the tides and basically getting your ship from point A to point B, which needed to happen when you were traveling the world trading beaver pelts, which is what they were doing. So my husband happens to be an animator, so he created an animation of a starry night.

We have like shooting stars that appear at the right time in the music, and then halfway through the scene the Big Dipper appears. Mm-hmm. And so these beautiful ballerinas and their tutu's and their point shoes, they stop to read the stars and see the Big Dipper. And then they, they tell the main characters where they need to paddle their canoe to.

So, you know, again, we're not doing Hawaiian dance, we're doing classical ballet, but just a little, a little homage to the Hawaiian community that has, has, and is such a big part of Vancouver. Our Sugar Plum was also a little bit of an homage to the Hawaiian community. 'cause we call her the Sugar Plumeria.

Mm-hmm. Which is a Hawaiian flower. We have dancing wapato plants. We have kids arriving from a covered wagon off the Oregon Trail. Again, they're all doing ballet dancing. They're all in these really elaborate costumes. But just, you know, a little different twist on a holiday classic. 

Adriana: And it roots it here literally in our backyard, which is so cool.

It also gives you an opportunity to kind of weave back in part of that mission about outreach, creating all these supplemental materials and historical reference points that you can find listener on their website if you're curious. And it also accompanies the production materials, but it's something that's bringing so many different parts of Clark County in into one place.

Becky: Yeah. It was amazing to collaborate with so many groups. And you know, the, the nice thing about the production is you can, you can come in as an audience member and enjoy it on whatever level you want. You can choose not to read anything about the historical part of the production, and you're still gonna be entertained because it's very magical and theatrical.

And the sets and costumes are gorgeous. The dancing's gorgeous. Or you can totally geek out about Vancouver's history, and that's our hope is that some people leave and go, oh my gosh, I didn't know that. I wanna get that book on the Castaways. That's so interesting. You know? 

Adriana: I am going to link all of the information to the Nutcracker in our show notes and on the episode page for this episode.

So really don't, don't sleep on this production, everybody. It's really, really a special one. 

Becky: I do wanna mention too, we have a sensory friendly show, so, um, that's part of our INCLUDE program that we do is also, um, getting people to be in our audience that might not otherwise feel welcome. So the sensory friendly shows, the Friday night one, um, we don't play the music quite as loud.

We keep the lights on a little bit in the audience, and it's a shush free zone. So if you have a family or friend that is not going to sit quietly for two hours and needs to get up and down outta their seat, that is a show for them. We would love to have them there. 

Adriana: Well, it is absolutely the best way to kick off your holiday season, and I, I hope everybody gets a chance to see it.

So, as you know, Becky, I always ask everybody a question at the end of the episode, which is to call out a cultural organization or an artist that you are really into these days. So while you're thinking about who you might wanna call out, I am going to give a shout out to our weekly newsletter. If you're not already signed up, please do that because that's where we share even more about the creative people and organizations in our community, and we give you a weekly curated overview of upcoming events.

We also link to the episode page for that week's podcast where we post behind the scenes photos, an article, and even special offers from our guests. So you can sign up for the newsletter by going to, imintothisplace.com, or just click the links in the show notes for this episode. If you like today's episode, please do click that follow button on whatever podcast app you're listening on right now, and then text this episode

to a friend. Following and sharing is the best way that you can help us continue to make this free coverage of the arts, culture, and heritage that make our community thrive. Ruby, what is a place or person or organization in Clark County that you're really into these days?

Ruby: Well, we worked with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra this past December, and I was blown away.

I had never even been to the symphony before, uh, working with them, and I love it now. And I just, I think they do so much there. It was such a diverse show. They had dancing, they had an opera singer. They had this wonderful conductor. I think they're doing great stuff and I really loved watching them.

Adriana: Becky, will you tell us what place or person are you really into these days? 

Becky: I don't think you're gonna be surprised, but I love Fort Vancouver National Historic site. Um, I get over there as much as I can. Anytime I have friends visiting, I take them there. I also, we have a lot of, uh, groups that use our studio space that are amazing, that I love.

So Carlyn Hudson choreography, our choreography's brilliant, often humorous. Um, and then Josh Murry Photography is really fun. Um, he does portraits. He does really beautiful dance portraits out in nature and uses light really beautifully. 

Adriana: Well, we'll link to all three of those in our show notes as well.

It was so delightful to spend some time with you. Thank you so much for having us. And now let's hear from you. This is our Community Voices segment where you call in and let us know what arts, culture and heritage places or people are you really into these days. 

Guest: Hi, this is David e Poland, a lifelong Vancouverite. I'd like to give a shout out to Washington School for the Deaf who now has deaf space design buildings and is supporting deaf students statewide.

Hi, my name's Grady. I wanna shut out Hawaiian Soul. It's on um, mini Haha and St. John's. It's a Hawaiian food truck that's there. Weird days, weird hours, cash only, but it's incredible. Get any dessert they have at any time. Um, it's all always terrific. 

Adriana: Wanna give a shout out to your favorite spot? Give us a call and leave a message, or send us a voice note via email. All the details on how to do that are in the show notes, or click on Community Voices on our website.

Columbia Dance's 2025 production of the Nutcracker runs December 19th through 21st at Skyview Concert Hall. I'm Into This Place is produced and hosted by me, Adriana Baer. Editing by Chris Martin Studios. This episode was recorded on site at Columbia Dance Center. Find out more about us and them at, imintothisplace.com.

See you out there.