Washington Ballet supporters knew there was no point trying to re-create the over-the-top ball that celebrated director Septime Webre’s stunning new production of “The Nutcracker” last year. The premiere event raised $300,000 (on top of an unprecedented $1.5 million in production grants from various sources) and could not realistically be duplicated for the show’s second season.
“Our goals this year were quite modest; we just wanted to have a party,” company Chairman Kay Kendall said Friday night at the scaled-down Nutty or Nice Bash in the Willard InterContinental Hotel’s grand ballroom after the opening-night performance in the Warner Theatre.
Yes, the party was a bit “nutty,” especially for the guests who missed out on a seat and had to eat their pasta, sushi and sliced lamb standing up — in black-tie finery, no less. Others wondered why more of the dancers didn’t attend.
However, it was also “nice.” A soul band kept Mary and Mandy Ourisman, Nini Ferguson, Evan and Cindy Jones and other ballet aficionados hopping to the tune of “Mustang Sally” and other ’60s hits as a bevy of “Nutcracker moms” and their daughters (all students in the company’s Children’s Ballet) joined in the fun.
“My daughter Caroline has been rehearsing since October and was onstage for all of three minutes, but I just couldn’t say ’no,’” Gahl Hodges Burt explained when asked why she accepted the chairmanship of the event, which ended up raising about $100,000 this year. All the company’s trustees and loyalists wanted to be part of the festivities again, she said, especially for a production that is, after all, unique because it is set in mid-19th-century Washington.
Frederick Douglass IV, a great-grandson of abolitionist Frederick Douglass, played the part of his famous ancestor this year, taking over the role from Vernon E. Jordan Jr. The Baltimore native, minus his whiskers, was spotted in the crowd along with Pamela Aparicio, Robert and Aimee Lehrman, Arturo Brillembourg, Nina Auchincloss Straight, Mike and Julie Connors, Lucky Roosevelt, Robert and Mary Haft and daughter Laura, Ann Walker Marchant, Tim Rooney, James and Nancy Rosebush, and Dutch Ambassador Boudewijn van Eenennaam and his wife, Jellie.
— Kevin Chaffee
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