Washington Ballet Cancels Entire Nutcracker Run

By Ben Mattison
December 19, 2005

Washington Ballet has canceled the remainder of its performances of The Nutcracker this month because of its ongoing labor crisis, the company announced.

The company's production was scheduled to run at the Warner Theater through December 24.

The company blamed the cancellation on its dancers and the union that represents them, the American Guild of Musical Artists. "AGMA's strike and its resulting effect on public perception is devastating, leaving us with no choice but to close the production," executive director Jason Palmquist said in a statement.

The company and the union have been at odds since dancers first asked AGMA to represent them a year ago, and they have been engaged in fruitless contract negotiations for months. On December 12, dancers asked management to agree to an interim contract; when no agreement could be reached, performances of The Nutcracker, which began on December 2, came to a halt.

While the company has consistently referred to the work stoppage as a strike, union officials continue to call it a lockout. In an email, AGMA executive director Alan Gordon wrote, "The ballet cancelled its production, the theater was dark and closed, the dancers were locked out."

The issue is not a purely semantic one. Union members would get unemployment benefits during a lockout, but not during a strike. "The ballet can call it whatever they'd like," Gordon added, "but the dancers are entitled to unemployment compensation because it's clearly a lockout."

In what appeared to be an effort to paint the union as a villain, Washington Ballet released a letter from artistic director Septime Webre to parents of the student dancers who were scheduled to appear in Nutcracker.

"All of you, their friends and families, will miss the opportunity to continue to cheer [the dancers] on," the letter read in part. "To clap for the stellar soldier barn door and the lively party scene Virginia reel; to giggle at the famous rat-toss and mistletoe kiss…."

The company also released a letter from Palmquist to Gordon in which Palmquist said that the union had turned down an offer including guarantees for job security and a dancer safety plan. Both issues had been cited by the union in their demand for an interim agreement.

Local AGMA representative Eleni Kallas told the Washington Post that management had resisted returning to the negotiation table last week. "The company appears to me to be prepared to close down," she said. "It could have been avoided if they had been serious about negotiations, but they were only serious about stalling negotiations."

Ticket holders should visit http://www.washingtonballet.org for information about receiving refunds.