The first time Jennifer Hackbarth took the stage for Milwaukee Ballet’s The Nutcracker, she was about 7 years old.
The Whitefish Bay native had “done nearly every child role in that production that was possible” as a student at the ballet school, she says. After launching her professional career in New York, Germany and Florida, Hackbarth returned home this year as the Ballet’s newest leading artist – and revisiting the ballet that started it all makes the homecoming sweeter. “When you evolve and grow with a ballet, it becomes very dear to your heart,” she says. “Because it’s not just the music and the story – you have all those memories attached to it.”
Milwaukee Magazine spoke with Hackbarth about returning to Milwaukee and the Ballet, and what makes The Nutcracker special to her. The Nutcracker runs Dec. 6-26.
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What made you return to Milwaukee?
I always wanted to dance here. I just have been very blessed and fortunate in my career to have had these opportunities to dance all around the world. And always, in the back of my mind, was this wonderful place. I love the productions; I grew up watching them. So when I was looking for the next step in my career, it just felt like the right time to make that move.
How did that fall into place?
As a dancer and an artist, you’re always looking for inspiration, a challenge, and how to grow and continue to evolve. And what better place to do that than at Milwaukee Ballet, where you have Michael Pink, who’s a gifted choreographer but also a director in the sense that he directs his dancers to the best of their abilities and pushes them so far in their artistry and technique.
And the company itself does such a wide range of ballets. You have classics like Sleeping Beauty to the Genesis competition they do every other year, where who knows what choreographer you’re going to get to work with. As a dancer, you can push yourself in every different aspect.
You mentioned Sleeping Beauty, for which you were a guest artist in last season’s production. Did that kind of play into your decision to return?
For sure. Sleeping Beauty was such a wonderful opportunity. I couldn’t help but want to keep doing more of that.
What’s your relationship to The Nutcracker?
It was my first production that I got the chance to do as a child with the Milwaukee Ballet, which is such a special thing because you have the opportunities as a child to do the professional productions with the company. You weren’t just doing a childhood Nutcracker – you were doing the Milwaukee Ballet Nutcracker, which was just so surreal.
And to see how the professional company did it – how you rehearse on stage, the tech and the lights and all – was so cool. I must have been in first grade when I was an angel. It was not the current production; it was Michael Pink’s production before. One year I was the drummer soldier, so my parents and all my family could spot me because I was the only one with the drum. And before I went away to school in New York City, I got to do the snow and the flowers with the company members, and that was cool because that was the real dancing on stage.
So yeah, I’ve had a long-lasting connection to this ballet. I’ve danced the ballet elsewhere, many different versions. But this will always have a special place in my heart because it was my first professional production as a child, and it’s the one I grew up with. When I hear the music, in my mind is still Michael’s choreography for all those different roles.
Did it put in your mind that this is what you wanted to do professionally?
I think I always wanted that since I was 4 years old. It was never a question. But seeing what you could become was formative in my decision to pursue it as a career.
What was your experience at the Milwaukee Ballet School & Academy like?
I started dancing because my sister was dancing at some other smaller school. I just kept running into the studio or wanting to dance in the hallway, so my mom signed me up for the ballet class here.
I was 4, and my teacher was Tatiana Jouravel-Malinkine, who’s the director of the pre-professional program now. At that time, she was one of the leading artists with the company. That was surreal. I mean, having like a prima ballerina as your first ballet teacher? I was just in awe. I still am in awe of her. There’s a cute photo of the two of us after my first recital, and we recreated it when I was older.
I remember so vividly this one time with her. She told my mom, your daughter has what it takes – that if I were where she grew up, in Ukraine, they would have taken me into the school just based on how I was physically and all of that, at that young age. This always stayed with me. If she believed I could do it, maybe I should believe I could do it. I stuck with it, and I loved it.
What’s it like being back at Milwaukee Ballet?
It’s great. I really like the atmosphere that the company has within the dancers, within the staff. I think ballet is such a hard profession because you have to give all of yourself, and then more, all the time, every single day. But here, they have such a way of enjoying it all the time that you feel a sense of community and connection with the dancers you’re dancing with. It becomes really everyone all together, and it doesn’t feel so isolating. Also, they push you to really be your best, and what dancer doesn’t like that?
