A storage facility full of costumes for Festival Ballet’s annual production of the Nutcracker has apparently been robbed. The Providence ballet company is scrambling to find replacements in time for opening night.
The ballet company discovered about half their Nutcracker costumes missing when they opened the carefully sealed boxes delivered from a storage facility in Pawtucket. The production opens in just a few weeks. So ballet artistic assistant and company dancer Marissa Parmenter says that doesn’t give them much time.
“You know we’ve been working diligently and contacting the dance community throughout the area as well as some local theater companies and working with them basically just to try to solve this problem as quickly as possible.”
Parmenter says the missing costumes, like a Sugar Plum Fairy’s tutu and the Nutcracker’s mask, are valuable.
“All of our costumes are handmade and they’re made with such precision and delicacy. I mean they’re really pieces of art themselves. So even when one is missing it’s tragic.”
But Parmenter says the show will go on as planned, with opening night on December 16.
