Claire Kretzschmar on Leading Ballet Hartford and Bringing the Company on Tour

Throughout her years as a dancer, Claire Kretzschmar had never envisioned herself as a director. But now, the former New York City Ballet soloist is stepping into her fourth month at the helm of Connecticut’s Ballet Hartford. What’s more, she has already planned a three-stage tour for the company for this winter.

When Ballet Hartford’s former artistic director, Leyna Doran (who is now the executive director and school director) asked Kretzschmar last December if she’d ever been interested in leadership, it was the first time Kretzschmar had ever considered the question.  

“But then it was a no-brainer, really, because I love doing all the things that an artistic director does,” she says. “I love teaching and choreographing. I love communicating with dancers and encouraging them. I like connecting with the broader community; I don’t mind fundraising. And so while I had no intention of becoming an artistic director or a producer, as I am for this tour, these roles use all of the faculties that I enjoy using.”

Ballet Hartford will tour Kretzschmar’s A Ceremony of Carols, created on the company last winter, as well as the world premiere of her Weihnachtsbaum to New York City on December 9, Philadelphia on December 11, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, on December 15. Each performance will feature live music, including three singers and a commissioned choral composition that opens the program. Kretzschmar has collaborated with Grammy Award–winning singer Katy Avery, who will also sing in the performances, as a co-producer of the tour.

Pointe spoke with Kretzschmar to learn about her vision for Ballet Hartford, the company’s upcoming tour, and more.

You joined Ballet Hartford as artistic director this past August. How have you approached this new role?

I am really still getting my footing. I have big dreams, but they all relate to the same thing: to give the dancers a really rich experience in the studio and great ballets to dance. So it’s both the experience that’s rich and joyful, where they get pushed but also encouraged, and then that they’d get to really live in these ballets that I hope to choreograph (and that I hope will be great!). 

How did you first get involved with the company?

It started in the winter of 2023, when I was connected to the company manager, Hannah Bush, and then the former artistic director, Leyna Doran. They invited me to teach a master class and a choreography workshop, which I did in February 2023. That was a really great experience for everyone, and we were all like, “We want to keep something like this going!” So I ended up staging Peter and the Wolf on them in spring 2023, and I created A Ceremony of Carols that fall, which premiered that December. I choreographed another ballet on them in the spring of 2024 called Venus, using Gustav Holst’s music. Now, it’s my fifth time working with the company in a formal way, but, of course, as director I’ll be here for a much longer time!

It’s a big step to have a tour on the books already. What went into the making of that?

This was actually an idea that was presented to me through Katy Avery. It turns out that she’s also a former dancer, and we grew up in the same hometown and went to the same ballet studio. She wrote to me on Instagram after seeing videos of A Ceremony of Carols, and she said, “Claire, I love what I’m seeing. I would love to talk to you about putting together some performances with live singers and live music.” She also pitched the idea of touring to some of the places that are home to us: New York, which is where I lived for a long time; Philadelphia, which is where she currently lives; and Winston-Salem, which is where we’re both from. 

We’re performing original repertoire, with new costumes. This is a big undertaking from an administrative standpoint, so I’ve created this organization, Claire Kretzschmar Productions, which houses the managing side of the tour. It’s a big step for the company, just as well as it is for my curatorial career, but especially because Ballet Hartford has not been on a tour that is this extensive. 

Could you tell us more about the two ballets on the program?

We have a new choral composition that we’ve commissioned to open the show, called “Ingress of the Messengers.” Then the first ballet is Weihnachtsbaum, which means “Christmas tree.” The music is by Franz Liszt, and I fell in love with it; it has a warm and joyful tone, playful and childlike, but at the same time it carries a nostalgia. Liszt composed this piece of music as a gift for his granddaughter, and its first performance took place at a family gathering at Christmastime. So the concept for this ballet is an intimate living room concert, with live piano music played by Mark Livshits.

A Ceremony of Carols is where everything gets to land; the whole curation of the program is about the Christmas carol. The piece has 11 choral compositions and one harp solo, with the harp also played throughout [by Juilliard graduate student Amanda Kengor]. All of the songs relate to the birth of Jesus, and specifically to his mother, Mary. Because Ballet Hartford is a company of all women right now, I chose to really tap into that. The music relates beautifully to the theme of motherhood—not only the joyful moments but also the more sorrowful ones. I also see all of the ballet dancers being like angels. It’s really grand, with both ends of the spectrum, joy and sorrow, but also the glory of that.