Last Wang `Nutcracker' earns record revenue

Boston Ballet's "Nutcracker" might be facing an uncertain future, but the production's just-completed run earned $6.6 million, a company record, according to ballet officials.

The company already knows where it will spend "Nutcracker" profits. Boston Ballet may need as much as $2 million to help pay for next year's costly transition out of the Wang Center for the Performing Arts. Valerie Wilder, the company's executive director, says these costs will come from adapting the massive production --which was built for the Wang -- for another space.

The Wang, which has hosted "The Nutcracker" since 1968, informed the company last year that, starting in 2004, it will bring in a touring version of the "Radio City Christmas Spectacular" to replace the local production. "[`The Nutcracker'] is a big show that's been very popular for a long time on a very consistent basis," said Valerie Wilder, Boston Ballet's executive director. "The story circulating from the Wang was that it was losing its luster, it was losing its popularity. I think it's pretty strong."

According to ballet figures, 139,620 people attended the 45-show Nutcracker run in 2003. That's up from the 2002 total of 106,626, for 47 shows, and only a slight dip from the 51-show run in 2001 and 50-show run in 2000, when 144,000 and 143,000 came, respectively. This year's "Nutcracker" revenue total topped the previous high of $6.3 million set in 2001. Wilder said that Boston Ballet expected, in its budgeting, to earn $5.5 million from "The Nutcracker" this year.

"This makes our position a little bit less precarious, but it doesn't change the mix of what we're looking at in the short term," she said.

Boston Ballet is still searching for a temporary home for this year's "Nutcracker" run and, beyond that, for a place to present the holiday tradition permanently. She said she isn't sure where the company will end up, though canceling "The Nutcracker," even for a year, is not a possibility.

"Our union agreements, with dancers and musicians, have guaranteed minimums that would be hard to meet if we suddenly lopped off the performances on our schedule," she said. "There are a lot of reasons why we can't just say, oh, we're going to sit this one out."

Josiah Spaulding Jr., the Wang's president and chief executive officer, was not available for comment yesterday, according to a Wang spokesman.