The Brigham City Dancer Who Brought The Nutcracker Home

In 1944, Willam Christensen, a dancer from Brigham City, was asked to put on a show in San Francisco that would lift people’s spirits during World War II. He chose The Nutcracker. With many male dancers away at war, a ballet with plenty of roles for children was one he could stage. Costuming the cast took some ingenuity. “He went to thrift shops, he took down drapes to make costumes,” Ballet West artistic director Adam Sklute told the Utah Stories podcast. When Christensen returned to Utah in the early 1950s, he brought the production with him. The version Ballet West performs in Salt Lake City each holiday season began with that wartime show. A family act from Brigham City Christensen and his brothers grew up in a family of dancers in Brigham City. Their parents were ballroom dancers who brought classical ballet training to Utah in the early 1920s, at a time when, according to Sklute, it was still hard to come by in much of the country. The brothers took their dancing on the road.

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