50 YEARS OF THE NUTCRACKER AT LES GRANDS BALLETS

To celebrate 50 years of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens performing the Nutcracker, I was asked to design an exhibition. The exhibition would showcase photos, costumes, artworks and posters from all the previous Nutcracker productions. Held in Place Des Arts Montreal, the exhibition was on from November to January, and was free to the public. Taking inspiration from the Nutcracker story, the concept behind the exhibition was to imitate the transformation the character Clara goes through. Shrunk down to the size of a mouse, Clara enters the world of the nutcracker under her Christmas Tree. I wanted visitors to the exhibition to feel as if they had been shrunk to the size of a mouse and become part of a Victorian paper theatre. As the exhibition was only temporary and would never be reused, making sure everything produced was easily dismantled and recycled was central to the execution of all the artworks. I used recycled, hexagonal structured, cardboard layers to create the theatre flats for each section of the exhibition as well as the characters and central Christmas tree. This meant at the end of the show it was easily broken down and recycled on site.