Shannon Cullem-Chipman’s wild life helps her bring ‘Nutcracker’ to life
When Shannon Cullem-Chipman was 15 years old, she was hit by a truck. While pretending to fly across a street at Opal Cliffs, she was pulled under a speeding pickup, Afterward, she did what all devoted dancers would do—she got up, dusted herself off and went to ballet class.
That’s the kind of dedication it takes to put on Nutcracker. In preparation for the performances on Nov. 29 and 30, the director of Santa Cruz’s International Academy of Dance (IAD) has been auditioning dancers, constructing costumes that require engineers, and managing roles, characters, and choreography—all with a cast of about 100 local dancers. It’s the same passion it took to walk away from a car accident with a broken rib poking out of her back and then get into Julliard a few months later—after being told she’d never dance again—that will get Cullem-Chipman through this year’s production.
“As a young dancer, there was something so special about Shannon. There was a passion, and passion isn’t something you can teach to dancers,” says Vicki Bergland, an IAD ballet instructor who has taught ballet in Santa Cruz for more than 30 years. “Maria Grande, who worked at Juilliard, came out to adjudicate a ballet company that we were both involved with for a regional dance performance, and she could not take her eyes off Shannon. She saw the talent, she saw the spark.”
Cullem-Chipman took Bergland’s class as a teenager growing up in Santa Cruz.
“Vicki taught me the importance of storytelling in dance,” she says. It’s not just about a series of steps, memorizing when to raise your leg and when to turn, it’s about living the story for a few shows a year.
And Cullem-Chipman knows all about living a good story. After earning a college degree and eventually becoming disenchanted with the pressures of Juilliard, Cullem-Chipman made a living as a dancer in New York City. Then she packed up, went West and got a pilot’s license.
“I wanted a career where I wouldn’t have to worry, ‘if I’m injured, do I not eat?’” she says.
After returning to Santa Cruz a few years later, however, the opportunity to head a dance school fell into her lap; and, in typical indomitable dancer fashion, she accepted. Now she does most of her flying with pirouettes and grand jetés—and with four sons at home, she prefers it that way.
Building the dance school virtually from the ground up hasn’t been easy though. Now in her 10th year as IAD’s director, putting on the Nutcracker ballet every year is like deconstructing a massive puzzle and then putting it all back together again—it gets easier every year, but there are a heck of a lot of pieces.
“You start planning for the Nutcracker when the Nutcracker ends,” says Bergland, who also helps choreograph the show.
This year’s returning principal dancers, Alison Roper and Brett Bauer, hailing from Oregon Ballet Theatre, draw a crowd of their very own. But Bergland says it’s the excitement of the cast, which ranges from adults who’ve been with IAD for years to children under 3, that fills the seats.
“Brett’s mother flew in from Arizona, and she’s been to you can imagine how many Nutcrackers. I said ‘You’d fly out to see it?’ And she said yes. She wanted to watch more than one show,” says Bergland. “For someone like her who’s watched her son dance in who knows how many Nutcrackers, she wanted to stay and watch more.”
That’s what the show is all about, from watching children who’ve begun as toddlers in IAD’s first Nutcracker and moved up through the ranks—like this year’s dancer in the role of Klara, who’s been at IAD since she was 3 years old—to perfecting every detail, every character and every backstory.
Building a space where people can find themselves through dance as they grow, a family of sorts, is what Cullem-Chipman and Bergland strive to create at IAD.
“It’s more important for us to bring out the love—everybody can dance and everybody can be a dancer, and they can find a place to dance,” says Bergland. “If you have the drive and the passion, you can find a place.”
They agree that it’s their undying love for dance that brings them both back, dancing for the joy of it—IAD’s motto.
“It’s still the discipline, the technique, the artistry, but doing it with joy and not doing it because you have to or because someone’s telling you to,” says Cullem-Chipman. “It’s something you have to do.”
“It’s like breathing,” says Bergland.
Nutcracker is at 1 p.m. and 4:30 p.m, on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 29 & 30. Crocker Theater, Cabrillo College, 6500 Soquel Drive, Aptos. Tickets $25-$35 at Nutcrackersantacruz.com.
