This heartwarming story about perseverance, adventure, and coming-of-age in an uncertain time arrives with a heavy dose of Christmas Magic! 

When most Nutcracker performances across the nation were sadly cancelled due to Covid-19 in 2020, Wild Rivers Coast Foundation for Dance (WRCFD) and the Wild Rivers Dance studio answered the challenge by reinventing ourselves as a film studio! This allowed our local youth to continue doing what they love–performing for the community. 

In August of 2020, already months into the pandemic, with the Wild Rivers Dance studio essentially shut down by the state government, we were looking for ways to keep our dancers engaged. We originally discussed filming the annual Nutcracker dances ourselves and asking a videographer to help us edit. Then we applied for an Oregon Cultural Trust grant and began to talk about inviting a Cinemetographer to film the dances. In September, studio owner and WRCFD Artistic Director Sky-Marie McDonald wrote the screenplay for this film. This took us from planning to film a screen dance to producing a feature film.

Our original twelve-day filming schedule stretched out for a month from mid-November to Christmas. We worked with and around students’ school schedules, location availability, technical issues, and the weather. Our dancers performed on the beach and in the Redwoods, as well as the stage of a local theater and in the Anna Wulf house, a Victorian era home in Crescent City, California. Director Rob Douthat brought out the best in our small cast, Director of Photography Bryan Wolfinger and his crew created magic with lighting and equipment, and Artistic Director Sky-Marie McDonald choreographed the beautiful Nutcracker dances in a dozen different locations! 

If we hadn’t been first time filmmakers, we would have known enough to say, “This is impossible.” But we didn’t know what we didn’tknow, so we pushed on. And, wow! Here we are with an enchanting holiday film from Brookings, Oregon to share with you