Alexandra Hutchinson knew about “The Firebird” long before she was the Firebird.
“My parents used to play the ‘Firebird’ music all the time, and I would dance around the house and just feel so elegant and so like royalty,” the Dance Theatre of Harlem ballerina recalls, looking back on a childhood spent partly in Washington, D.C.
Now Hutchinson is playing the title character in the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s acclaimed version of the ballet, a tale of love, magic, freedom and a mysterious flame-evoking creature. Recently revived after more than two decades, this “Firebird” features John Taras’s choreography, Igor Stravinsky’s music, and sets and costumes by Geoffrey Holder. The work wings into the National Theatre in Washington this weekend, presented by DTH and Washington Performing Arts.
Not long after that local appearance, Hutchinson will return to the city to dance the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy for two performances on Nov. 29 as part of the Washington Ballet’s “The Nutcracker,” choreographed by Septime Webre. It’s a work she knows, having appeared in various roles while a student at the Washington School of Ballet. (More recently, Hutchinson danced the Dewdrop role in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” performing as a guest artist with the New York City Ballet.)
Hutchinson first fell in love with ballet in Wilmington, Delaware, where she was born. She was a theatrical child, putting on song-and-movement shows all while standing on a radiator. At age 3, she began classes at the Wilmington Ballet Academy of the Dance and was smitten.
Her family moved to Washington when she was 10, and she began studying at the Washington School of Ballet. “It was such a big turning point in my technique,” she says, and in the realization that ballet “would be more than just a hobby.”
When Hutchinson was older, she had to juggle participating in the ballet school’s trainee program with her high school life at Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. “It was a big sacrifice to focus on ballet, but it was never a pain,” she says. “It was a joy, because I really did find that it was my solace and my passion.”
At one point, she remembers, the sight of her dancing around the living room inspired her mother to bring up the Dance Theatre of Harlem — “this company full of Black and Brown ballet dancers that she saw in the ’80s, and how they were so elegant and regal. And I always, from that week forward, had such a beautiful picture of Dance Theatre of Harlem in my mind.”
Hutchinson studied ballet at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where her teacher was former New York City Ballet star Violette Verdy. After graduating, Hutchinson danced with Nashville Ballet’s second company before joining DTH, where the 31-year-old is now in her ninth season.
In the Harlem company, Hutchinson says, she “found a home like no other. … I had never been in the studio with so many people that looked like me, and it was such a freeing experience. It’s not that I wouldn’t make mistakes before, but it felt like [at DTH] I could really just go for it — in class, in rehearsal — and make mistakes, but grow in all of it, because it felt like such a safe space.”
That freedom and safety have borne results. “She’s a dance threat. She can do any kind of style, any kind of character,” says DTH artistic director Robert Garland, whose ballet “Return” is also on the company’s program at the National, along with Balanchine’s “Donizetti Variations.”
During the pandemic, when Hutchinson was helping with DTH’s virtual programming, she watched a video of the company’s “Firebird” for the first time.
“I actually cried, because I had just envisioned it in my head for so long,” she says.
The ballet world has seen many iterations of “The Firebird,” starting with the 1910 version choreographed for impresario Serge Diaghilev by Michel Fokine, who based the story on Russian folk tales.
DTH’s production, which debuted in 1982, is set in the Caribbean. It tells of a prince who captures the Firebird in an enchanted forest, then frees her. The grateful creature subsequently helps him defeat an evil wizard who has imprisoned the woman the prince loves.
The ballet was a hit. “It does one thing other versions do not — send its audience into a whooping spell of delirium,” the New York Times wrote.
Even with this crowd-pleaser in its repertoire, however, DTH ran into financial difficulties that led to a hiatus in 2004. In 2009, the company’s revered co-founder and leader, Arthur Mitchell, asked Virginia Johnson (who trained at the Washington School of Ballet) to take over, and she presided over a rebirth. She stepped down as artistic director in 2023.
In the post-hiatus era, the relatively large “Firebird” cast initially presented a challenge. A revival got off the ground, thanks in part to a partnership with the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, whose contributions have included providing dancers from its school of dance for the “Firebird” corps de ballet.
Hutchinson made her official debut in the role when the company’s “Firebird” revival opened in Paris this spring, following an earlier preview engagement in Detroit.
Garland says Hutchinson was right for the title role because of her ability to suggest not just airborne movement — “You need someone that can evoke the idea of flight, and that she most definitely has stepped into” — but also the characteristics of a bird who “is less swan and more sparrow.” (Hutchinson performs the role at the evening Washington performances; Ariana Dickerson at the matinee.)
For Hutchinson, the role has also required her to summon her acting skills — “we don’t really have that many story ballets” at DTH, she says. For instance, she must convey the Firebird’s fascination with the human prince and belligerence toward the wizard and his minions.
For acting tips, Hutchinson turned to her uncle Al White, an actor known for playing the Second Jive Dude in the movie “Airplane!” and for roles in August Wilson plays.
Her uncle, she says, “helped me with my anger and aggression in the attack mode, and finding my fierceness and the sense of calm.”
White says that for the Firebird’s epic confrontation with the wizard’s forces, he suggested his niece adopt an intimidating stare and imagine “she was holding a ball of fire, and then she would throw it at the bad guy.”
“She took my advice, and it seemed like it worked out!” he says.
Providing coaching in the role’s demanding technique was Charmaine Hunter, a former DTH principal dancer and Firebird who helped assuage Hutchinson’s worries about the stamina the part requires.
“I would get nervous that if I came out too strong, I’d fade toward the end in terms of having energy,” Hutchinson says. Hunter helped her realize she could build enough endurance in rehearsals to display her character’s strength from the get-go.
“That was such a big gem that I held with me and was able to carry on to other ballets that I perform as well,” Hutchinson says. “To not hold back and to really show my strength and power.”
Dance Theatre of Harlem Sept. 25-26 at the National Theatre, 1321 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. broadwayatthenational.com.
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