Thank you to the Austin community for a beautiful seven year run of The Watchmaker’s Song! (2018-2024)

Endless gratitude and love to our amazing collaborators: AJ Garcia-Rameau and Ventana Ballet, the Neill-Cochran House Museum, and to our home studio East Side Performing Arts.

Scroll down for a letter from Artistic Director, Dorothy O’Shea Overbey.

The beloved characters of The Watchmaker’s Song have moved on to new adventures… and we may hear from them soon! Follow us on the socials to stay tuned for their wild adventures this holiday season.

An immersive and interactive re-imagination of The Nutcracker

set to Duke Ellington & Billy Strayhorn’s iconic arrangement of the Tchaikovsky score.

The Watchmaker's Song:

A Seven-Year Journey From Dream to Reality

How a teenage vision became Austin's beloved immersive holiday tradition - and what comes next.

A letter from Dorothy O’Shea Overbey, the concept-creator, writer, artistic director, and choreographer of The Watchmaker’s Song

The Beginning

I've been dreaming about the production that became The Watchmaker's Song since I was a teenager in the 1990s - long before I was familiar with the term immersive theater.

I wanted to create an alternative Nutcracker, one where audiences weren't just watching from their seats but living inside the story. Where the magic happened all around you. Where you could wander from room to room and discover something new each time.

But more than that, I wanted to address something that, in recent years, had begun to bother me about traditional Nutcracker productions.

The Jazz Age & Cultural Authenticity

I grew up with jazz music filling our house. My dad was a big fan of dixieland, and as a young pianist, my teacher taught me basic jazz improvisation. That love of jazz became woven into my vision: what if we reimagined The Nutcracker through a jazz-age lens?

In our first year (2018), we commissioned Nicholas Perry Clark from Density512 to arrange excerpts from Tchaikovsky's score. The following year, I discovered Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's iconic Nutcracker arrangement, and we leaned fully into the jazz-age aesthetic.

But the more important evolution was in Act II.

If you're familiar with traditional Nutcracker productions, you'll recognize that the "divertissements" - the cultural dances in Act II - have historically been performed by ballet dancers adopting the styles of various cultures. When this premiered in 1892, it was most certainly worldly and multicultural. By the 21st century, it sometimes felt stereotypical and culturally insensitive.

I had a different idea: what if we invited actual practitioners of these cultural traditions to perform?

Instead of ballet dancers interpreting Chinese dance, we featured traditional Chinese ribbon dance. Instead of a fabulous (but vague) "Spanish" number, we invited authentic Flamenco artists. Egyptian belly dancers. Argentine Tango. Classical Indian Dance. Tap artists representing African American traditions. Drag performers for Mother Ginger.

This wasn't just about avoiding stereotypes, though that mattered: it was about creating genuine artistic collaboration, honoring cultural traditions, and strengthening connections across Austin's diverse dance communities.

(photos below by Jack Kloecker, 2023. Courtesy of Red Nightfall & Ventana Ballet)

Seven Years of Collaboration

For seven years, The Watchmaker's Song grew through partnership. Ventana Ballet, directed by AJ Garcia-Rameau, collaborated with Red Nightfall Dance Theatre to produce the show, bringing resources and organizational support that allowed the vision to flourish. The Neill-Cochran House Museum opened their beautiful historic home to become the immersive setting. East Side Performing Arts served as our rehearsal home base.

But most importantly, the artists: the dancers, the designers, the directors, the musicians, the hard-working stage crew, the cultural artists who returned year after year made The Watchmaker's Song what it became. Your dedication, your artistry, your generosity created something truly irreplaceable.

And to you, our audiences, who showed up year after year in your most fabulous holiday finery, always with open hearts: you made The Watchmaker's Song what it was. Thank you for believing in this vision.

Moving Forward

This season, The Watchmaker's Song will not be returning. While collaborations sometimes end, the vision that sparked it remains alive and growing.

Red Nightfall Dance Theatre continues creating immersive, interdisciplinary performance experiences. Our current project, CRONE, brings together dance, live music, film, and fashion design in a series of performances where audiences don't just observe, they actively help shape the mythology we're building.

Just as The Watchmaker's Song invited you into a world where anything could happen around the next corner, CRONE invites you to become co-creators in an unfolding universe exploring themes of power, transformation, and healing.

And The Watchmaker's Song characters? They're not gone - just off having new adventures. Follow Red Nightfall on Instagram to see what they're up to now that the party's over.

Gratitude

To everyone who was part of this seven-year journey: thank you.

To AJ Garcia-Rameau and Ventana Ballet: thank you.

To the dancers who brought intense physical and creative work to every performance, who embraced non-traditional spaces with grace and toughness, who stayed open to new experiences and collaborated with humor through it all: thank you.

To the cultural artists who brought authenticity and beauty: thank you.

To the collaborating organizations who made it possible: thank you.

To the audiences who believed in this vision: thank you.

The creation of beauty is an act of liberation - and you helped prove that it's not the privilege of the pedigreed, but a birthright for us all.

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Concept, Choreography, Artistic Director, Director of Red Nightfall Dance Theatre - Dorothy O’Shea Overbey

Executive Director, Director of Ventana Ballet - AJ Garcia-Rameau

The Watchmaker’s Song is an immersive, culturally inclusive dance-theatre production based on the beloved ballet, The Nutcracker, performed at the historic Neill Cochran House Museum.

The Watchmaker’s Song showcases many different dance and theatrical traditions, from classical ballet to Spanish Flamenco, Egyptian Belly Dance, Traditional Chinese Dance, Bollywood, Irish Step Dance, American Tap Dance, Argentine Tango, Drag Performance, and more. Act One of The Watchmaker’s Song features Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s iconic arrangement of the Tchaikovsky score.

Our mission is to bring the Austin dance community together to honor our diverse traditions and celebrate our love of dance!

By presenting this performance in an immersive style at the Neill-Cochran House Museum we break down the barriers between performers and audience members, so dance of all kinds can be experienced in an intimate setting.

This nutcracker is different…

“…because of the chance it offered to dive inside this familiar work, to attend the party that kicks off the evening's adventure and take our own journeys to see cultures of faraway lands.

The Watchmaker's Song let us in on the action.

To be so close to something you know so well from afar is to see it anew. It is magical, and in a way that is all this show's own.”

-Robert Faires, the Austin Chronicle