There’s one person you won’t see onstage in the Kansas City Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, even though he is perhaps the most important element in putting the whole thing together. James Jordan is a KCB Ballet Master, and he is the martinet in charge of leading the 28-member professional company and the 225 students from the Ballet School into an extravaganza that has become not just a local holiday favorite but one of the best Nutcrackers in the country. James learned the late Todd Bolender’s Nutcracker from the choreographer himself, having danced with KCB during Todd’s tenure as the company’s artistic director when he was young. “One of the things I needed to do as a relatively new dancer was to stretch my whole body and make it more limber,” James says of his early years with KCB. “So I literally watched Todd create his Nutcracker while I stretched in the corner of the studio – and that was a good thing to do.” (James didn’t really start dancing until he graduated from high school, a late start for a dancer.) This year’s show will be the largest in the company’s history, as it was decided to include two dozen extra students from the School; it is the second on the Kauffman Center stage. The Nutcracker is KCB’s bread-and-butter, as it is for nearly every ballet company in America.

James’ career path was a circuitous one, but it kept bringing him back to dance. He freelanced in New York, worked for PBS in Washington, and eventually became an event planner and was hauling floral arrangements into everything from embassies to the Smithsonian Institution and State Department events. He says those jobs taught him skill sets that have been essential for his current job, which he assumed at Todd’s invitation in 1991. “It really informed me as a ballet master in making me be organized, and to organize other people. That’s where my brain sort of shifted.” Organized, indeed: On any given day during Nutcrackerrehearsals at the Ballet’s Todd Bolender Center you will find swarms of dance students carefully corralled into different studios, where under the tutelage of James, Ballet Mistress Karen P. Brown and their choreographic team they learn to be mice, angels, flowers, soldiers, party guests and all manner of other things.

The team works from notes that are a combination of former Ballet Mistress Una Kai’s notes and James’ additions. “Todd never wrote his ballets down,” James says. “As he was choreographing he would create count structures and preparations but he never did anything to record his work. So what I still have in my notebook is Una’s handwriting, and I photocopied it so that I could then write my own  notes around them. … So I’ve kept adding to it.” Todd and James were a close team, and though the KCB actuallyowns Todd’s works, before his death in 2006 he named James “artistic trustee” of his ballets, including his Nutcracker – “because he knows I won’t change anything.” It’s up to James, then, to preserve the originals by making sure the company doesn’t stray from Todd’s intentions. Although there have been tweaks through the years – some scenes had to be altered to accommodateRobert Fletcher’s new stage designs in 1994 – it is the same Nutcracker as it was when Todd created it in 1991.

What makes the KCB’s Nutcracker unique is that it contains elements from 19^th-century Russian ballet (especially the Prince’s famous pantomime scene), from George Balanchine (in whose company Todd danced for years), and of course from Todd’s own Balanchine-flavored choreography. “But Todd wasn’t analytical about it or historically entrenched in it,” James says. “We just did it.” What Todd did do, however, was to make his Nutcracker really difficult. “Todd wanted to use this to teach,” James says. “Since we had to do it every year we might as well learn something from it. So he made it really challenging and that’s what keeps me engaged in it. Because it’s hard, and the kids really grow step by step through it.” James carries out Todd’s intentions of letting the students “work up through the ranks” as they grow as dancers, beginning as angels or Party Scene kids and each year advancing to more challenging roles – all the way to the coveted parts of Clara and the Prince. (This year’s Claras are Destane Doughty and Mariah Fleischman, and the Princes are Wilfred Rowland and Shawn Kramarovsky.) Casting it is a massively complicated organizational task each year. “I try hard not to make the kids repeat roles, because that makes everyone happier. If they were a mouse last year I’ll make them a soldier.” (Now multiply that task by 225 students and you’ll get an idea how tough it is.)

James says that although he hopes to help with a sense of continuity when the company names a new artistic director in the coming months (William Whitener announced this summer he was stepping down from the post), he’s happy where he is. “My skill set is better under the Ballet Master title,” he says. “It’s really kind of two different job descriptions.” He prefers being a “worker bee,” he says, “someone who can guide the next director with the community and the history and all of those things.” Moreover he takes naturally to the teaching role that the Nutcracker provides each year. The key to success with the students? “I just treat them like adults and give them responsibility and call them on it.” Because young dancers learn in so many ways – some respond to verbal instruction, some are more visual – you have to take a variety of approaches, he says. “That was something Una always said: Because everyone learns differently you have to use every means possible: demonstrating, counting and clapping, using the music and so on. Because everyone’s picking up something different.”

The Nutcracker runs through December 23^rd at the Kauffman Center’s Muriel Kauffman Theatre. For tickets call 816-931-2232 or go to kcballet.org.

To reach Paul Horsley, performing arts editor, send email to phorsley@sbcglobal.net.