The Secret's Out: Will Tuckett's 'The Secret Garden' is back

It begins with a familiar nursery rhyme.

“Mary, Mary quite contrary. How does your garden grow?”

In choreographer Will Tuckett’s production of “The Secret Garden” for Sarasota Ballet, Mary is a plain Jane of sorts — but she doesn’t dance like one.

This dancer is Katelyn May, who is starting her career at Sarasota Ballet with the leading role in the company’s first show of the season.

May previously was with Houston Ballet’s professional company for nine years and in their academy for the two years prior. After 11 years, she was ready for a change, and Sarasota Ballet was the first  company she auditioned for after making that decision.

On Oct. 27, she will officially begin her company experience as a junior principal starring in the season opener.

“I was always one of the little solo diverts on the side,” she says of her experience as a demi soloist at Houston Ballet. “I was never the person who carried the show, so that’s been a new experience.”

She says her experience working with Tuckett has been fun and helped make it a smooth transition from Houston.

Hailing from England, Tuckett was commissioned three years ago to create this piece specifically for Sarasota Ballet. This is the first time the company will perform the show since 2014, and though the story is the same, Tuckett says it feels different.

“The first time you do anything, sometimes it’s hard to see the wood through the trees,” he says. “We’re all three years down the line now, so everyone’s got more experience.”

Tuckett says everyone seems more relaxed this time around, and this helped the artistic staff pull more out of the characters and make it more well-rounded.

It’s his emphasis on storytelling that May finds most appealing about “The Secret Garden,” which is told through the help of a narrator who’s onstage and often interacts with the dancers.

“It’s so nice to have a narrator there,” she says. “It’s a really good introduction to ballet because it’s so interactive and there’s a lot more than just pure ballet technique happening onstage.”

But the narrator isn’t the only theatrical element that she believes will be a crowd pleaser.

This show also incorporates the use of puppets, which take on their own personalities. May says they’ve even become friends of a sort — she often forgets that there are people maneuvering them because they’re so gracefully incorporated into the show.

May thinks the show is a great family production because it appeals to a wide range of ages. There’s some drama for the older audience members, but then there’s the puppets, narrator and many other elements of pure entertainment that will leave the younger kids happy.

It works so well with younger audiences that the company arranged for a whole week of shows for school groups leading up to the main production.

“We want our kids to grow up in a society where the arts are really central,” Tuckett says.

He says he loves school shows because he thinks watching a performance with friends gives kids a different experience than watching with their family. Kids act differently around their friends, and Tuckett believes they’re more liberated when they’re with their peers and are more willing to ask questions after the performance.

Tuckett says doing this show again after three years has been satisfying because he’s proud to see how it’s helped the ballet make an even bigger mark in Sarasota.

“It’s lovely when you’ve made it and it’s not really yours anymore,” he says. “It’s theirs.”