The Nutcracker News

The 2007 cast of "A Christmas Carol" at the Berkshire Theatre Festival's Unicorn Theater.

Claudia Weeks as Clara dances with Luis Abella as the transformed nutcracker in the kingdom of snow during the "St. Augustine Community Nutcracker" at Flagler College Auditorium on Saturday afternoon.

On Dec. 18, 1892, Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Nutcracker" publicly premiered in St.

Wendy Whelan is among the best dancers in the world. She's a principal ballerina with New York City Ballet and a guest artist with the innovative Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company ballet.

The tiniest dancers in the Festival Ballet of North Central Texas' staging of The Nutcracker, shown in a 2008 performance, are in the Mother Buffoon and her baby buffoons scene.

Moved by the scenic grandeur and sonic majesty of the renovated Granada , the State Street Ballet is going all out to make this year's production of The Nutcracker ballet one to cherish and remember.

Look, up on the stage. It's a bird, it's a plane - it's a dad. It's Steve Rash and other brave men leaping on the Longview stage they will share with the Longview Ballet Theatre when Pat George Mitchell's ballerinas and pros from the world stage dance "The Nutcracker." The Christmas classic kicks off the ballet school's 2009-10 season Dec.

Visions of sugarplums always dance in Angela Presto's head this time of year. The 14-year-old ballerina, who attends Marquette Catholic High School in Alton, has performed in "The Nutcracker" for the last three years with the Saint Louis Ballet School, where she studies dance, as part of the Saint Louis Ballet Company's professional production.

Kalena Gabay makes her Ballet San Jose debut as one of the mighty mouse minions in "The Nutcracker" in performances this week.

The St. Louis Ballet , a mix of dancers, directors and choreographers under the lead of internally recognized Artistic Director Gen Horiuchi, is performing its rendition of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" on Saturday as part of the University Concert Series .

Many girls at some point during their childhoods experience the cliche of putting on a pink tutu and proclaiming to their mothers: "I want to be a ballerina when I grow up." That wasn't the case for Haley Schwanz - not at first, that is.

What does Brooklyn need but a king for its rats? And we shall have one, next December.

Haley Schwanz may want to consider this practice for what is likely to be a lifetime of whirlwind tours.

Shortly after Ethan Stiefel became the dance dean at UNC School of the Arts in July of 2008, he said that choreographing was not his thing.

With its fairy-tale story line and its fantastic Tchaikovsky score, "The Nutcracker" has become a Christmas tradition - as well as one of the few ballets to enjoy mainstream popularity.

Ethan Stiefel , dean of the school of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, rehearses with Laura Chachich and Kris Nobles for a performance of a oeThe Nutcracker.a Credit: Nelson Kepley/News & Record Want to go? What: "The Nutcracker" by UNC School of the Arts, with new choreography by Ethan Stiefel and three other members ...

Plano dancers, Naomi Shapira, McKenna Karnes, Audrey Clark, Cosette Goldstein and Camille Goldstein, will be starring in the upcoming production of The Nutcracker.

Of all the fabled dancers who famously defected from the former Soviet Union, Mikhail Baryshnikov proved to be the one whose quest for "artistic freedom" became something far more than just a high-minded slogan.

T he Nutcracker opens each year in early December, but it's not usually on our radar until around Thanksgiving.

If Alicia White could speak to Johannes Brahms, famous German composer , she'd ask him what he was trying to express through his piano music.