The Nutcracker, Op. 71, is an 1892 two-act classical ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, set on Christmas Eve at the foot of a Christmas tree in a child's imagination. The plot is an adaptation of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The ballet's first choreographer was Marius Petipa, with whom Tchaikovsky had worked three years earlier on The Sleeping Beauty, assisted by Lev Ivanov. Although the complete and staged The Nutcracker ballet was not as successful as had been the 20-minute Nutcracker Suite that Tchaikovsky had premiered nine months earlier, The Nutcracker soon became popular.
New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company's first music director. City Ballet grew out of earlier troupes: the Producing Company of the School of American Ballet, 1934; the American Ballet, 1935, and Ballet Caravan, 1936, which merged into American Ballet Caravan, 1941; and directly from the Ballet Society, 1946.
Pacific Northwest Ballet (PNB) is a ballet company based in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. It is said to have the highest per capita attendance in the United States, with 11,000 subscribers in 2004. The company consists of 49 dancers; there are more than 100 performances throughout the year.
Ib Andersen is a Danish ballet dancer, choreographer, and painter.
The Joffrey Ballet is an American dance company and training institution in Chicago, Illinois. The Joffrey regularly performs classical and contemporary ballets during its annual performance season at the Civic Opera House, including its annual presentation of The Nutcracker.
Paper Mill Playhouse is a regional theater containing approximately 1,200 seats located in Millburn, within Essex County, New Jersey, United States, on the banks of the Rahway River. Due to its relative proximity to Manhattan, the theater draws from the pool of actors who live in New York City. Paper Mill was officially designated as the "State Theater of New Jersey". From 1971 to 2008, Paper Mill held the New Jersey Ballet as its resident ballet company, with the annual production of Nutcracker until the premiere 25th Anniversary tour of Les Misérables took up the ballet's performance slot. Mark S. Hoebee serves as the producing artistic director, and is often credited as saving the Paper Mill during the financial crisis in 2008.
Allegra Kent is an American ballet dancer, actress, children's book author and columnist.
Todd Bolender was a renowned ballet dancer, teacher, choreographer, and director. He was an instrumental figure in the creation and dissemination of classical dance and ballet as an American art form. A child of the American Midwest during the Great Depression, he studied under George Balanchine and led the Kansas City Ballet in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1980 to 1995.
Miami City Ballet is an American ballet company based in Miami Beach, Florida, led by artistic director Lourdes Lopez.
Nicholas Magallanes was a Mexican-born American principal dancer and charter member of the New York City Ballet. Along with Francisco Moncion, Maria Tallchief, and Tanaquil Le Clercq, Magallanes was among the core group of dancers with which George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein formed Ballet Society, the immediate predecessor of the New York City Ballet.
Helgi Tomasson is an Icelandic artistic director and principal choreographer for San Francisco Ballet, and a former professional ballet dancer. Since assuming leadership of San Francisco Ballet, he has helped transform the company from a respected regional troupe to one of the world's great classical ballet companies.
The New Jersey Ballet is a ballet company based in Livingston, New Jersey in the United States, founded in 1958 by native New Jerseyan Carolyn Clark and her fellow dancer, George Tomal.
Jocelyn Vollmar was an American ballerina, known for her career with the San Francisco Ballet.
Leonid Kozlov is a former principal dancer of the Bolshoi and New York City Ballet. He is also a choreographer, the founder and owner of Kozlov Dance International (KDI) and Youth Dance Festival of New Jersey.
Tener Brown is an American ballet coach of New Jersey Ballet. She is a former ballet dancer of American Ballet Theatre and actress.
Chloe Arnold is an American dancer and Emmy-nominated choreographer, actress, director, and producer. She is best known internationally as a tap dancer, and was seen on Season 11 of FOX's So You Think You Can Dance with her company Chloe Arnold's Syncopated Ladies.
Choreographer George Balanchine's production of Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker has become the most famous stage production of the ballet performed in the U.S. It uses the plot of the Alexandre Dumas, père, version of E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" (1816). Its premiere took place on February 2, 1954, at City Center, New York, with costumes by Karinska and sets by Horace Armistead. It has been staged in New York every year since 1954, and many other productions throughout the United States either imitate it, or directly use the Balanchine staging. However, although it is often cited as being the production that made the ballet famous in the U.S., it was Willam Christensen's 1944 production for the San Francisco Ballet which first introduced the complete work to the United States.
The Kansas City Ballet (KCB) is a professional ballet company based in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was founded in 1957 by Russian expatriate Tatiana Dokoudovska. The KCB presents five major performances each season to include an annual production of The Nutcracker. The KCB, its school, and its staff are all housed in, operate from, and rehearse at the Todd Bolender Center for Dance and Creativity, a renovated, seven-studio, office, and rehearsal facility in Kansas City, Missouri, that opened in August 2011. The company performs at and is the resident ballet company at the nearby Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, a performance venue in downtown Kansas City that opened in September 2011.
Ballet Memphis is a regionally and nationally recognized professional ballet company, founded in 1986 by Dorothy Gunther Pugh, and based in Memphis, Tennessee. Ballet Memphis regularly performs at their midtown home in an intimate performance space, at Playhouse on the Square, Germantown Performing Arts Center, Crosstown Theater and the Orpheum Theatre.
