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.
Darci Kistler is an American ballerina. She is often said to be the last muse for choreographer George Balanchine.
A nutcracker is a tool for cracking nuts.
Emile Ardolino was an American television and film director and producer, best known for his work on the films Dirty Dancing (1987) and Sister Act (1992). He won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for his film He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin' (1983).
Katherine Healy is an American former principal ballerina and actress who also had a professional performing career in figure skating.
Moscow Ballet has toured the United States and Canada during the holiday season since 1993 and is exclusively represented by Talmi Entertainment Inc for these tours. There are 70 to 80 Russian-trained classical dancers on the annual North American tour who fly in from the former republic of Russia. Stanislav Vlasov, a former principal artist of the Bolshoi Ballet, was the first artistic director on the North American tour in 1993. Vlasov's debut in the United States was at Carnegie Hall in 1957.
"The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" is a novella-fairy tale written in 1816 by Prussian author E. T. A. Hoffmann, in which young Marie Stahlbaum's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls. The story was originally published in Berlin in German as part of the collection Kinder-Märchen, Children's Stories, by In der Realschulbuchhandlung. In 1892, the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and choreographers Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov turned Alexandre Dumas' adaptation of the story into the ballet The Nutcracker.
The Nutcracker Prince is a 1990 Canadian animated romance fantasy film directed by Paul Schibli based on the screenplay by Patricia Watson. It is a retelling of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" and Marius Petipa & Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker, about a girl named Clara who is gifted a special nutcracker by her uncle. The gift draws her into a world of magic and wonder, and she brings about the conclusion to the legend of The Nutcracker, Prince of the Dolls: a young man named Hans who was transformed into a nutcracker by mice, and can only break the spell if he slays the Mouse King. The film stars Kiefer Sutherland as Hans, Megan Follows as Clara, Mike MacDonald as the evil Mouse King, Peter O'Toole as Pantaloon, an old soldier, Phyllis Diller as the Mouse Queen, and Peter Boretski as Uncle Drosselmeier.
Nutcracker Fantasy is a Japanese-American stop motion animated film produced by Sanrio, very loosely based on Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker and E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It is directed by Takeo Nakamura and written by Shintaro Tsuji, Eugene A. Fournier and Thomas Joachim. It was officially released in Japan on March 3, 1979 and later in the United States on July 6, 1979. The film was nominated for the 1980 Saturn Award for Best Fantasy Film and the 1980 Young Artist Award for Best Motion Picture featuring youth and won the 1980 Young Artist Award for Best Musical Entertainment.
Jewels is a three-act ballet created for the New York City Ballet by co-founder and founding choreographer George Balanchine. It premièred on Thursday, 13 April 1967 at the New York State Theater, with sets designed by Peter Harvey and lighting by Ronald Bates.
Tiler Kalyn Peck is an American ballet dancer who is a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. As well as ballet, she has performed in musical theatre shows and has made cameo appearances in films including Donnie Darko and television series including Tiny Pretty Things.
Nutcracker: The Motion Picture, also known as Pacific Northwest Ballet's Nutcracker or simply Nutcracker, is a 1986 American Christmas performing arts film produced by Pacific Northwest Ballet in association with Hyperion Pictures and Kushner/Locke, and released theatrically by Atlantic Releasing Corporation. It is a film adaptation of 1892 ballet The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the 1816 short story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" by E. T. A. Hoffmann.
The Hard Nut is a ballet set to Tchaikovsky's 1892 The Nutcracker and choreographed by Mark Morris. It took its inspiration from the comic artist Charles Burns, whose art is personal and deeply instilled with archetypal concepts of guilt, childhood, adolescent sexuality, and poignant, nostalgic portrayals of post-war America. Morris enlisted a team of collaborators to create a world not unlike that of Burns’ world, where stories take comic book clichés and rearrange them into disturbing yet funny patterns.
Artem Vyacheslavovich Ovcharenko is a Russian classical ballet dancer. He is a principal dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet and a guest artist with the Hamburg Ballet.
The Slutcracker is a burlesque, satirical version of the 1892 ballet The Nutcracker that is the creation of Lipstick Criminals troupe director Vanessa White. It has been performed in Somerville, Massachusetts, and Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The performance incorporates burlesque and tango dancers, drag kings, hoopers, ballerinas, acrobats, and belly dancers in a retelling of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet from the point of view of a young woman who experiences a sexual awakening during a holiday dream-like sequence.
The Nutcracker, also known as George Balanchine's The Nutcracker, is a 1993 American Christmas ballet film based on Peter Martins's stage production and directed by Emile Ardolino. It stars Darci Kistler, Damian Woetzel, Kyra Nichols, Bart Robinson Cook, Macaulay Culkin, Jessica Lynn Cohen, Wendy Whelan, Margaret Tracey, Gen Horiuchi, Tom Gold, and the New York City Ballet.
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a 2018 American fantasy adventure film directed by Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston and produced by Mark Gordon and Larry Franco, from a screenplay by Ashleigh Powell. Co-produced by Walt Disney Pictures and The Mark Gordon Company, it is a retelling of E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1816 short story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King", as well as of Marius Petipa and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's 1892 ballet The Nutcracker, about a young girl who is gifted a locked egg from her deceased mother and sets out in a magical land to retrieve the key. The film stars Keira Knightley, Mackenzie Foy, Eugenio Derbez, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, Misty Copeland, Helen Mirren, and Morgan Freeman.
"The Nutcracker" was a special Christmas presentation of the CBS television series, Playhouse 90, featuring Tchaikovsky's ballet performed by the New York City Ballet, choreographed by George Balanchine, and conducted by Robert Irving. It was broadcast live and in color on December 25, 1958.