PRETTY POSE-Y Miss Indigo Blue shows some, uh, sass in The Burlesque Nutcracker.
The inevitable has arrived: With annual productions by Salt Creek Ballet and Von Heidecke’s Chicago Festival Ballet Company opening this week, Nutcracker season officially has begun. Those solid and lovingly produced versions of the 1892 Russian Christmas-themed ballet are bound to please, but if you’re looking for a twist on the traditional, we’ve found a quartet of notable options.
Gimme some sugar
Land of the Sweets: The Burlesque Nutcracker, running December 9 and 10 at the Park West, sounds absolutely delicious! Leave the young’uns at home and enjoy a version of the story aimed at grown-ups. On tour from Seattle, this intelligent and sassy send-up of the ballet’s second act includes a “Waltz of the Flowers” in which dewy girls drop their petals, a hot Arabian Coffee Maiden and an oh-so-sweet Sugar Plum Fairy. The key performers, they tell us, are trained ballet dancers as well as ecdysiasts (a fancy word for strippers).Parkwestchicago.com, $30.
Mane event
According to the folks at the Noble Horse Theatre, before ballerinas and danseurs took over the roles in stagings of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by German author E.T.A. Hoffman, equine artists and their riders galloped throughout 18th-century Europe in productions of the tale. Noble Horse prides itself on being the only theater in North America to keep this tradition on its (four) legs. There’s no doubt that the horses carrying toy soldiers come to life make for the most exciting battle scene you’ll find. The Nutcracker on Horseback runs through January 10. noblehorsechicago.com, $22–$30.
Tapped in
Way before Disney, composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and his collaborator, choreographer Marius Petipa, conceived the Nutcracker’s second act as a kind of “small world” scenario with cartoony dances of animated edibles from “other” lands, such as Spanish chocolate and Chinese tea. Ten years ago Chicago tap dancer Reggio “the Hoofer” McLaughlin got the bright idea to play with this notion by having each country represented by a different cultural dance form. His Nut Tapper, at the Athenaeum Theatre on December 14, features tap, gypsy flamenco, Mexican Zapateado and clog dancing. athenaeumtheatre.com, $15–$25.
Tsar and peace
Leave it to a joint Russian-American production company to turn a prettily elegant story ballet into a Broadway-worthy spectacle replete with lavish set design. In this eye-popping touring ballet, hitting 38 states this season, the second act is not a journey to the Land of the Sweets but is reconceived—in a grand gesture that is purply romantic as only Russians can be—as “The land of Peace and Harmony, where there is no war or suffering.” The Moscow Ballet is a curious enterprise consisting of Russian artists but operating from a business address in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and it brings its Great Russian Nutcracker to the Rosemont Theater for a matinee and an evening show on December 14. rosemont.com, $25–$86.