The Beloved "Nutcracker" is a Holiday Special on WPBT2

Kristi Yamaguchi hosts the lavish holiday treat, Great Performances Dance in America: San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker, on Monday, December 21 at 9:00 p.m. on WPBT2.

San Francisco Ballet makes the beloved Nutcracker its own, resetting it during the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exhibition and introducing viewers to the dazzling Maria Kochetkova and Davit Karapetyan. The work is choreographed by artistic director Helgi Tomasson and features sets and costumes by, respectively, Michael Yeargan and Martin Pakledinaz, both repeat Tony Award-winning designers. San Francisco Ballet music director and principal conductor Martin West conducts Tchaikovsky’s sprightly score.  “Striking, elegant and beautiful,” assessed The New York Times.    

 “I have grown up with this wonderful company,” says Yamaguchi. “It was with them that my mom, Carole, took me to my first Nutcracker. Pretty impressive for a little girl, with all that magic and sparkle, thrilling music and those costumes! I think that’s when I fell in love with performing. Next year, I’ll be taking my little girls, five and three, to their first production.”

  The Nutcracker, which was first performed in Russia in 1892, holds a special significance for San Francisco Ballet, America’s oldest professional ballet company. The ballet had its U.S. premiere there in 1944.

Tchaikovsky’s beguiling score is one of the most popular pieces of music ever written. Think “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “Waltz of the Snowflakes.” Inspired by E.T.A. Hoffman’s 1816 story, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, it was first proposed to Tchaikovsky by legendary choreographer Marius Petipa as a follow-up to Tchaikovsky’s other successful ballets at Russia’s famed Mariinsky Theatre: Swan Lake (1877) and The Sleeping Beauty (1890). The composer began work on it in 1891.