Kansas City Ballet: The Nutcracker

Kansas City Ballet: The Nutcracker at Muriel Kauffman Theatre - Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts

When Clara's slipper flies across the stage and knocks down the Mouse King, it's the Kansas City Symphony that surges through that breathless moment, playing every note of Tchaikovsky's score in the same room where the dancers leap and spin. Devon Carney's production for Kansas City Ballet places the orchestra alongside the choreography—not in a recording booth somewhere else, not years ago—and that living partnership changes the way you feel the music inside each scene.

The story wraps all the holiday-magic charm you remember around a structure built for ballet: Drosselmeier's parlor tricks at Clara's Christmas party set off a wild midnight fight between toy soldiers and mice, then dissolve into the shimmering Kingdom of Snow and finally the Land of Sweets, where the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier reward Clara for her courage. Alain Vaes and Holly Hynes designed the sets and costumes to guide your eye from one world to the next without losing the thread, and Trad A. Burns' lighting lets each kingdom announce itself.

Mother Ginger joins the fantasy, dancers fill the stage for the Waltz of the Flowers, and the Nutcracker becomes a prince, all inside a score that the Symphony plays with the breath and pacing of the performance unfolding in front of them. The combination—Carney's staging, Vaes and Hynes' designs, Tchaikovsky performed live—lands the familiar story in Kansas City with detail and sweep.

Get your tickets for Kansas City Ballet's The Nutcracker at the Muriel Kauffman Theatre.