SeeCalifornia.com

Photos left: Long Beach Ballet. Center: Los Angeles Ballet. Right-top: Festival Ballet Theatre at Irvine’s Barclay. Right-bottom: Ballet San Jose’s Nutrcracker.

CALIFORNIA: One of the most popular productions to celebrate the Christmas season is The Nutcracker, a ballet based on a children’s fantasy story about a girl who falls asleep just before Christmas, dreaming that her toys come to life around her. Clara’s dream is sprinkled with Sugar Plum Fairies dancing merrily, and the toy soliders marching to battle. A valiant  Nutcracker prince engages in a fierce battle pitting him against a Mouse King with seven heads.

The Nutcracker Ballet in California, highlights:

• Famed Moscow Ballet Great Russian Nutcracker is coming to 5 cities, tickets still available: Bakersfield, Cupertino, Hanford, Los Angeles and Santa Rosa.
• Renowned Westside Ballet of Santa Monica founder, Yvonne Mounsey, passed away recently but not before a dream was fulfilled. Joy Womack, her former student, recently became the first American female to be accepted into the Bolshoi Ballet company. Womack is returning to perform as Sugar Plum, to fulfill Yvonne’s dying wish that she perform with Mounsey’s production of the Nutcracker at Wadsworth Theater in L.A.
• Ballet San Jose invested heavily several years ago in state-of-the-art lighting, pyrotechnics and stage sets. It’s a must-see production!
• Long Beach Ballet stuns the audience with a flying sleigh and musical score exactly as Tchaikovsky wrote it — with angelic young voices blending harmoniously with full symphony orchestra!

Nutcracker Bummer:

• California Riverside Ballet is not appearing in 2012. Losing $25,000 on the 2011 production which cost  $350,000, the city grant was not available in 2012.  They want to figure out a way to come to Riverside in 2013 and are seeking financial assistance.