The Nutz: versions new and old arrive with the holidays plus a feast of faux pas

Nonetheless, cautions Judanna Lynn, who designed the production's 200 plus new outfits, the ballet is not a documentary. "We're just having fun with the characters," she explains. The Act II divertissements, set among cherry trees on the banks of the Potomac, feature Anacostia Indians in the Arabian variation, a Davey Crockett-ish trapper in the Trepak, cardinals in tutus as mirlitons, and an entire American circus as Mother Ginger, her skirt its working carousel. A history-laden puppet show mounted by Drosselmeyer allows Clara, the ballet's focus, to dream anachronistically, thus resolving any inconsistencies.

The cast includes 200 Washington School of Ballet students, plus about 20 first- and second-graders from WB's outreach program as mushrooms and butterflies. Webre hopes that his production will become a training ground and a community institution on a par with Day's. "In the first year, it will seem newfangled," he admits. "But over time the choreographer tinkers with the production and after a while it no longer belongs to him but to the dancers who contribute to it. I suspect the production we see December 10, 2004, will be quite different from the production of 2010."--PAULA DURBIN

California Dreaming

Bordering Alamo Square in San Francisco, there stands a row of six Victorian houses that face west. Called the Painted Ladies, these colorful gingerbread houses have become emblems of the city's eccentricity and charm.

When the San Francisco Ballet announced that it would mount a new production of The Nutcracker, the company said it would aim for a ballet that would speak to and for San Francisco. On December 17, when the curtain rises on Helgi Tomasson's first complete Nutcracker, SFB's fifth production since 1944, we will meet the Stahlbaum family in the parlor of their landmark Victorian home inspired by the Painted Ladies.

The time is Christmas Eve, 1915, and Clara Stahlbaum is 13. World War I has begun in Europe, but life in the U.S. remains peaceful, and San Francisco has finally recovered from the devastating 1906 earthquake. In fact, at night from the second-story windows of one of the Painted Ladies, a young girl might have glimpsed the San Francisco World's Fair, called the Pan Pacific International Exposition, constructed in what is now the Marina District. The fair featured exotic pavilions from all over the world, including a 43-story Palace of Jewels, to celebrate the new Panama Canal, which cut travel distance from Europe to San Francisco by 18,000 miles. Taking his inspiration for Act II from the exposition, Tomasson said, "I thought what an incredible event it must have been, not only for adults, but for children. It must have been an eye-opener."

In linking the ballet to an historical event, Tomasson and his artistic team--Tony Award-winning costume designer Martin Pakledinaz and renowned opera set designer Michael Yeargan, in his first ballet assignment--hope to anchor Clara's fantasies in a collective experience of a small city glimpsing the larger world. "It's a dream about San Francisco," said Pakledinaz. "But it is also more than a dream. It's about a girl who realizes that the world is so much bigger than her Family or her town."