Nutcracker magic returns to San Francisco

In 2004, San Francisco Ballet’s then-Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson took a creative leap with a new production of the perennially popular Nutcracker. Stakes were high; the San Francisco Ballet was, after all, the first U.S. company to stage and produce a full-length version (based on the Ivanov/Petipa 1892 original), which premiered on Christmas Eve, 1944, there … Read more

10 reasons you’ll love SFB’s “Nutcracker Online”

Why the San Francisco Ballet’s Nutcracker Online production, you ask? Because of course you have other options to watch The Nutcracker online this year. Dozens upon dozens of options, from companies all around the world. So. Here, up front, are ten good reasons: Because the first full-length North American Nutcracker started right here Those 600 … Read more

San Francisco Ballet and the (sorta) first Nutcracker

Willem Christensen and Gisella Caccialanza, 1944 It hadn’t been intended as a “timeless holiday classic,” that first year, on Christmas Eve day, 1944, when Willem Christensen, artistic director of the fledgling San Francisco Ballet, presented to audiences his complete, two-act Nutcracker production. He’d known he was doing something relatively new. The only other complete Nutcracker ballet outside Russia had been in … Read more