It is and was a dream

There’s an old showbiz dictum that says to never work with kids or animals. Choreographer Ron Cunningham, whose Nutcracker is now on stage at the Community Center Theater, has ignored the first part of that warning for more than two decades, casting as many as 500 children per year in the Sacramento Ballet’s annual holiday show.

This year, he’s also gone for the second half of the warning, putting an adoptable animal from the Front Street Animal Shelter into each show, with more available animals in the lobby.

The good news is that neither of these rule-breakers is just a gimmick. Cunningham gets admirable performances out of kids and dogs alike. And his ballet company is as excellent as ever. Some of the performances also are accompanied by live music from the Sacramento Philharmonic under the direction of Henrik Jul Hansen.

The plot of the story involves a young girl named Clara (Nikole Farina, Ashlyn Bell and Nikki Martin alternate in the role), who dreams of a magical journey in which a toy nutcracker comes to life (Rex Wheeler, John Whisler and Alexander Cain Biber each play the role) and escorts her on an adventure.

While the story is very much for children and features a bunch of them in the prologue and a party scene, it has plenty of real ballet to please adults. The Snowflake Forest (Clara’s first landing place) is ruled by the Snow Queen and King, who dance a delicious pas de deux. Lauryn Winterhalder and Stefan Calka partner in the first and final performances, with Alexandra Cunningham and Christopher Nachtrab, Maggie Rupp and Mate Szentes, and Winterhalder and Richard Porter dancing in other performances.

A visit to the Land of Sweets yields many pleasures, culminating in the grand pas de deux featuring the Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier (Cunningham and Porter, Winterhalder and Richard Smith, Cunningham and Calka, Kaori Higashiyama and Nachtrab alternate), with all the Sugar Plum Fairies and their Cavaliers dancing in the final performance.