AllMovie

Every Christmas season, The Nutcracker Ballet is performed in cities all over the world. What does it really take to produce this ballet each year? Our documentary film, Getting to The Nutcracker, takes you inside the Herculean effort involved in gathering the resources, assembling the volunteers, casting the dancers, rehearsing and staging the performances of this classic ballet. Los Angeles-based Marat Daukayev School of Ballet, led by the former Kirov star, takes you behind the curtain from auditions, the rigorous hours of rehearsals, the joy of landing a principal role to the pain of losing one. The dancers (boys and girls ages 3-18) are profiled; passionate people who, with their families, make incredible sacrifices of time and money just so that they may dance.