The Nutcracker

Carolina Ballet’s yearly Tchaikovsky tour of the Triangle starts this weekend as Carolina Performing Arts hosts its production with a live symphony orchestra in Chapel Hill, prior to its DPAC dates on Dec. 14-15 and a home stand in Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Dec. 18-29. Founding artistic director Robert Weiss began integrating increasingly elaborate stage magic illusions years ago to keep the holiday classic from becoming too much a known commodity. Still, dance purists have long known that the stagecraft of sumptuous sets, glittering costumes, and cute adolescent dancers outflank the actual choreography. No matter: ultimately we go to The Nutcracker to submerge ourselves in spectacle and reconsider the very close proximity that the uncanny has to Christmas in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s unsettling, ancient tale. The performance is an opportunity to revisit, briefly, the sense of wonder we experienced when we first encountered the story. –Byron Woods