A ‘Nutcracker’ Under the Tree, After All : * San Francisco Ballet Saves Season by Offering to Stage Classic in ABT’s Absence

What’s the holiday season without the “Nutcracker”? For a lot of romantics, especially the young-at-heart variety, hardly any fun at all. That gloomy prospect seemed inevitable just a few weeks ago, however, after the American Ballet Theatre, citing financial problems, pulled out of its promised world premiere of the “Nutcracker” at the Orange County Performing Arts Center.

Ballet companies generally are booked one or two years ahead, so there seemed little hope that another company could be obtained in time for the holidays.

But, like Clara saving the Nutcracker from being killed by the Mouse King, the San Francisco Ballet has come to the rescue.

It has filled in all but one performance date, enabling the center to keep this sugarplum of a crowd-pleaser on its calendar from Nov. 29 to Dec. 8. (Only the evening performance of Dec. 8 had to be canceled.)

There is no way of knowing what ABT would have presented in its new version. The ABT, remember, was the company that introduced then-ABT artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov’s “Nutcracker.”

But, after his acrimonious departure in 1989, Baryshnikov refused to allow the company to make any further stagings of his heavily Freudian version of the favorite Christmas ballet. Suspense over the new version being staged by Canadian choreographer Brian MacDonald will have to remain for at least another year, however, and there’s no guarantee Orange County will see it even then.

On the other hand, much is known about the fanciful “Nutcracker” that has become a tradition with the San Francisco Ballet, which, in 1944, became the first dance company in the country to present the now very popular ballet.

While many stagings of the “Nutcracker” can be as saccharine as the ballet’s famous Land of Sweets, the current version first presented by the San Francisco Ballet in 1967 has been warmly received. The Times’ music/dance critic, Martin Bernheimer, on seeing it four years ago, called it “taut, gentle, colorful fantasy.”

It was a heady prospect for the Performing Arts Center to be the chosen venue for ABT’s new “Nutcracker,” which was to have gone on to the Kennedy Center in Washington. But, like the holidays themselves, there’s also a comfort to the familiar.

The San Francisco Ballet’s “Nutcracker” is a welcome addition to the holiday scene in Orange County. Getting it on such short notice is enough to make one believe that there really is a Santa Claus.