Last Chance

Matthew Bourne’s “Nutcracker!”: The choreographer who gave us male swans in “Swan Lake,” nasty stepbrothers in “Cinderella” and a take on “Carmen” (“The Car Man”) full of references to film noir turns the Christmas classic into a vision of exploited children desperate for a little holiday cheer. Alternately touching, comic and spectacular, this audacious two-act reinvention of a ballet that too often grows mindless with repetition bristles with provocative ideas and movement as danced by Bourne’s exciting New Adventures company.

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Ends next Sunday at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in Westwood. 2 and 8 p.m. today, 2 p.m. Friday and Sunday. (310) 825-2101.