Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

Land of Sweets

When the gingerbread men on your cookie plate grow into soldiers to battle an army of six-foot-tall mice, you better hope a Tchaikovsky score is on the way. And it is, at least at Vermont Ballet Theater’s sixth annual performance of The Nutcracker. The well-loved Christmas Eve ballet pairs classically trained dancers with lifelike dolls, tin soldiers, a Sugar Plum Fairy and other colorful characters only an active imagination — that of E.T.A. Hoffmann, who penned the source tale — could have conjured. Fantastical stage effects, including falling snowflakes and a remote-controlled sleigh, add a hint of wonder to graceful pirouettes, pliés and arabesques performed by dance students and three professionals: Devon Teuscher and Roddy Doble from the American Ballet Theatre and Samuel Wilson from the Dance Theatre of Harlem.