The Kennedy Center Presents Atlanta Ballet in The Nutcracker

For its annual holiday production for 2019, the Kennedy Center presents Atlanta Ballet in The Nutcracker. This production made its debut in 2018 with choreography by Yuri Possokhov set to Tchaikovsky’s score. This will be the first time Atlanta Ballet performs at the Kennedy Center.

Atlanta Ballet joins the robust list of American ballet companies to share their holiday tradition with Washington, D.C. metropolitan area audiences in the Kennedy Center’s annual presentation of The Nutcracker. Under the artistic direction of Gennadi Nedvigin, Atlanta Ballet premiered its first new production of The Nutcracker in more than two decades in Atlanta last December. A balanced blend of contemporary and classic, this version closely follows E.T.A. Hoffmann’s original 1816 tale, The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, but uses elaborately crafted, larger-than-life scenery combined with advanced techniques in lighting and video projections to bring the magical story to life.

The production highlights:

• scenic design by Tom Pye
• lighting design by David Finn
• costumes by Sandra Woodall
• video projections by Tony Award®–winning designer Finn Ross.

Integrated into this eye-catching layering of visual effects is San Francisco Ballet’s acclaimed in-house choreographer Yuri Possokhov’s new choreography, which expands the roles of protagonist Marie and the Nutcracker Prince by giving both characters the ballet’s major pas de deux, which are typically performed by more conventional characters like the Sugar Plum Fairy, Cavalier, Snow Queen and Snow King. Throughout the production, the ballet takes the audience on a journey through a unique visual reality for the beloved story.

An annually anticipated opportunity for local partnership for learning and collaboration between area artists and visiting companies, more than 45 local children from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area will join in the production. In addition, the Arlington Children’s Chorus lend their voices to the dazzling snow scene. All performances will be accompanied by the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra.