The Nutcracker is not only a winter fairytale, but also eternal story. And, like all timeless stories, it attracts many interpreters with a desire to fascinate the audience, to make it gasp with astonishment. This time, that «wow» is ensured by an enchanting magician of the choreographic world, Jeroen Verbruggen, whose brilliant, untrammeled, explosive imagination produces something truly spectacular. He’s generous in everything — in the luxury of texture and style, in triumphant joy, lyrical tenderness and fascinating mysticism. It’s impossible not to be moved by his creativity or charmed by such a familiar and yet surprisingly new story.

This Nutcracker is a world of endless reflections, fairy-tale immersion and unbelievable transformations. A world of countless doors, enigmatic gray animals and fragile baroque lanterns. Verbruggen retells this brilliant story in his own way: he mixes genres, decomposes texts, uncovers narrative psychologisms and finally creates a fairytale-blockbuster for adults. Extravagant and mad, mystic and tender, confused and simple. But maybe not a fairytale at all, but a manual to adulating for overage children, flavored with mists in Tim Burton’s style.

Extravagant Paris designers worked on this production. They helped to construct the main characters of The Nutcracker: tender and impulsive Marie in coat of nut shell, a man without skin — helpless and hurtable love, artful were-rats and other incredible characters of these dreams.

Marius Petipa would be proud of his successor, a real ballet master and true wizard, as Drosselmeie…meaning to say Verbruggen. It is not surprising that the choreographer admits: “Drosselmeier — it’s me to a great extent, hyper moving, cheerful and looking at life as a celebration”.