Visions of sugar plums: George Balanchine's The Nutcracker

Really Shameful Confession, of grab-the-smelling-salts proportions: I have never been to the ballet in New York City.  I'm sorry.  Another Really Shameful Confession: I have scarcely been to the ballet at all.  My younger sister and I did all but wear out a VHS of Swan Lake, but family excursions to musical performances, when they happened, were mostly to the symphony (with occasional Gilbert & Sullivan.)  College was rural.  Excuses, excuses.  I did see a really exciting performance of Prokoviev's Romeo and Juliet at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2005, unabashedly fierce and angular in choreography and musical interpretation alike, if memory is to be trusted.  But that, as far as memory extends, is my only ballet experience besides a Nutcracker when I was seven (I loved the Christmas tree, and the Dance of the Snowflakes, and was fascinated and frightened by Uncle Drosselmeier) and one when I was thirteen (I thought the pas de deux for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her cavalier was the most ravishingly romantic music I had ever heard, and was fascinated and frightened by Uncle Drosselmeier.)  Why, after allowing so many tantalizing offerings to pass unseen, do I inaugurate my New York City Ballet experience with The Greatest Christmas Cliché of Them All?  Well... I did love it when I was seven, and when I was thirteen.  Furthermore, the Beloved Flatmate has never seen The Nutcracker live!  "But the Christmas tree!" I stammered, when I learned this.  "The snowflakes!"  And then I pulled myself together and said that, after all, Tchaikovsky has been unjustly trivialized, and all the musical sparkle and spectacle would be lifeless without the thrillingly dark, ruthless streak that lies within the best fairy tales (in my raised-on-the-Brothers-Grimm opinion.)