'The Nutcracker' Again? Dancers Feel the Same.

"The Nutcracker" drives plenty of people nuts.

Tchaikovsky was miserable composing the score. Marius Petipa fell ill while choreographing it, bowing out mid-rehearsal. Antonietta Dell'Era, the first Sugar Plum Fairy in 1892, was described as a "heavy, large, unpretty, ungraceful dancer." And reviews were dismal: " 'Nutcracker' can in no event be called a ballet," one critic opined after its premiere in St. Petersburg, Russia. "It does not comply with even one of the demands made of a ballet." Another wrote: "The production of such 'spectacles' . . . is an insult . . . and may soon easily lead to the ruin of the ballet." Ouch.

Yet, year after year, "The Nutcracker" persists. It has become an ever-popular staple of the American holiday season and a cash cow for ballet schools and companies large and small. But many people, even a few who spend their days in pink tights and satin slippers, can't wait for the new year, when the Sugar Plum tutu, the candy canes and the gnarly mouse heads can be packed away.

Come Halloween, Septime Webre gets a heavy feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Hearing that music on all the commercials and in every mall in America does leave one with the feeling of too much recycled fruitcake and store-bought eggnog," says the artistic director of the Washington Ballet, which produces the region's premier "Nutcracker" at the Warner Theatre every year.

Nancie Woods, artistic director of Arlington's Center Dance Company, grew up in England, where the holiday ballet isn't the staple it has become on these shores. But as a dancer in the Delta Festival Ballet's "Nutcracker," she says she hated two- and three-show days, when she would have to warm up again and again, often between the break between the two acts. "That," she says, "was a real pain."

Washington Ballet dancer Morgann Frederick says she can't stand the snow scene. "I dance the entire pas de deux and a few solos while this snow is coming down," she says. "If you open your mouth at all, snow actually gets in your mouth, in your throat, on your eyes, in your nose. It sticks to your eyelashes. By the end you can't breathe and can't see. The snow is everywhere. And we still have to look beautiful and regal."

Washington Ballet apprentice Corey Landolt saw his first "Nutcracker" when he was 5. He loved it so much he begged his mother for dance lessons. The next year he was a soldier and Fritz, the mischievous brother. "The thing that drives me nuts is I've now done 'Nutcracker' every year since I was 6 years old, and I'm now 21." Get used to it, ballet directors might say with a laugh, a dancer who has spent 15 years in "The Nutcracker" is just getting started.