The Nutcracker. A Version is a two-act phantasmagorical ballet staged by Radu Poklitaru and inspired by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann’s The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.

In this new Ukrainian version, the ballet will feature an original score by Oleksandr Rodin, composed especially for the production.

At the heart of the ballet is the story of a little girl lost amid the winter cold and the indifference of the adult world. Christmas light falls upon the street where she searches for warmth, a home and love, yet the world, aglow with festive splendour, remains deaf to her loneliness. At the threshold between harsh reality and dream, as the young heroine’s strength begins to fail, her final dream is born.

From this dream, Radu Poklitaru creates an exquisite theatrical phantasmagoria exploring the vulnerability of a child’s soul, its yearning for love and its ability to dream even when the world turns away. Within this uncanny realm, reality and fantasy merge into a haunting vision; festive radiance reveals its darker side, tenderness arises alongside fear, and a familiar tale reaches into the deepest recesses of human emotion.

The Nutcracker. A Version is a ballet about loneliness and love, about cold and the longing for warmth, and about a small, vulnerable human being whose dream becomes a poignant story of inner strength. Here, the fairy tale sheds its familiar sense of safety and lingers in the memory as a profound, haunting and beautiful experience.