Video: Watch The Toy Soldier in THE NUTCRACKER at New York City Ballet

Check out video of featured dancer KJ Takahashi as he performs 'The Toy Soldier' in the New York City Ballet 2024 production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. 

The 2024-25 season of the holiday classic will conclude on Sunday, January 5, 2025, with a special Sensory Friendly Performance.

New York City Ballet’s acclaimed production of Balanchine’s masterpiece, which premiered on February 2, 1954, helped to establish The Nutcracker and its score as perennial favorites in the United States, evident by the now countless versions of the ballet performed all over the country.  NYCB’s beloved production is seen by more than 100,000 people annually.  

Set to Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky’s glorious score, George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker features choreography by Balanchine, scenery by Rouben Ter-Arutunian, costumes by Karinska, and lighting by Mark Stanley, after the original design by Ronald Bates.  The production features the Company’s entire roster of more than 150 dancers and musicians, as well as more than 120 children, in two alternating casts, from the School of American Ballet, the official school of New York City Ballet.

Highlights of this world-renowned holiday production include a one-ton Christmas tree that grows from 16 to 41 feet, an onstage snowstorm, and hundreds of elaborate costumes, including one for Mother Ginger that measures 9 feet wide and weighs 85 pounds.  The production’s grand finale involves one million watts of lighting, the most used in any New York City Ballet production.