Sat. Dec. 15 

(Last year, we asked our intrepid dance correspondent Max Friedli to pen us something on "Urban Nutcracker." He did. Max is out of the country this year, but we loved his take then, and have a feeling what he wrote last year - it's still Anthony Williams show - will make sense to people considering going this year. It's up Sunday  Dec. 13-15 at the John Hancock Hall.)

After having sat through nine front-row seat performances---amorous liaisons with the Sugar Plum Fairy, the nut that the cracker cracks--- and one performance elsewhere without a Christmas tree and snowflakes, I think I am entitled to yak about "Nutcracker," the Tchaikovsky spectacle that has for a century turned innocent children into future balletomanes.
After sneaking for years around the fringes of Boston, BalletRox dares to bring its acclaimed "Urban Nutcracker" to the downtown John Hancock Hall which is now part of the refurbished Back Bay Events Center. Under the direction of Anthony Williams, "Nutcracker" has become much more than Tchaikovsky had envisioned---it is now an entertainment lesson through the history of dance and music up to the present.
Sure Tchaikovsky's music still commands the stage by 60%, but then comes Duke Ellington with a respectable 30% and another 20 to 30 % of tunes and rhythms that are less known but sound comfortably familiar, such as doo-wop, drums and hip-hop.
It is a strange Christmas night indeed filled with child's play, adult gossip, mystery guests, supernatural occurrences that frighten and delight. Performers and audience never quite know whether they are awake or dreaming.

As you would  expect, there are plenty of toe shoes and tutus as in the "Waltz of the Flowers', but gone are the airborne snowflakes of  Balanchine that were a mere sound and a visual whiff. These girls are earthbound and their movements adjust to Duke Ellington with rotating shoulders and shaking breasts, no-no's in classical ballet. Then the tap dancers come on and draw the spectators in. First they clap along, then they stomp. If the tap dance kids can pull off that trick, the John Hancock Hall will have a riotous clapping and stomping fest every night.
I should not forget to mention the mice scene which has always puzzled me. Did they have mice in the mansions of St. Petersburg like they have cockroaches on Beacon Hill? The scene survives the Anthony Williams reworking and suits the environment much better here though the size of the cheese chunks remind me of Switzerland rather than Roxbury. The mice have their picnic  and promptly get sloshed on champagne. John Hancock will have a few strange nights, and so will you. Tickets: $55-$20. Performances are at 7:30 Saturday.

180 Berkley St., 877-548-3237 www.balletrox.org