🗓️ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27 | 2:00 PM & 7:00 PM
🗓️ SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 28 | 2:00 PM & 7:00 PM
🗓️ SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 29 | 12:00 PM
Ballet West’s Nutcracker returns to Ogden for Thanksgiving weekend, America’s first and longest-running production of the holiday classic. Willam Christensen choreographed it in 1944 for San Francisco Ballet, developed in consultation with George Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova. For ten years his was the only complete Nutcracker in the country, and Ballet West has danced it every year since 1963.
This is the production that started the American Nutcracker tradition, the blueprint every other version traces back to. In 2024, the Utah Legislature designated Ballet West’s Nutcracker a Living Historic Landmark, the first recognition of its kind anywhere in the country. Eighty-two years in, and the choreography still belongs on the stage it was made for.
The Ballet West Orchestra plays Tchaikovsky live in the pit, fifty musicians strong. Utah’s finest professional dancers share the stage with more than seventy children per performance, and the sets, costumes, and special effects were rebuilt in 2017 through the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation. The Christmas Eve party, the battle with the Mouse King, the snowfall scene, and the Land of the Sweets all unfold in about two hours with one intermission, the way Christensen put it on stage in 1944.
Bring the young dancer who has been twirling around the living room for a month. Bring the grandparent who remembers Christensen’s first Utah seasons. Bring the friend who has never seen a ballet and will walk out understanding why this one matters. The Nutcracker is a show that rewards first-timers and regulars in equal measure.
Five performances across the holiday weekend mean a showtime for every family’s Thanksgiving, and Ogden patrons get the full Ballet West Nutcracker experience without the drive to Salt Lake.
