THE NUTCRACKER

"The Nutcracker" is a 102-year-old story reborn every year at Christmastime.

Clara's Christmas gift, a nutcracker, is transformed into a prince in her Christmas Eve dream, and the toys come alive in a World of Sweets watched over by a Sugar Plum Fairy and the Snow Queen and King.

The Yuletide tradition will happen all over again Friday night at 8 when the 70 members of the St. Louis Ballet present "The Nutcracker" at the Show Me Center.

The cast includes 40 children, including Alicia Whitehead of Benton, Ill.

The 14-year-old Whitehead travels from Benton to St. Louis every afternoon and takes classes until 8:45.

"She is an exceptional, talented child," says Ludmilla Dokoudovski, co-director of the St. Louis Ballet. Her husband, Antoni Zalewski, is the other director.

Dokoudovski comes from a family of famous and dedicated dancers. Her Danish mother danced with the Ballet Russe and the American Ballet Theatre. Dokoudovski and Zalewski danced with Rudolph Nureyev, and with a number of regional ballets before coming to St. Louis in 1980 to stage "The Nutcracker" with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra.

That was the birth of the St. Louis Ballet.

"It was a big success and St. Louis did not have a professional ballet company at the time," she said.

The professional company now consists of 16 dancers, including one from Korea, another trained at the Bolshoi Ballet and a dancer from the Bahamas.

This will be the St. Louis Ballet's first performance at the Show Me Center and the first "Nutcracker" performed in Cape Girardeau since 1991, Dokoudovski said.

"`The Nutcracker' is a ballet that has introduced quite a number of people to the ballet."

In other parts of the world the ballet is performed at any time of the year, but in the United States it has become a Christmas tradition. Every major city in the country has a "Nutcracker."

Dokoudovski will dance the cameo role of the grandmother in this presentation. She thinks its holiday appeal is simple: "It has to do with Christmas and families and dreams."

"What makes it so popular is it's so very understandable," Dokoudovski says. "A ballet like this tells a story without words but with a body."

"It's one of the most understandable, compact ballets there is."

"The Nutcracker" lasts just less than two hours with an intermission.

Tickets are $25, $20 and $15, with $5 off for students and seniors.

They are available at the Show Me Center Box Office, Capital Bank, Disco Jockey Records in Cape Girardeau, Carbondale and Paducah, Schnucks in Cape Girardeau, or by calling (314) 651-5000