Tickets available for Oakland Ballet's 'Nutcracker' this weekend: 'My message to our community is, we need you. We want you.' - Oakland North

Tickets available for Oakland Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’ this weekend: ‘My message to our community is, we need you. We want you.’

On a stage, four lines of toy-soldier-like characters are standing at attention in mostly white outfits, with yellow and white jackets and tall black hats. In the middle of the frame, a red-jacketed solider with a sword in his right hand is leaping before them, his legs in a mid-air split.

“The Nutcracker” ballet has been performed at Christmastime for more than 100 years, but not quite the way the Oakland Ballet is staging it this weekend. “Graham Lustig’s The Nutcracker” isn’t set in the stuffy Victorian era, but in the looser early 20th century, when women had ditched their corsets and upped their hems, when … Continue reading Tickets available for Oakland Ballet’s ‘Nutcracker’ this weekend: ‘My message to our community is, we need you. We want you.’