There are versions including a “Harlem Nutcracker” and a Barbie “Nutcracker” there are stiff Russian versions and hometown American ones and there are versions that make you want to see your shrink. Hoffmann was radically simplified for the Russian imperial ballet stage. And all of them will participate in the evolution of the annual “Nutcracker,” a ballet that’s undergone constant change from the moment in 1892 when a tale by E.T.A. This season in the Southland alone, more than a dozen productions will attempt to deliver on the ballet’s holiday promise, from dancing school extravaganzas to pitch-in community efforts to big-name touring companies and local ballets of different levels. Or at least that’s what happens when “The Nutcracker” fulfills its destiny. No one says a word, but graceful dancing speaks volumes about an imaginary world, full of positive pleasures. Snow starts to fall-not the messy kind that clogs roadways but the pristinely floating kind that turns Clara’s world into a snow-globe paradise. Her ordinary tinsel-laden tree expands in a fit of gigantism, while Tchaikovsky’s emotionally expansive chords make it seem even more majestic. OK, maybe not at your house, but consider “The Nutcracker,” in which Clara’s fun Christmas Eve party gives way to a midnight fantasy of spectacularly picturesque proportions. Sometimes, Christmas arrives looking just like a postcard, and then it gets better and better.

Nutcracker hoffmann