HÀ NỘI – Twenty Vietnamese kid dancers beat hundreds of other junior competitors across the country to perform together with Russian professional ballet dancers in The Nutcracker.

The children, mostly from Hà Nội, passed through several tough selection rounds, and the performance will be staged by the Russian ballet theatre Talarium et Lux (Ballet and Light) in Hà Nội on December 3.

The libretto of the two-act ballet was originally choreographed by Marius Petipa based on the fairytale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by German author E.T.A. Hoffmann. Its music was written by Russian composer P.I. Tchaikovsky. The ballet was premiered in St Petersburg on December 18, 1892.

The complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s, and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in North America.

The Russian theatre Talarium et Lux, which is well known by staging classical ballets with 3D animated graphics, premiered The Nutcracker in May 2013.

Talarium Et Lux has employed choreographer Vasiliy Vainonen, and the ballet masterpiece will also be accompanied by colourful lighting show and multimedia decoration.

More than any other ballet, The Nutcracker is about children and the magic of childhood. The story is about a child, and many of the dancers in the ballet are also children. That’s why the ballet performance’s organisers opened a selection in Hà Nội to recruit child dancers for the show.

The Nutcracker will be presented at the Mỹ Đình National Convention Centre on December 3.

Before the performance in Hà Nội, the Russian dancers will also delight 1,800 audience at the HCM City’s Hòa Bình Theatre with the classical Swan Lake on December 1.

The ballet performances have been brought to Việt Nam by the Vietnamese telecommunication group MobiFone.

For the tickets to either show, please see Performance on Page 25.

Talarium et Lux made its Việt Nam debut successfully last year with the stunning The Swan Lake in Hà Nội.– VNS