Every December, fierce mice, waltzing snowflakes and a dreaming girl take center stage in the ballet world. Over the past 25 years "Nutcracker" has become one of the most beloved ballets internationally, and soon "Shchelkunchik," as the ballet is known in Russian, will cast its spell once again on Moscow audiences.


The ballet is as much a pleasure to dance as to watch, said former Bolshoi star Yekaterina Maksimova, who was renowned for her interpretation of Masha, the central figure of the ballet.


"Masha is a magical role -- an expression of that special time in life when childhood becomes youth and dreams become possibility," Maksimova said.


Set to Tchaikovsky's score, which has been called a "symphony of childhood," the ballet is based on E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 tale, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King."


In Hoffmann's original, the protagonist's name is Clara, rather than Masha. The story begins as Clara's parents are giving a Christmas party. One of the guests is her godfather, Herr Drosselmeyer, an amateur magician who brings wonderful toys, including a nutcracker, which he presents to Clara. Jealous, Clara's brother Fritz breaks the splendid gift. Herr Drosselmeyer repairs the doll but Clara, afraid that Fritz will break it again, decides to spend the night under the Christmas tree.


Suddenly, the tree and the toys grow before her eyes. A Mouse King appears and leads an attack on the Nutcracker and the other toys. As the Mouse King is set to kill the Nutcracker, Clara throws a pillow, deciding the battle in favor of the toys. The Nutcracker then turns into a handsome prince and, passing through a snowstorm, Clara and the Prince are transported to the Kingdom of Sweets, where they troth eternal love. Clara then awakens and is introduced to Drosselmeyer's young nephew, who looks just like the Prince.


Tchaikovsky wrote his score for the ballet according to a scenario by Marius Petipa, the aging head balletmaster of the imperial ballet in St. Petersburg. Petipa's version is built around two characters -- Clara in the First Act and the Second Act's Sugarplum Fairy, who welcomes Clara and the Prince to the Kingdom of Sweets.


The loose dramatic structure of the plot has allowed for various adaptations in the century since the first production, and in subsequent versions, the fairy is sometimes written out of the plot, focusing the entire work on Clara and her journey.


In the ballet's music, both childhood delight and childhood fears are echoed. "But at the same time, the music reveals the spiritual world of the heroine, the little girl who loves the toy despised by all -- the ugly Nutcracker," the eminent Moscow ballet historian Elizabeth Souritz has written. "By defending him she is able to overcome her fear of the terrible Mouse King and thus wins the right to have her dreams come true. Selfless love is the key to all the beauty in the world, to all the hopes; it is the way to great achievements."


"I think there is something very Russian about our perception of the German fairy tale," Maksimova said. "If there is a certain coldness in Hoffmann's original, Tchaikovsky's music gave a Russian soul to the story -- sentimental and soft. The atmosphere and characters are both very Russian -- the big Petersburg drawing room, the Empire costumes, the lively children."


Undoubtedly, Tchaikovsky's score is largely responsible for the popularity of "Nutcracker," which premiered on Dec. 18, 1892, at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater. For the ballet itself, the path to wide appreciation has been slower.


Maksimova has danced in the ballet since childhood and was the first Masha in Yury Grigorovich's 1966 version at the Bolshoi. "This was the first major role he created with me," Maksimova recalled. What she remembers most vividly, however, are her performances in "Nutcracker" as a student, before joining the Bolshoi company. Those performances, at the Bolshoi Ballet School, were staged each year following the 1934 St. Petersburg version by Vladimir Voinonen, in which Clara's name was changed to Masha. In Voinonen's ballet, Masha is danced by a little girl in the first half, as are the other children. Only in the second half of the ballet is she a grown-up ballerina.


"I remember when I came to the school first dancing one of the little girl's roles, and then little Masha, and then some of the dolls, and finally in my last year dancing grown-up Masha. For that role, I received the graduation gold medal and prizes in competition," said Maksimova, who is now teaching other ballerinas the role of Masha as well as conducting rehearsals for Andrei Petrov's Ballet of the Kremlin Palace.


The biggest change in Grigorovich's "Nutcracker," Maksimova said, was to make Masha an adult ballerina from the beginning of the ballet. This moved the accent away from childhood to imagination and creation.


Mikhail Lavrovsky, the first Nutcracker prince in Grigorovich's version, said this change united the spirits of both Tchaikovsky's music and Hoffmann's tale: "While dancers dragged the orchestra down in earlier versions, Grigorovich changed the dances to meet the tempo of Tchaikovsky's music. And as in Hoffmann, childhood imagination is just a metaphor for artistic creation."


Other recent versions of "Nutcracker" tend toward psychological interpretation, recasting Hoffmann's tale as a coming-of-age allegory, as in for example in the version by Mikhail Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theatre.


In Moscow, Petrov's version is closest to this interpretation. The Nutcracker whom Masha loves transforms into Drosselmeyer and back many times during the wedding pas de deux. Here, more than the magic itself, Masha comes to love its maker. "In Petrov's 'Nutcracker' she is in that physical awakening period, about 14," Maksimova noted. "Her feelings and sensations are very confused."


Three other full-scale versions of "Nutcracker" exist in Moscow, but will not be viewed here at Christmas or in January.


The Moscow Classical Ballet will be on tour in Mexico and California with their new production. "It's the big moneymaker for the ballet companies," said director Natalya Kasatkina. "Every city in America wants a 'Nutcracker' for Christmas."


Vyacheslav Gordeyev's Russian Ballet Theatre will offer its version in Scandinavia and England for the next six weeks. The company of Viktor Smirnov-Golovanov will offer the ballet in tours lasting until March; while in England, the company of 55 dancers expects to dance 44 "Nutcrackers."


But the ballet's commercial success -- it is also a major fund-raiser and crowd-pleaser for Western ballet companies -- does not make it any less sweet for the dancers and balletomanes who treasure it as art. "Nutcracker has always been part of my life," said Maksimova. "But I still get a shiver when the music is well-played and I am watching a good performance."





"Nutcracker" will be performed at the Bolshoi on Dec. 31 and on Jan. 13. Tickets can be bought from IPS in the Metropol Hotel, tel. 927-6982 or 927-6983; or from Intorist, 13 Makhovaya Ul., tel. 292-2677.


The Ballet of the Kremlin Palace will dance "Nutcracker" Wednesday and on Dec. 5, 17 and 18. Tickets can be bought at the box office, diagonally opposite the Kremlin's Kutafya Tower, tel. 291-4849.