The History of  Long Beach Ballet's
The Nutcracker

 In 1983, two years after the opening of the Long Beach ballet school and only one year after the humble beginnings of a new professional ballet company, David Wilcox was offered a spot at the Long Beach Terrace Theater to produce a new production of “The Nutcracker.” In the spirit of adventure and with the confidence borne only from the success of his first full-length choreography, Hansel and Gretel, Wilcox set about the task of creating, from scratch, a theatrical extravaganza that quickly became Southern California’s favorite holiday performance.

He assembled a team including former Disney designer Elliot Hessayon, flying wizard Peter Foy, Universal Studios pyro-technician John Bordeaux, and even Traveler the Trojan Horse, venturing into an experiment of theatrical wizardry ahead of its time, especially for classical ballet.

Over the ensuing 20 years, this production was seen by over half of a million people in numerous theaters, including the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Shrine Auditorium, and the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, but the theater for which the production was designed, the elegant and spacious Terrace Theater, has been its host for 17 of the last 20 years.

In 1996 and 1997 excerpts were presented live on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. The Classical Ballet of Guangzhou, China engaged Wilcox to recreate his version of the ballet for them, purchasing the rights to perform it throughout the world.

In 1997, Wilcox’s professional company, the Los Angeles Classical Ballet, succumbed to financial burdens and for the following three years, the ballet which had become known as “the Long Beach Nutcracker” was performed at Lakewood High School auditorium by the students of Wilcox’s school, Long Beach Ballet Arts Center.

It took four years for Wilcox to ready his aspiring ballet students for the ballet’s return to the Terrace Theater in 2002, once again making Long Beach the “Nutcracker capital of Southern California.”