Rachel Hester

Nutcracker Sweeties is Billy Strayhorn and Duke Ellington’s big band take on the Tchaikovsky classic—The Nutcracker as you've never seen or heard it before! It portrays Broadway and America in the 1940s: full of humor, irony, commentary, swing, and blues. The cast, dressed in an array of glamorous Jasper Conran costumes, includes pom-pom girls, drum majorettes, sailors, GIs and Candy Kane. David Bintley’s choreography is a catwalk of jazz styles. With its eye-catching clothes and flashing neon sets, Nutcracker Sweeties is imaginative, funny and visually irresistible.

Lis Jepessen dances the lead role of La Sylphide -- a beautiful forest sprite who entrances Scottish farmer James (Nikolaj Hubbe) with her radiance -- in this memorable stage adaptation of August Bournonville's most enduring work, a piece he created for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1836. Sorella Englund co-stars as Madge, a vengeful witch and fortune-teller who, after being spurned by James, resolves to destroy his future.