Our family loves the Nutcracker and we go every year. It is truly a fabulous experience and we love every minute of it. The talent is incredible.

Watched The Nutcracker by SF ballet on 12/17/2021. I think the costumes and the setting was beautiful and the orchestra was very good. However, dancing is very very poor! No energy, no synchronisation, and the soloists could not follow the music! They were struggling!!! I felt like watching kid’s performance at school where they are only learning to dance and you need to support them. But charging $172 for some amateur performance, that’s appalling! Do not recommend!

SF Ballet has managed to take much of the charm out of their Nutcracker. The awe inspiring huge growing tree of long past performances has been replaced by a not-so-grand one in the background. The fat, funny mouse king has been replaced by an ugly, unfunny snaggletoothed version. The sets, after the house interior party scene, have become so Spartan that is almost comical. Much of the dancing is observed onstage from a single, tiny, lonely sleigh rather than the grand, snow palace of the past productions - it looks lost and silly. The beautiful final scene of the sleigh soaring off the stage has been eliminated. Perhaps the grand sets are just too expensive now, as are some of the dancers. Many of the waltzing flower dancers seem to have been dropped. Fake snow, however, must be inexpensive as it is now used to such excess that the dancers are obscured. The dancers are terrific and orchestra superb, but the sets of the past mattered too. Much of the magic is, sadly gone.

I watched The Nutcracker on the 24th of Dec 2021. The show is not worth it, the part where the family is celebrating Christmas is a drag, very slow and in no way charming. It really was a 'white' Christmas, its spectacular that in 2021, there was no colored performer on the show(maybe except a child, and a helper), kudos to that!!

Would you pay $500 per ticket for a Nutkracker ballet produced in a middle school? Probably you wood, if a child you adore stars in the show. But then your expectations would be set appropriately. When you go to SF Ballet, you expect to enjoy a professional performance from both dancers and musicians. What you get is a show dominated by children dancers (ages from about 5 to about 13). Even Clare is danced by a middle school girl for most of the show. This is cute, and the children are probably dancing quite well for their age, but this is no high art. As a result the quality of dancing of adult performers is pulled down. Thankfully, they at least dance much better than children. The orchestra sounds OK, but, it seems, they are missing the mood of the music for most of the scenes. This year's (December 2023) Nutcracker production is a failure.

NOT worth the money. Empty stage, not enough dancers, little energy, poorly choreographed dancing. An easy gig for the dancers. The applause was louder for the orchestra than the dancers... Wish I spent my money on something else