My First Nutcracker immerses us - together with students of the Ballet Academy and members of the Youth Company of the Vienna State Opera - in Piotr I. Tchaikovsky's famous musical masterpiece, in which the boundaries of reality are transcended into a dreamlike fantasy world.

Choreographer and dancer Eno Peci takes this - as well as E. T. A. Hoffmann's fairy tale Nutcracker and Mouse King - as a basis, but creates his own, no less enchanting, yet contemporary story for his ballet about a girl who receives a nutcracker as a gift and takes the audience on a magical dream journey. Beginning in a nut and chocolate store, a group of children experience exciting adventures in which, among other things, nuts from various countries around the world lead them to different cultures. A big party concludes the ballet, which is not just sweet as sugar.

About the Choreography
The Nutcracker has been one of the most popular ballet classics by the congenial duo Piotr I. Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa for over 130 years. Choreographer and solo dancer Eno Peci has now created his own contemporary take on it, designing a condensed and humorous version in his concise, contemporary style especially for a young audience from the age of 6, which he introduces to the world of dance in a playful way.

About the Music
"I don't think Tchaikovsky is romantic, I think he's modern," George Balanchine once said about Tchaikovsky. In his creation, Eno Peci shows that Tchaikovsky's music can be perfectly combined with contemporary dance vocabulary - even though it was once created in meticulous collaboration with Petipa's choreography. Different moods are reflected in many well-known melodies - from festive and exuberant to sombre moments and a fairytale dream world with elements of different cultures, but also the world of children versus that of adults.

Nice to Know
The Nutcracker - based on the Histoire d'un casse-noisette (1845) by Alexandre Dumas the Elder and the fairy tale The Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816) by E. T. A. Hoffmann - was premiered in December 1892 at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre, choreographed by Marius Petipa and set to music by Piotr I. Tchaikovsky, as the last major ballet score before his death. It is one of the most popular and successful ballet classics of the 19th century and is still performed in various productions around the world today. Eno Peci now presents the charming but also exciting story between dream and reality with many colorful dance numbers in a modern spirit and guise - danced for children by students of the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera. Since its foundation in 1771 by Empress Maria Theresa under the direction of Jean Georges Noverre, the Ballet Academy of the Vienna State Opera has been one of the oldest and most renowned training institutions in the world, which was institutionalized in 1870 with the opening of the Court Opera on the Ring. Today, it offers students aged 8 to 18 from Austria and abroad a comprehensive stage dance education with performances at the Vienna State Opera and, since 2024/25, also at NEST. Its graduates dance in many internationally renowned companies.

NEST - Neue Staatsoper im Künstlerhaus

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Schedule in October 2026