The Nutcracker (Joffrey Ballet)

About This Event

Christopher Wheeldon didn't just restage Tchaikovsky's ballet when he reimagined it for the Joffrey in 2016 — he moved the whole story to Chicago, set during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, swapping the usual generic European fairy tale for something tied directly to the city staging it. Marie and her family become Polish immigrants living in a worker's shack on the fairgrounds, and Drosselmeier is reimagined as "The Impresario," modeled on Daniel Burnham, the architect who actually built the fair.

It replaced Robert Joffrey's original production, which had run every December from 1987 to 2015 — a 28-year run the company retired on purpose to make room for this one. The new version came with a reported $4 million budget and a Broadway-veteran creative team, including a book credited to Brian Selznick, the author-illustrator behind Hugo. 2026 marks its tenth anniversary at the Joffrey.

A small historical coincidence worth knowing: Tchaikovsky's original Nutcracker premiered in St. Petersburg in December 1892 — the same winter construction crews were finishing the actual Columbian Exposition buildings in Chicago. The ballet and the fair it's now set in were happening at almost exactly the same time.