Last night we all watched the 2013(?) PBS broadcast of the New York City Ballet's production of The Nutcracker, which remains my favorite staging of the ballet. Balanchine is a genius choreographer who really uses the music in his steps and whose handling and direction of the parents and children in the Act One party verges on pure genius. When the piece was first staged in 1954, Balanchine asked Jerome Robbins for help, and Robbins staged the battle between the mice and the toys, which is very funny, and which reminds me of his work on Mary Martin's Peter Pan.