What if you yearn for a Christmas ballet that isn’t The Nutcracker? This year, you might try Claire Kretzschmar’s touring program for Ballet Hartford. True to her Balanchine roots, the former New York City Ballet soloist has chosen illustrious scores that have yet to be taken up by dance. Benjamin Britten’s Ceremony of Carols—for boys’ choir and harp, with libretto adapted from medieval poems—underpins the eponymous ballet. The premiere work, Weihnachtsbaum (German for “Christmas Tree”), also takes its title from the music, Liszt’s piano impressions of the holiday with popular carols blended in. Though Britten is a modernist and Liszt a gushy Romantic, they nearly meet here. Britten allows the boys’ voices to lead him to joy, and the specter of Christmas exercises restraint on Liszt. For the mixed bill, a harpist, a pianist, and singers will bring the music home. Also enticing is the fact that Kretzschmar helms this small, young, entirely female troupe. I can’t think of a better paragon of cherished inimitability than this gawky, intense dancer. —Apollinaire Scherr

A Ceremony of Carols will be shown at Performance Garage, in Philadelphia, on December 11, and at Reynolds Auditorium, in Winston-Salem, on December 15.