Virtual reality at the ballet? That’s exactly what Gennadi Nedvigin, artistic director of the Atlanta Ballet, envisioned when he put together his dream team for this production of The Nutcracker. Premiered in 2018, Atlanta’s Nutcracker places E. T. A. Hoffmann’s fantasy within an immersive realm of cutting-edge set, lighting, and video-projection design. “You won’t be able to tell,” Nedvigin predicted, “what is real, what is not, what you can touch, and what you can only see.” The choreography is by Yuri Possokhov. This production reaches back to the 19th century and forward into the 21st—all at the same time. —Laura Jacobs