There are two founding American Nutcrackers. One of them, by George Balanchine, was premiered in 1954 at the City Center in New York City. The other, by Willam Christensen, was premiered 10 years earlier in 1944, in San Francisco. Balanchine—and the ballerina Alexandra Danilova—had a hand in that one, too. In Christensen’s living room, they showed him the steps they remembered from their early days at the Mariinsky, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. But it was Christensen’s idea to do The Nutcracker, and it was his version (with his steps) that set everything in motion. With the help of $3 million in 2019, Ballet West made an all new production of Christensen’s original choreography. Holiday history! —Laura Jacobs