(23/25) These are photos from rehearsals for the 1958 CBS TV taping of the Nutcracker. As you can see here, Mr. B played Drosselmeyer. In...

(22/50) Herbert Bliss, original Hot Chocolate lead Photos by Radford Bascome, 1954. NYPL.

(20/50) "In 1958, Balanchine removed the grand pas de deux, substituting for it a dance for the Sugar Plum Fairy supported not by a...

(18/50) A very young Gelsey Kirkland as an angel, a party child, and a Polichinelle! (top Upstage center. Fred Fehl, 1963. Upstage, last...

(17/50) Paul Mejia in his third year as the Nutcracker Prince. I shared these photos with Maria Terezia Balogh and Paul last night at...

(16/50) Suzanne: "Mr. Balanchine treated all human beings with respect, including children. He never talked down to them, or for that...

(15/50) Shout-out to the Hoops in the second picture for a clean sous-sus! Deni Lamont and SAB students. Photos by Fred Fehl, 1959. Harry...

(14/50) “I can remember very well,” Ms. Tallchief says, “standing downstage on opening night toward the end of the first act, before I...

(12/50) I love these two photos of Arthur Mitchell dancing Balanchine's 1954 choreography for Arabian/Coffee. He just looks so radiant...

(13/50) “Diana Adams as the Sugar Plum Fairy is a vision of beauty, The act opens, in this version, with her variations from the grand...

(10/50) “The original costumes with Karinska using her imagination…My costume was the most comfortable, wonderful costume because she had...

(11/50) “Jumping through that damn hoop at breakneck speed was not easy. I was trying to do it academically when Mr. B said, ‘Bobby, you...

(9/50) The skirt of the tutu [for Dewdrop] has taken on various lengths over the years, depending on the individual ballerina's physique....

(8/50) On the first night of Nutcracker in 1964, when the ballet and sets had been expanded to fit the massive proportions of the new New...

(7/50) The best thing you will see all day today is little baby Suzy Pilarre as a Polichinelle when she was 11 years old. The pictures...

For the finale of the first season of Immortal Icons of Dance, we talked to Patricia Ward Kelly about her late husband, Gene Kelly. Star...

(6/50) Violette Verdy as Dewdrop. Photo by Fred Fehl, 1962. Harry Ransom Center. From left to right down the line: Patricia Neary, Leslie...

(4/50) You may (or may not) know that Janet Reed danced lead Marzipan in 1954 when Balanchine's Nutcracker premiered...but she wasn't the...

(3/50) Jacques d'Amboise & Melissa Hayden in the Nutcracker Pas de Deux. Photo by Fred Fehl, 1962. Harry Ransom Center.

(2/50) The Sugar Plum Fairy, welcomes the Nutcracker Prince and Marie into the Land of Sweets in the original 1954 production of...