‘Nutcracker’ Immersive Experience to Project Holiday Cheer on Las Vegas Strip

Posted on: August 25, 2022, 04:45h. 

Last updated on: August 25, 2022, 11:22h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.

If digital reproductions floating, winking, and then dissolving across screens all around you is how you prefer your Van Gogh paintings, then boy, does Lighthouse Immersive have a production of the ballet The Nutcracker for you.

The developers of the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit will stage The Immersive Nutcracker: A Winter Miracle on the Las Vegas Strip this holiday season. It will feature filmed scenes set to Tchaikovsky’s “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” and “The March of the Toys.”

Immersive Nutcracker Las Vegas
‘The Immersive Nutcracker,’ featuring projections of live ballet dancers and the music of Tchaikovsky, will play at the Lighthouse ArtSpace at The Shops at Crystals from Nov. 19-Dec. 30, 2022. (Image: immersive-nutracker.com)

The Immersive Nutcracker will run Nov. 19-Dec. 30, 2022 at the Lighthouse ArtSpace at The Shops at Crystals. It will alternate daily with the previously announced Immersive Van Gogh event in the same venue. Tickets go on sale 3 p.m. Friday, Aug. 26 through immersive-nutcracker.com.

In a Nutshell…

Loosely based on the 1816 story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by E.T.A. Hoffmann, as was the ballet, The Immersive Nutcracker tells the tale of a girl who befriends a nutcracker that comes to life on Christmas Eve and wages a battle against the evil Mouse King.

Like the ballet, it features the familiar music by Tchaikovsky, although at 30 minutes, it’s been edited considerably. (Gone is the politically incorrect “Arabian Dance,” for instance.)

Based on reviews of the 2021 production staged in Canada, the show begins with a wintry landscape projection that beckons guests into a cozy house where ornaments on a Christmas tree come to life. The Prince Nutcracker and Princess Marie are performed by Denis Rodkin and Eleonora Sevenard, both from the Bolshoi Ballet. Canadian dancers Elizabeth Pivovar and Alexander Marinosyan play siblings Marie and Fritz.

A press release from Lighthouse Immersive reads: “Set to the sweeping music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Immersive Nutcracker encompasses visitors in over 500,000 cubic feet of projections composed of over 1 million frames of video, curating a grand immersive display that relays the tale of The Nutcracker from opening to finale.”

Similar experiences are scheduled simultaneously in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Denver, Phoenix, Nashville, San Antonio, Kansas City.

Founded in 2019 by Toronto-based producers Corey Ross and Svetlana Dvoretsky, and Toronto-based developer Slava Zheleznyakov, Lighthouse Immersive describes itself as the “first experiential entertainment multiplex, aiming to cultivate community and creativity through large-scale events and exhibitions of all art forms.”

A Tough Nut to Originally Crack

Although The Nutcracker was not considered successful when it ran in 1892 as a two-act ballet with choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, the 20-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. The complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s, and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season. Some major American ballet companies generate 40% of their annual ticket revenues from its performances.