Visions of sugar plums ... and Zozobra? 

For the 15th year, Festival Ballet Albuquerque presents “Nutcracker in the Land of Enchantment” at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. The ballet opens on Friday, Dec. 19.

Choreographer Patricia Dickinson Wells’ take on the beloved holiday ballet uses Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s familiar music but adds distinctly New Mexican characters, including Mr. Coyote, Ms. Roadrunner, Navajo-churro sheep and a stilt-walking Zozobra with jackalope backup dancers.

“I set it in 1880s territorial New Mexico,” Dickinson Wells said. “So, the first act has a lot of beautiful territorial Victorian dresses with that Southwestern look and a real strong Spanish flair.”

During the party scene in the first act, the stage is filled with fascinating characters.

“I like a full stage,” Dickinson Wells said, “and there’s so many fun vignettes going on that you will not be bored.”

In the second act of the original “Nutcracker,” eight children pop out from under their mother’s hoop skirt.

“But I didn’t do that,” Dickinson Wells said. “I went to the Cochiti Pueblo and talked to the governor there, and I asked permission to set this section of the ballet around their storyteller dolls, where the woman is sitting there with all the children.”

A uniquely New Mexican tradition, storyteller dolls were first invented by Cochiti Pueblo ceramic artist Helen Cordero in 1964 and continue to be made by Pueblo ceramic artists today.

Later in the second act, the children travel to the Land of Sweets, where, in the original ballet, a series of fictional dance troupes perform dances from their respective nations, including Russia and China. In Dickinson Wells’ version, the dances represent the diversity of cultural traditions within New Mexico.

“Four years ago, I received permission from the Zozobra group up in Santa Fe to build on what normally would be the Chinese variation, also known as ‘Chinese Tea,’” she said. “And I made that into Dia de los Muertos, with Zozobra and the jackalopes.”

Gina Shorten performs the role of Zozobra on stilts.

“She is a dancer, but she happens to be a circus artist also, so she actually does turns on stilts,” Dickinson Wells said. “She does what we (in ballet) call a grand battement, which means a big kick. She’s doing a lot of things like that, and en pointe turning. It’s pretty amazing.”

Instead of Russian dances, “Nutcracker in the Land of Enchantment” incorporates a fandango, a traditional folk dance from Spain.

“There’s six couples, with the lead couple spinning, turning and leaping all over the stage,” Dickinson Wells said. “It’s like the old-timey fandangoes, but it’s still very classical.”

Guillermo Figueroa, the music director for the Santa Fe Symphony, will conduct the orchestra.

“It’s a full orchestra, and it’s fabulous at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, because the acoustics are just superb there,” Dickinson Wells said.

All of the dancers are local, and Dickinson Wells has been working with many of them for years.

“One of the things that I really believe in is our culture and our community, so I don’t bring in guest artists or ringers. We build our dancers from within,” she said.

The youngest dancers, who play mice and sheep, start at 7, and the oldest dancer in the production, Rosalinda Rojas, who plays the abuela, is in her 70s.

“She’s a veteran of the stage, and she’s brilliant,” Dickinson Wells said. “She studied with American Ballet Theater and Dance Theater of Harlem and Alvin Ailey. And she was a circus artist … a tremendous trapeze artist. So, she’s just this amazing Renaissance woman.”

Some of the adult dancers in this year’s production have been performing in “Nutcracker in the Land of Enchantment” since they were children.

“Amanda (Geilenfeldt) and Laura (Sturm) went through the ranks of being a sheep or a little mouse or a little angel, and then grew up through the different roles throughout the years,” Dickinson Wells said.

Geilenfeldt and Sturm now dance as sugar plum fairies.

“That’s the lovely thing about living in New Mexico. I call it a boomerang state, because people do go away — they may go to New York to dance — but there’s this magnetic draw to come back to family. So, as a result, all these beautiful dancers come back. Not all, but a large number of them do,” Dickinson Wells said. “You’ll see that they’re the best dancers in the state. I’m not bragging. I’m just very lucky.”

The ballet has become an annual tradition for many families in New Mexico and beyond.

“We actually have people now who come in from Nevada and the surrounding states,” Dickinson Wells said, “and we have people who come from Gallup and Santa Fe. It’s a prideful thing, and it’s fun and beautiful and uplifting. You’re definitely in the mood for the holidays when you leave.”