The annual production of The Nutcracker by the Festival Ballet of North Central Texas is a beloved local tradition.

It has all the familiar ingredients that make the ballet one of the most popular of all kinds. It’s got a tree that grows, mice with glowing red eyes, a nutcracker prince and a festive Chinese dragon that snorts steam.

Courtesy photo/Bruce Davis

The tiniest dancers in the Festival Ballet of North Central Texas’ staging of The Nutcracker, shown in a 2008 performance, are in the Mother Buffoon and her baby buffoons scene. All these tots fit under Mother Buffoon’s hoop skirt.

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Many of those who clamor for tickets every year have been savoring the beauty of the performances since the ballet made its first appearance here in 1988, but the enjoyment doesn’t stop with the audience.

Some of those in the cast have returned again and again to share the joy of the holidays.

“It’s fun to watch, and it’s fun to be in,” said Lisa Glenn, assistant to artistic director Hugh Nini. “It’s a great family production.”

Glenn said her family has appeared in the production for the last 14 or 15 years. She and her husband, Joel, and their four daughters look forward to it every year.

“We’ve been in it since our girls were very little,” she said. “Our family has kind of grown up in The Nutcracker.”

Glenn said her family is not unique.

“We are not the only ones,” she said. “There are other families similar to ours. We are by no means unusual.”

This year’s production of The Nutcracker will be offered at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 p.m. Sunday at Margo Jones Performance Hall, on the first floor of the Texas Woman’s University Music Building at Oakland Street and Pioneer Circle.

Tickets are priced at $10, $15, $20 and $25 and can be purchased by calling the box office at 940-891-0830 or online at www.festivalballet.net. Tickets also are available at the Denton Ballet Academy at 637 Londonderry Lane. Patrons can contact the box office for wheelchair seating.

Glenn advised those interested in tickets not to wait.

“Last year, we were sold out before our first performance,” she said. “If people want tickets, they need to get them sooner instead of later.”

New costumes for some dancers also will highlight this year’s production, Glenn said.

“That’s always fun to see,” she said.

The local production features about 200 dancers who range in age from 4 to 40 and older. The ballet is the Christmas night dream of Clara, a young girl who gets a nutcracker doll for Christmas.

She falls asleep beneath a Christmas tree and finds that the doll is the Nutcracker Prince. They fight an army of mice, meet a world full of characters, and cross gardens and snow fields to reach the land of sweet meats.

This year’s production will feature familiar figures in the principal roles. Guest dancers Levente Bijare, Krizstina Pazar and David Kerenyi — members of the Hungarian National Ballet — will return to Denton for the production, Glenn said.

Bijare will appear in the production for the ninth year, and Pazar will be making her fourth appearance. This will be Kerenyi’s third year.

Nini owns and operates Denton Ballet Academy, the home studio of the festival ballet. He has said that the professional dancers are an example to his students — many of them young and just starting to learn more complicated steps and techniques.

The guest artists also recall the iconic skill from American Ballet Theatre, which produced the most famous American broadcast of the ballet, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland.

Staff writer Lucinda Breeding contributed to this story.

LES COCKRELL can be reached at 940-566-6887. His e-mail address is lcockrell@dentonrc.com .