'Nutcracker' thrives in new setting

By GLENN GIFFIN
Special to The Denver Post

There was no business-as-usual about the Colorado Ballet's opening production of "The Nutcracker" Saturday night.

For one thing, the Paramount Theatre (a forced move occasioned by the renovation of the Auditorium Theater) was never a theater in the conventional sense. It was built for motion pictures and had only rudimentary dressing rooms and a quasi stage.

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Two factors became, pardon the expression, paramount: Seeing "The Nutcracker" here is a more intimate experience than at the Auditorium, and the orchestra sounded the best it ever has.