From the moment the curtain rose until final farewell, the show was riveting, joyful, and entertaining. The dancers were amazing, and inspirational! As an audience member, I felt part of the show and moved to tears many times. Moving forward, this will become a holiday tradition for me and my family.
The whole cast was used, I liked the urban twist on the whole production
The show was very good. I like the music and the dancers were great.
Stevie and his crew did a really good job. Good to see diversity and other talents that wouldn’t normally be seen!
This a fantastic show. Mr. Steven Massey does an incredible job directing, the costumes are remarkable, the music is great and the dancing is unforgettable!! I can't wait to see this again in 2017.
I made this a Christmas present and I believe this will be a annual event. My granddaughter would like to audition next year
The delay, preliminary speeches, thanks and gifts made it 15 minutes longer as people paraded across the stage, a badly drafted program that didn’t describe the details of teh production but did have lovely photos of every adult and child remotely connected to the production, the babies under 3 (and yes, there was some crying but it may have been me), people texting and playing video games during the production (the teenager next to me was playing a game on her tablet – no sounds but light – and her mom was on her phone texting so I didn’t think saying something to the teenager was a wise move), made it seem more like a production at the community center or church than an event downtown at the Times Union where I paid $15 just to park. The production itself was disjointed but some of the dancing was good and some was amusing. The amusing got huge applause, as did the gospel and the West African drumming that made Claire proud of her ancestors. The ballet was not so nicely rewarded. Truly loved those plus sized dancers up there giving it their all and doing a very nice job of it. Never saw that at The Nutcracker. And as always, the children were extremely cute and some quite talented. I expected it would be a rewrite of the traditional Nutcracker but it could use an edit. If this is early 60's Harlem, for example, Hip-Hop as we know it today didn't really belong in Claire's dream. The snakes were ... interesting. I'd have thought nightmares of rats might have been more appropriate but the dancing was fine. The music was taped and that wasn't a surprise (it was the same at the Florida Theatre Nutcracker when I attended) but at one point it sounded like an old scratchy record. I suppose that could have been on purpose but I could have done without that. I had high hopes and overall I was disappointed.
I was beyond excited about going to see the Chocolate Nutcracker, but sadly, it ended up being a disappointment. The concept and story is great, but most of the dancing is just mediocre. Many of the dancers were off beat and off queue. The sound system was also terrible and not very well coordinated. The first half of the show was slow and quite boring. A few parts of the second half were entertaining, though. "The Land of the Sweets" was fun to watch, especially the upbeat hip-hop dance/music. The rest was just average, really. Definitely not worth the near-$50 per ticket that I paid. The show is worth about half that.
I was very impressed with the program and the behavior of all those children. So much talent on one stage.
Really enjoyed the play!! Would love to see another one...had a great time
