Snuggle up with some holiday cheer as OnMilwaukee shares stories of everything merry and bright in the spirit of the season.
The OnMilwaukee Ho Ho Holiday Guide is brought to you by Educators Credit Union, Harley-Davidson Museum and MolsonCoors.
"The Immersive Nutcracker, A Winter Miracle" premieres in 12 North American cities this holiday season, including Milwaukee, where it kicked off on Thursday, Dec. 1.
Tickets for the show, which runs through Dec. 31 at the Wisconsin Center, 400 W. Wisconsin Ave., are available here.
"The Immersive Nutcracker" – which is family friendly – is presented in partnership with Paquin Entertainment, which also worked with the Wisconsin Center on "Beyond Van Gogh" and "Beyond Monet," which is also currently on view in the same space.
The enveloping 360-degree experiental holiday show – with 500,000 cubic feet of projections of more than a million frames of video – retells the story of a girl's magical Christmas Eve journey, set to the familiar music of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
There's a brief, "screen saver" featuring characters from the mostly animated main event: squirrels and rabbits flying biplanes, mouse soldiers popping up out of the snow. It plays in rotation until the show starts.
When the main feature – based on E.T.A. Hoffman’s 1816 fairy tale "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King" – begins, it has a bit of a film vibe with on-screen titles, but also attempts to recreate a theater performance with animated curtains.
"The Immersive Nutcracker" also has some live actors inhabiting the animated world in which a girl and her new Nutcracker friend battles the multi-headed mouse king and his soldiers.
There are a few three-dimensional features, too, like snowballs that speed right toward the viewer during an on-screen snowball fight.
Arriving with a basic knowledge of the classic story is definitely helpful, though younger viewers who might not much care about the narrative may still be wowed by the brightly colored animations and the holiday cheer themes.
After the story wraps up, there are on-screen performances by world-class ballet dancers Denis Rodkin and Eleonora Sevenard.
During the credits there's a pop music video-style performance of an original song with a children's choir.
The holiday show, which runs about 30 minutes, alternates with "Beyond Monet," with which "The Immersive Nutcracker" also shares a gift shop.
Entering along a long red carpet, guests arrive in a space with a number of holiday-themed selfie stations before passing through the same glitzy colored-light space as do "Monet" visitors.
Inside the main area is a central gazebo and there a number of circular benches for seating.
While I enjoyed the show with my teen, "The Immersive Nutcracker" will be even more enticing to families with younger children: it's bright, it's colorful, there is great music, ballet dancers, cartoon animals and, best of all, it's not too long for youthful attention spans.
Tickets start at $29.99, plus fees. Family packs are available in bundles of four or more tickets for 10 percent off.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He can be heard weekly on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories.
