LakeCities Ballet Theatre offered a delightful performance Saturday evening with fanciful sets and costumes, superbly trained students and ravishing international ballet stars. This is consistently one of the best, most enjoyable Nutcracker productions in North Texas.

The quality of community ballet theater rests upon the caliber of the instructors and the intensity of student training. There are plenty of talented young dancers filling ballet schools across the land, but the academies with the means to offer a well-rounded program including acting, partnering and ballet history – and so few do – are able to produce students, who go onto becoming professional, as well as crowd-pleasing performances.

One such school is LakeCities Ballet Theatre in the Dallas metropolitan area.  Their annual Nutcracker draws guest artists from American Ballet Theatre as well as stars from New York City Ballet in past years. And it should be underscored that this is the only Nutcracker in the Dallas area in 2009 that offered live symphony music. (Even the much larger-budgeted and marketed Texas Ballet Theatre’s Nutcracker, now staged for Dallas audiences in the gorgeous new Winspear Opera House, doesn’t have live music this year.)

And what a difference it makes. The Lewisville Lake Symphony, with Adron Ming conducting, played seamlessly Tchaikovsky’s beautiful score setting the perfect tone for the holiday magic to unfold onstage. LakeCities Ballet offered a delightful performance Saturday evening with fanciful sets and costumes, superbly trained students and ravishing international ballet stars. This is consistently one of the best, most enjoyable Nutcracker productions in North Texas.

Act one opens with Christmas party guests arriving at the Silberhaus estate with  excited children, 108 young performers in all, ready for merriment, along with Herr Drosselmeyer, played not too over-the-top by Allan Kinzie, the company’s artistic advisor.

There are several nice touches in this version, staged by LakeCities Ballet Theatre Artistic Director Kelly Kilburn Lannin, including humor; during a fun-loving marionette show for the children the puppets broke into playful wrestling which was mimicked by the partygoers, first the children, then the adults.

Clara, played sweetly and proficiently by Kendall Galey, was up on her toes in pointe shoes, which isn’t always so. (Some schools that cast young dancers for the role of Clara oftentimes are still only in ballet slippers.)

Nicole Votolato, playing the Ballerina doll, and Ruben Gerding, as the Cadet doll, gave enjoyable performances. Gerding also played the Nutcracker Prince who battles the evil Mouse King during the lively skirmish with the menacing mice. Clara throws her slipper at the Mouse King helping the Nutcracker to overtake him. At last, the Nutcracker reveals that he is Clara’s prince and the pair are off to the Land of Snow.

The delightful pas de deux by the Snow Queen (Sally Schweitzer) and Snow King (performed by guest artist Michael Eaton, with the Kansas City Ballet and former LBT student) demonstrates the mature level of dancing that many of Lannin’s students have achieved. It’s a pleasure watching students like Schweitzer -- who are still in their teens – become more self-confident performers. Her several past summers at the School of American Ballet are now evident in her dancing.

In Act two, Clara and her prince arrive at the Kingdom of Sweets to be greeted by the Sugar Plum Fairy, played by the ravishing ABT Principal Julie Kent, and her Cavalier, ABT Soloist Sascha Radetsky.

The Arabian Coffee dance was made compelling by Karlee Kautz, who is only 17, and Shannon Beacham (a guest artist who’s performed with Texas Ballet Theatre and many other companies). Kautz smartly uses her tall and sleak frame to create a sinewy, gypsy-like character. She danced the role last year but somehow this year she has even more amazing extension and fluid hype-flexibility.

The highlight of the performance was watching Kent, the epitome of balletic elegance who is technically polished and supremely gracious, and Radetsky, a commanding dancer with strength, virtuosity and shine. From their nuanced movements in the adagio section of the pas de deux, to Radetsky’s no-handed fish dive hold at the end, the pair gave a memorable performance to a grateful crowd.

And with a proper farewell for Clara, who was treated to a shoulder lift by Radetsky followed by being delicately placed on her dreamy bed, she floated away.