Los Angeles Ballet: The Nutcracker — Dolby Theatre

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By the third week of December the city has already spent a month trying to make you feel something. The lights went up in November. The ache that shows up anyway — the one that wants December to mean more than errands before it runs out — has a two o'clock matinee waiting for it. Los Angeles Ballet dances its Nutcracker downtown with a live orchestra in the pit rather than a recording, which is rarer in this city than it should be and is the whole difference in the snow scene. The thing worth knowing is that the Dolby run is the back half of a tour: the company opens the production at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus in mid-December, plays four performances there, then moves to Hollywood Boulevard for the holiday stretch. The dancers who walk onto the Dolby stage have already lived inside the piece for a weekend, and it shows in the second act — the party scene is looser, the Sugar Plum variation is steadier. Matinees at 2, evenings at 7:30, December 22 through 24.