Before Mark Morris’ The Hard Nut, before Matthew Bourne’s Nutcracker!, choreographer Tandy Beal revamped Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker with a modern twist. Her latest version, Mixed Nutz, is a colorful confection of circus performers, acrobats and dancers set to an a capella score by the Bay Area group SoVoSo. Mixed Nutz plays UC Santa Cruz’s Mainstage Theater weekends through December 6.

“This is really a bon bon of visual delights for the audience,” said Beal, who was named a Dance Icon of the West by the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum in 2005.

Loosely based on E.T.A. Hoffman’s story of a toymaker who gives a young girl a nutcracker, Mixed Nutz features jugglers (including Tim Furst of the Flying Karamazov Brothers), hoop divers, a life-sized ragdoll, aerialists, hip-hop dancers, rhythmic gymnasts, folklorico dancers from Watsonville’s Corazon en Flor and UC Santa Cruz’s Los Mejicas, and more. Theater arts students and local gymnasts share the stage with seasoned veterans. A number of cultures are represented in the two-hour show.

“For me, its purpose as an opening to the holiday season is to bring everybody together — all ages, all nationalities, all art forms — bring it together in one package, tie it with a zany bow,” Beal said.

Mixed Nutz is not the only holiday show the choreographer is associated with. She also created the dance moves seen in Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

As a child, Beal remembers watching New York City Ballet perform the traditional Nutcracker, complete with Mouse King, Clara and the Nutcracker Prince. She stopped attending at age six.

The idea of an alternative Nutcracker was born when the UC Santa Cruz lecturer was touring “bus and truck” with her company in the early 1980s.

“Everybody was cranky and my husband [composer Jon Scoville] put on a tape that he had compiled called mit schlagsahne, coffee with whipped cream, to cheer us up,” Beal reminisced. Among the tunes was The Nutcracker Suite. “He leaned over and said you should do a modern version of it. I laughed and then I thought ‘That’s a great idea.’”

Her 1982 remake of the classic ballet incorporated circus skills, attracting the attention of The Pickle Family Circus. She “ran away to the circus,” becoming the Circus’ artistic director, which put a temporary end to her holiday show.
Then in 2001, at a point where Beal was focusing once again on choreography after having left the big top, the head of the Mello Center in Watsonville asked her to revisit The Nutcracker. Beal decided she wasn’t interested in doing it unless she could come up with a fresh idea.

Enter SoVoSo, an a capella group she met while working with Bobby McFerrin and Voicestra. SoVoSo rescored Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite into a voice-only treat and added both original music and modern melodies to the show.

There are “all the goodies of the second act and they sing it completely vocal. There’s no accompaniment except for their voices,” Beal said, adding later “They are the throbbing heart of this show.”

It’s been four years since Mixed Nutz last appeared in Santa Cruz County, at the Mello Center. The loss of Shakespeare Santa Cruz’s annual holiday show due to budget constraints left a hole in the UC Santa Cruz Mainstage Theater’s schedule, one Beal was happy to help fill.

“There’s no seat in that house that you don’t feel like you’re close to the performers,” she said of the 527-seat theater. “There are moments where — because I have performers sitting on the edge of the stairs there — who’s the performer and who’s the audience, they are all one at different times.”

Beal is hoping that audiences find wonder and unadulterated joy in the spectacle that is Mixed Nutz.

“The world stops for you when you’re either laughing or in wonderment,” she said. “One of the reasons why I moved towards circus in my life is I thought it was a way where adults could drop their guard and come into a place of ‘Wow, look at that!’ and stop thinking, judging, and just go into delight.”

Mixed Nutz. 2 p.m. & 7 p.m. November 27, 28 & December 5; 7 p.m. December 4 and 2 p.m. November 29 & December 6. Mainstage Theater, UCSC Campus, 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz. $10-$26.50. (831) 459-3240.