HOLIDAY SEASON IS USHERED IN WITH A PANOPLY OF ‘NUTCRACKERS’ : ‘BIG THEATER’ MARKS FULLERTON VERSION

You won’t see lots of tutus, tiaras and pointe shoes in Tandy Beal’s version of “The Nutcracker.”

Instead you’ll see jugglers, acrobats, roller skaters, real Spanish dancers and punk-rock mice.

“I wanted to sidestep the stereotyped ideas we all have after seeing umpteen ‘Nutcrackers,’ ” Beal, a noted modern dancer, said in a recent interview.

“The story line is basically the same, but there is not as much dancing. Instead, it’s very visual. It’s a big theater show.”

More than 60 performers, including young children, are scheduled to be in the production at 8 tonight through Sunday at Cal State Fullerton. Principal roles will be danced by Beal, 38, and two other members of her Santa Cruz-based company. Her father, actor John Beal (his TV appearances include “The Waltons” and “Kojak”), will be seen in the role of Drosselmeyer. The two will be performing together for the first time.

(The jugglers and other specialty acts will be professional performers. The remainder of the cast will be made up of Cal State Fullerton students.)

Beal said that for all her innovations, she has followed the Tchaikovsky score faithfully and tried to preserve the nostalgia associated with performances of “The Nutcracker” during the holidays.

She could not remember the original story when she began to work on the production in 1979 because she hadn’t seen the ballet since her childhood.

“So I didn’t know what was supposed to happen when,” she said. “But in Tchaikovsky’s music, it’s all there. I knew this must be the raising of the tree; this must be the mouse battle. Each piece told me what to do.”

So there will be the usual party, with children, in Act I--only the time and place will be indefinite; women will be dressed in long skirts, men will wear tuxedos.

There will still be a battle with the mice--although it will turn into a shadow play battle.

Clara, of course, will fall in love with the Nutcracker-turned-Prince, as usual. But Beal resisted choreographing ballet-type lifts for the Sugarplum Fairy and her cavalier in their pas de deux.

“I went the opposite way and made it a dance of veils and capes of many, many colors,” she said.

Even so, Beal has tinkered with the work far less than the well-known production by Mikhail Baryshnikov for American Ballet Theatre (opening Dec. 9 at the Orange County Performing Arts Center).

Baryshnikov’s version recasts the plot as a rite of growing up for the heroine, who has to accept reality and wake from her lovely dream. It also makes Drosselmeyer a far more prominent figure than usual, introducing him, for instance, into the Grand Pas de Deux for Clara and the Nutcracker Prince.

Nor did Beal go so far as to cast the character of Drosselmeyer in an ambiguous or menacing light, as has been done in some other recent productions, reflecting more accurately the original E.T.A. Hoffmann story upon which the ballet is based.

“This (‘Nutcracker’) is not about psychological overtones,” Beal said. “I wanted the spirit of the holiday season to be the communication.

“My Drosselmeyer is charming and eccentric. My Clara is a young adolescent, and this is her first love.

“And being who I am, I let the dream continue at the end. Clara just floats off into the clouds, and you can make up your own ending. But it’s a happy ending. It’s a little ambiguous, but it’s soft.”

Beal, who is known for her modern dance choreography, nevertheless felt that describing the work as a modern-dance version was inadequate.

“I think my own work is not modern dance or anything,” she said. “My home is theater, and my tools are dance. What’s more important than what kind of movement people will see is that the work is theatrical.

“My real thrust was to have a spirit of exuberance.”