Fortunately, Helgi Tomasson’s “Nutcracker” production, just over two decades old, does an exemplary job of serving both constituencies. The sets and costumes placing us in 1915 San Francisco are tastefully gorgeous and tickle everyone’s nostalgia, while the snow scene, Waltz of the Flowers, and final Grand Pas offer challenging classical dancing that demand top-drawer artistry and technique. By the end of the third show I caught, on a rainy Friday evening, the audience was clapping along with the Russian and Mother Ginger numbers, and hooting and hollering for the curtain calls. Meanwhile I was walking out of the War Memorial Opera House thinking about Madeline Woo.

Born in California, Woo is a new hire straight into principal rank, from the Royal Swedish Ballet. Her internet presence is certainly intriguing: lately she’s been posting clips of herself rehearsing explosive, athletic jumping passages, dressed in punkish black leotards with elaborate straps and rips that highlight her tattoos. (She even has her own clothing line, Madwoo Studios.) If I expected edginess from this Instagram persona, the dancer who stepped out for the Grand Pas instead gave us innocence and wonder. 

In Tomasson’s production, just before that thrilling pas de deux music from Tchaikovsky, Clara is transformed (via a magic wardrobe) from an adolescent girl into a grown woman. I’ve long appreciated the dramaturgy here, but for me, the suspension of disbelief usually fades; I watch the ballerina as a dancer, not as Clara. Woo changed this. Even though the adage of the pas de deux is so technically devilish, she remained completely character-driven, an ecstatic 13-year-old in an adult body, an effect created not just through her wide smile, but from the slow, juicy stretch of her leg into that supported arabesque. She turned time into taffy, but never to show off: when her partner Francesco Gabriele Frola let go of her hand she surely had a good balance to stay longer on that leg, but such preening wasn’t part of this Clara.