It's the same classic story of candy-coated wonder, but this year the doll-cradling Clara isn't the only one with a vision. After 24 years under the direction of Frano Jelincic and Dagmar Kessler, Radford University staging of the "The Nutcracker" ballet is under new management.

Choreographer Inessa Plekhanova said families attending the ballet this year will notice several changes.

"The performance is bigger," Plekhanova said. "There are more people on stage, more people are dancing at the same time and the step choreography itself is really advanced."

The ballet consists of 146 roles danced by 60 university dance department majors and 30 Radford University Ballet Youth students ages 3 to 17. Some roles overlap, but only three professional guest dancers will participate.

Cindy Thomasson, a junior dance major with a concentration in dance education, is playing Fritz, a Snow Crystal and a Marzipan dancer.

She said her most difficult movement will be ballons, a series of one-footed hops on pointe across the stage.

"Learning and getting to see all the new parts in this new production has been exciting because everything is very different from our past 'Nutcrackers,' " Thomasson said. "In the second act, every dance has a certain personality to it. It's not just pretty ballet where you're smiling the whole time, necessarily. Everyone has to act and play a role."

There were no student auditions this year.

"Usually what we do is audition students at the beginning of the school year, but for 'The Nutcracker,' since I'm teaching classes I pretty much knew who's going to be able to dance, at least the solo parts," Plekhanova said.

The three guest dancers are from the Colorado Ballet. Ashton Berkley is playing the Sugar Plum Fairy and Snow Queen, Andrei Vassiliez will play the Snow King and the cavalier and Cornell Callender will play the Nutcracker.

Plekhanova choreographed from early September to early November.

"The original choreography exists in the Marinsky company, and first I was planning to restage it with some changes. But then it's turned out to be mostly my choreography because it's a different setting and a different number of dancers," Plekhanova said. "So it's turned out to be my choreography, except for the children's dances and the battle scenes" which were choreographed by adjunct faculty members Galina Vorotynova and Aleksey Plekhanov.

Plekhanova, 38, has been dancing professionally since she was 10. She grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, and attended the Vaganova Ballet Academy, the official ballet school of the Marinsky Theatre. She was a solo/principal dancer in the Estonian National Ballet in Tallinn, where she also taught dance for the College of Dance and Choreography school.

In 1991, she traveled to the United States and joined the Colorado Ballet, where she worked for 15 years, serving as a solo/principal dancer and then as artistic director for the last six years.

In 2005, she accepted an assistant professorship at Radford University. Her husband, Aleksey Plekhanov, also teaches dance at the university. There are about 74 majors in the dance department. Last February, Plekhanova established the Radford University Ballet Youth.

"We created children's classes, so now we're able to provide high-quality ballet training in this area and prepare our little dancers for such performances as 'Nutcracker,' " Plekhanova said.

"The Nutcracker" will feature an orchestra directed by Al Wojtera and an elaborate set and costumes.

Senior Jeanie Clay is participating in several dance pieces but has also been working on costumes. She said many are hand-sewn.

"Before this, I had never sewed anything, and through this I have learned to sew and it shows me that outside of dancing there are many different aspects to it [a production] that I can pursue," Clay said.

Margaret Devaney has served as dance department chair since 1985. She said every performance has come close to selling out in the past.

"There's just something about the warmth of family relationship and community," she said, "and the belief that dolls can come alive ... the belief that there is a wonderland and sugar plum fairies and that we all can still be children."