What is Christmas without “The Nutcracker”? In the last 20 years, I’ve had only one December holiday bereft of Tchaikovsky’s ballet, and it was a bleak omission, indeed. In the midst of the bustle and brawn of this holiday, it’s not such a bad idea to give yourself over to a tenderly imaginative work that is as resolutely romantic as it is seasonal. And I don’t mean that for just the kiddie crowd. “The Nutcracker” will always be right for little girls dressed in frills and little boys in bow ties.

But it is so very right for the rest of us, too. On Saturday afternoon when the Robinson Ballet Company, Bangor Symphony Orchestra and Bangor Area Children’s Choirs presented the annual “Nutcracker” at the Maine Center for the Arts, I was lucky enough to be seated in the balcony next to a girl – about age 9, I suspect. During the first act, I noticed she never took her eyes off the Silberhaus family and all their elegant friends dressed in jewel-toned party clothes. At intermission, I struck up a conversation with the girl. Had she had seen the show before? She said yes. Then why come back? I persisted. She squeezed her small hands into a puzzle, raised her eyebrows and answered: “Because it’s fun.”

I doubt she was thinking that the Robinson production has improved so noticeably over the years that someone recently told me it had become too professional. (May we all be accused of that in our work!) My little friend probably was not thinking that it’s a boost to everyone’s quality of life when dancers bred locally – such as Rebecca Breau and Ian H. Robinson – return to share their lessons-from-away in regal performances of Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier.

And I bet my seat mate couldn’t quite pinpoint the moment when some new face or style caught her eye – such as Audrey MacLean in a muscular portrayal of the Soldier Doll, or Sarah Breau and Jesse Dunham splicing street-dance moves into the more classical Harlequin Dolls, or the doe-like airiness of 13-year-old Katie Taylor as the Reed Flute dancer. Certainly she loved the various dancers on Sugar Mountain in the realm of the Sugar Plum Fairy – the Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Arabian dancers; the lambs, wolves and reeds; and the Mother Ginger-ites.

If I had to guess, I bet every little girl in the audience was caught in the storybook quality and talent of Stevie Dunham and Caleb McGary as the Dew Drop duo. It’s not just that their training has served them well. That’s true of every member in the corps de ballet. Choreographers Maureen Lynch, Keith Robinson, Kelly Holyoke and Dunham, too, have done their jobs well. But Dunham and McGary, both of college age, took over the stage with immediacy and brightness. If the floor and the stars belonged to anyone on the day I saw the show, it was Dunham.

The creative magic of “The Nutcracker” is the music and dreamy storyline. But the real wonder of it is that Robinson Ballet can mount the production every year and continue to breathe fresh life into it. Even when the dancers are not spot-on, the spirit is still there, and it’s strong enough to continually enrapture all the little girls and boys. And a few of the big ones.