A holiday tradition for many this time of year is seeing a live performance of The Nutcracker Ballet.

The Louisville Ballet has been performing the classics since 1963.

The official State Ballet of Kentucky is also the fifth oldest ballet company in the world.

Our Kelsie Starks takes us behind the curtain to see how the magic is made Each year.

Far before you experience the magic of the Brown-Forman Nutcracker on stage.

The Louisville Ballet is putting in the work for.

Marie's Going to Take The Nutcracker, but I think it takes over 200 people at any one given Nutcracker.

Between the crew, the theater crew, our crew, our dancers, children's cast, volunteers, ushers, everybody at the theater.

It's a 200 people plus to get us on stage every every night.

So that's a lot.

Thousands of rehearsal hours, hundreds of dancers and dozens of national and international production and set designers make magic on stage every year, a tradition for so many families and so many performers do.

But it's been really fun to grow with the ballet.

I started as a snowflake and a teenager and a side Arabian girl, and so it's been really great over the years to grow with it.

The story and tradition remain the same, but if you take a closer look, you'll notice that this tradition is unique to the place.

The Louisville Ballet calls home.

When we did our New Nutcracker in 2009, we added all of the Kentucky and Louisville specific elements.

St James Fountain, the St James Court Fountain is in the back of our snow scene and we have, instead of Madame Bonbon and her Polish Chanels, we have Madame Derby and her jockeys.

Brown Street and Forman Avenue and the old Clocktower that used to be downtown Louisville.

They took a vintage photo of that and they they incorporated that into our front cloth scene.

So it's really, truly tied to the city of Louisville in the state of Kentucky in that way.

I think in a party scene, you should always look for the teenager.

I think the amount of magic in this one is pretty impressive.

Just how physically in training this production is, particularly the snowflake X, I think that is one of the hardest things I've ever danced, is a snowflake in this production.

It is so musical.

The choreography, it's my favorite snow scene I've ever seen.

But I think any anyone that's danced, it can say that.

It's like running a marathon.

Yeah.

With your friends.

It's the tradition that makes it a classic.

It's the Louisville Ballet that makes it magic.

Stunning, indeed.

You can learn more about the Louisville Ballet on this weekend's episode of Inside Louisville with Kelsey Starks.

Meet the CEO and hear how rapper Jock Jack Harlow is getting involved with the ballet.

That's this Sunday at 12 noon Eastern, 11 a.m. Central right here on KCET.