The Hard Nut

''There are people who have grown up with The Hard Nut,'' says Brooklyn-based dance legend Mark Morris about his 16 year-old re-imagining, both hip and heartwarming, of The Nutcracker. ''They came when they were six and now they're 13. Kids love it, adults love it, teenagers love it. It's interesting and fun and beautiful and tender.'' Morris' brilliant, irreverent, gender-bending 1991 ballet, set to the gorgeous music of Tchaikovsky, is now as much an annual holiday treat as any of the more conventional Nutcracker performances mounted by dance companies around the world as a prelude to Christmas. Nonesuch now offers the perfect stocking stuffer for the many admirers of Morris' weird and wonderful vision - the DVD premiere of the original 1991 production of The Hard Nut by the Mark Morris Dance Group, filmed at the opulent Theatre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, where Morris and his dancers maintained a brief, and often stormy, residency nearly two decades ago. This version of A Hard Nut was first televised on PBS during the 1992 holiday season as part of the network's popular Dance In America series.