" At Christmas, we’re a little like Magi, " the Nobel Prize–winning poet Joseph Brodsky wrote in " December 24, 1971. " Brodsky grew up in St. Petersburg, and he would have understood the Boston Christmas tradition that is The Nutcracker. For all that this holiday classic is a feast for the eyes and ears, with its scrumptious choreography and delectable Tchaikovsky score, its heart is E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story about a little girl who turns her fantasy into reality. Godpapa Droßelmeier may have created the Nutcracker, but it’s Marie (Clara in the ballet) whose faith brings him to life. This is a poetic rather than a religious faith, and the poetic land into which she and the Nutcracker Prince escape is an indictment of everyday life. Or perhaps it’s a metaphor for the world we too could live in if we only had faith in each other.

Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker doesn’t stint on spectacle and special effects — most notably the Christmas tree that rises like Jack’s beanstalk — but it’s the detail and the dancers that keep audiences coming back. This year, after some 20 years of watching the production, it finally dawned on me that David Walker’s costumes for the Nutcracker

and the Mouse King are grounded in the English mummers’ play St. George and the Dragon: the Nutcracker’s white with red trim suggests the white-with-red-cross flag of St. George, and the Mouse King with his Arabian Nights pantaloons and curved scimitar is clearly the Turkish Knight. On the other hand, no one who’s ever seen Swan Lake will miss the parody of the Dance of the Cygnets (that’s the quartet who cross hands and dance in a line) performed by a quartet of Baby Mice during the Battle Scene. This year one of the adult Mice snatches up Clara’s blue blanket and dances with it, then turns toreador, executing a perfect veronica as his comrades scamper off. And if you’ve read Hoffmann’s story (look for the Ralph Manheim translation with illustrations by Maurice Sendak), you’ll understand why the Silberhaus family have an owl clock and why its eyes light up when the Christmas tree starts to grow.

For the past few years, now, the company has been tinkering with the choreography; this time around, new artistic director Mikko Nissinen has redone Chocolate (Spanish) and Coffee (Arabian). I saw these in three preview performances last weekend, before they’d had time to settle, so it’s not fair to pre-judge. But I keep wondering whether so many cooks aren’t spoiling the broth. In the divertissements of the second act, Clara should see models of adult love and life. At one point Boston Ballet’s Chocolate, with one lady and four suitors, was all about flirting. Coffee, with one lady and two suitors, was about sex and jealousy. Tea was about respect. The Marzipan Shepherdess and Shepherd are proud parents; the Waltz of the Flowers is a pajama party, the Russian Trepak a boys’ night out. Mother Ginger and her Polichinelles remind us that life can be funny. And then Sugar Plum and her Cavalier dance out what Clara aspires to with her Nutcracker Prince.

That used to work, after a fashion, in Boston Ballet’s Nutcracker. Now I’m not sure what the company means to put in its place. The two men in the new Chocolate have no duende, no attitude, and no relationship with the lady; they’re mere decoration. The new Coffee retains some of the familiar slinky moves, but now it’s a duet, so the pain is gone, and the old and inappropriate straight lines (Tchaikovsky’s music here is all curves) of the entrance have given way to equally inappropriate replacements, like the way the lady lifts her free leg over her shoulder and the man turns her 90 degrees, as if she were a two-by-four. And when Rita Coolidge sings " We move as one " in the Octopussy theme, I don’t think she has parallel jetés in mind. (Also, the color of Charles Heightchew’s new costumes is cold when it should be hot — that metallic blue looks more like Berlin than Baghdad.) The four Cavaliers who’ve infiltrated the Waltz of the Flowers impinge not only on Dew Drop but on the story of how flowers bloom and wilt and bloom again. Send them over to the Russian Trepak, which needs at least the five men it used to have as opposed to the three who dance it now. Gianni Di Marco’s choreography for the Polichinelles isn’t as clear or as comical as it used to be in the days when the inimitable Tony Collins played Mother Ginger, but it gives the children more to do, and they’re a treat to watch.

The best details in this Nutcracker are the ones that come from the performers. Last Friday’s opening night opened with a bang as Ariel Gold’s Clara gave Dylan Tedaldi’s Fritz a don’t-even-think-about-it look when he tried to steal her turn on the sled. The prologue also makes room for a brief encounter between the Delivery Boy and the Maid, and their romance-at-short-notice develops when he turns up at the Silberhaus home as Drosselmeyer’s assistant — too bad he goes out with the Bear and doesn’t return. I still haven’t come to terms with the pastel costumes, which seem too pallid for holiday celebrating (and what party would see all the ladies, big and small, wearing what amounts to the same dress?). And Drosselmeyer, who should be an old and mysterious presence, still looks like a cross between David Copperfield and the Man in the Hathaway Shirt. But Grandmother and Grandfather are shaping up: she’s a little dotty, he’s in his second childhood (he keeps stealing Fritz’s hobby horse), he does a nice job of hiding the box of pearls for her in one hand and then the other during the Großvater Tanz, but even after he gives them to her, she won’t sit in his lap. The Children’s March and Galop now gives the kids more dancing, and the Bear has more attitude, snapping at Drosselmeyer, then at the end kissing Frau Silberhaus’s hand. Other highlights last weekend included Frances Pérez-Ball’s all-doll Columbine and Miao Zong as a Nutcracker who treated Clara with the attention and courtesy you’d accord the love of your life.

Preview weekend at The Nutcracker invariably means partnerships that are works-in-progress. The opening-night Sugar Plum and Cavalier, Sarah Lamb and Gaël Lambiotte, did not seem ideally matched. Lamb was almost brittle in her footwork, without the plasticity of phrasing that you’d see from, say, Jennifer Gelfand or Pollyana Ribeiro. She didn’t get much help from the orchestra; music director Jonathan McPhee is in Australia doing a Swan Lake (he’ll be back before the end of the run), and the severer, more symphonic style of associate conductor Mark Churchill isn’t as suited to dancing. Tchaikovsky’s phrases need to be stretched out and given their full harmonic weight, so a dancer can " step " on them; the way they instead fell away Friday made it appear that Lamb was behind the beat. Lambiotte looks great in his manège work, but otherwise his pomp doesn’t suit her precision.

Lambiotte and Sabine Chaland, however, made the biggest success of Coffee: she focused all her sexuality on him, and he held out in way that underlined his independence. Melanie Atkins was just as sensual but more audience-directed, with the result that Viktor Plotnikov seemed merely in thrall. Chaland also brought the high heat to Chocolate, and Sarah Lamb wasn’t far behind, but they need partners that are more than warming ovens. Tea remains problematic: I don’t suppose putting the dancers in Mao jackets would solve the problem, but there has to be a way of presenting Chinese dolls that’s not offensive and stereotyped. (Maybe a company outing to a Zhang Yimou film . . . ) The Marzipan Shepherdess and Shepherd likewise come off like Miss America and her escort. Tara Hench at least gave the Shepherdess some emotional weight, and she brought her usual exquisite line to Snow Queen and Dew Drop, though her classical vocabulary is not the most extensive.

Gelfand and Ribeiro, on the other hand, seem able to do anything. Gelfand and Chris Budzynski (who excelled as the Trepak leader, along with Raul Salamanca) substituted Saturday evening as Snow Queen and Snow King, and they gave their pas de deux a creamy softness with vanilla-bean edge. Gelfand and Ribeiro were the other two Dew Drops I saw; they offered up more-complicated steps, and both were radiant, Gelfand transcendent, Ribeiro immanent. And then on Saturday evening, Ribeiro with Paul Thrussell presented Clara the Sugar Plum and Cavalier she’d been waiting for, Ribeiro with pellucid footwork (and Churchill and the orchestra seeming to adjust themselves to her) and model piqué turns that flowed into chaînés and stopped on a dime — she never slams on the brakes, she just eases into position. Thrussell — for my money the company’s best male dancer — showed off the kind of entrechats you can take dictation from (it’s as if they were in slow motion), and he was an unexceptionable partner, tossing her with gentle accuracy and supporting her unobtrusively without disappearing into her aura. Watching these two put me in mind of the end of Brodsky’s poem: " both an Infant and a Holy Spirit/you become aware of in yourself, without shame,/you look at the sky and you see — a star. "