Clara & The Nutcracker

Clara & The Nutcracker opens at the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities on 10 December, and it's not a stage show in the usual sense. It's a fulldome immersive film, which means you sit back in a reclining chair inside a 360-degree dome while the imagery wraps around you, blending dance, animation and surround sound. It's the Schwarzman Centre's first festive production, and it's a collaboration between Northern Ballet, 4Pi Productions and the centre itself.

Rather than a full-length performance of The Nutcracker, the film follows Northern Ballet dancer Rachael Gillespie as she prepares to take on the lead role of Clara. It takes you behind the scenes into the company's Black Box studio, with imagery captured by 4Pi Productions on stage, in the studio and backstage. Those real-life moments are woven together with richly animated fantasy sequences, so you get the rehearsal process and the imagined world of the ballet side by side. The whole thing is set to Tchaikovsky's score, performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra.

There's a fair bit of Oxford research behind it, too. The production was shaped by work from University of Oxford humanities academics, including Professor Joanna Neilly, Professor Philip Bullock and Dr Meindert Peters. On the dance side, you've got Northern Ballet dancers, original choreography by David Nixon CBE, movement direction by Gavin McCaig and direction by Janire Najera.

It runs from 10 to 24 December at the Schwarzman Centre's Black Box in the Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, OX2 6GG. The evening screenings on 10 and 11 December start at 19:00, and on 24 December it's open from 10:00 to 19:00. Tickets range from £27.50 down to £11.