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"The Snow Queen" takes the stage in Wilmington this weekend

Dancers perform on stage during a performance of "The Snow Queen" by the Delaware Arts Conservatory.

Delaware Arts Conservatory presents The Snow Queen this weekend in Wilmington.

The show has become a holiday tradition for the conservatory, which first presented the Snow Queen in 2012.

Tracy Friswell-Jacobs is directing this year’s show. She says the program offers a wide variety of dance styles featuring students at the conservatory.

We have hip hop trolls. We have jazz dancing reindeer. We have a whole tap section. That's the raccoon Bandit and his badger gang of thieves. We have, of course, ballet, our enchantress does contemporary. So it's kind of all of the above," she said.

The show is based on the 1844 story by Hans Christian Andersen that gained new popularity just over a decade ago, when it inspired the popular Disney film, Frozen, which remains the fifth highest-grossing film of all time, and spawned three cinematic sequels.

Friswell-Jacobs says the show features dancers of all ages, from little ones all the way up to adults.

“Our townsfolk, a lot of them are parents of our dancers, so it's fun to be in a show with your child. This gives a great opportunity for that. And then in the dancing scenes, the youngest dancers are five," she said.

“Our story is a little bit more true to the original fairy tale," she said. "That fairy tale takes you through all these different places that she has to go in order to save her friend. We did follow that pathway a lot more than just kind of focusing on the concept of a snow queen.”

The Delaware Arts Conservatory offers three performances of the Snow Queen at the Tatnall School’s Laird Performing Arts Center in Wilmington - two on Saturday at 12pm and 5pm, and a third at 2pm on Sunday.

Delaware Public Media's arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Martin Matheny comes to Delaware Public Media from WUGA in Athens, GA. Over his 12 years there, he served as a classical music host, program director, and the lead reporter on state and local government. In 2022, he took over as WUGA's local host of Morning Edition, where he discovered the joy of waking up very early in the morning.