The New York City Ballet gave its first annual performance of George Balanchine's reworked staging of "The Nutcracker" in 1954. The performance of Maria Tallchief in the role of the Sugar Plum Fairy helped elevate the work from obscurity into an annual Christmas classic, and the industry's most reliable box-office draw. Critic Walter Terry remarked "Maria Tallchief, as the Sugar Plum Fairy, is herself a creature of magic, dancing the seemingly impossible with effortless beauty of movement, electrifying us with her brilliance, enchanting us with her radiance of being. Does she have any equals anywhere, inside or outside of fairyland? While watching her in "The Nutcracker," one is tempted to doubt it." Beginning in the 1960s, the tradition of performing the complete ballet at Christmas eventually spread to the rest of the United States.