It's a ballet thing: Backstage dancer Grace Scheffel bangs her pointe shoes against a wall at Lincoln Center's Koch Theater, just minutes before heading onstage to perform in "The Nutcracker." Why?

"Basically what we do is we bang the shoes to get all the sound out. The softer we can make the tip of the shoe, with keeping it strong enough to dance on, is really important," Scheffel explained. 

It's just part of the scene backstage at "George Balanchine's The Nutcracker," with the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the choreography of the legendary co-founder of the New York City Ballet.

This is the 70th season for the holiday classic. Just a half-hour before an afternoon performance for 2,000 school children, the crew goes through a pre-show checklist.

Director of production Marquerite Mehler, a 30-year veteran of the company, says it's all about making sure everything works. That includes set pieces like the fabulous Christmas tree that grows to 41 feet during the performance.  

"It takes about 20 minutes to do everything. We have 30 minutes, so if we do have a problem, we have very little time to fix it," Mehler said.

There's the dance, and of course, the very recognizable music.

Leading the 62-musician orchestra is music director Andrew Litton, who grew up only blocks from Lincoln Center and saw the ballet as a child. He says it's fun to be part of the tradition, and have some responsibility for the final outcome of each performance. 

"Balanchine wrote, 'The Nutcracker at our theater is for children young and old. That is, for children, and for adults who are children at heart, because if an adult is a good person in his heart, he is still a child,'" Litton said. "Isn't that great?"

Even with only minutes to spare, more makeup is applied to dancers, and alterations and repairs are made to some of the bevy of costumes.

Dancer Harrison Coll, also from the Upper West Side, first saw the ballet at the age of 4, and went on to be part of the company. He continues to dance in a variety of roles to this day, including one he hoped to play watching as a child.       

"I had the opportunity to be one of the party scene boys when I was 9, and did it again when I was 10 years old," Coll said. "And then when I was 12 year old, I got to [be] the prince."

For the performers and the audience, "The Nutcracker" continues to be an event. New Yorkers attend and take their kids — and then their grandkids. 

Scheffel, who grew up in Sea Cliff in Nassau County, says dancing in all 50 shows, there are days fatigue sets in, but she reminds herself of advice she received when she first joined the company. 

"Just remember that there's somebody out in the audience that has never seen the production before, and it's their first time seeing ballet, or seeing 'The Nutcracker,' and it's kind of our job to make that as magical as possible," she said.