This was originally a stage production, but rather than taping or filming it in a theatre with a live audience, Baryshnikov chose to have the sets enlarged and taped it in a television studio with no audience.
Some of Mikhail Baryshnikov's choreography for this production of "The Nutcracker" (not just the choreography for the "Snowflake Waltz") is heavily based on Vassily Vainonev's choreography for a famous 1934 Russian production of the ballet. Baryshnikov directly uses virtually all of Vaynonen's choreography for the "Snowflake Waltz" (for which Vaynonen receives screen credit), but only bits and pieces of the rest of the Vaynonen work.
Once credited as having been first telecast on New Year's Day 1977, this was in fact telecast during the Christmas season of that year. This is why it was eligible for Emmys in 1978, rather than 1977.
Costume designer Frank L. Thompson died six months before the first telecast of this production. He was only fifty-six.
Although the Dance of the Clowns is still intact, Baryshnikov omitted the character of the giant-skirted Mother Gigogne from it, and choreographed the dance for just four Court Buffoons.