LONG ROAD TO DALLAS: Texas Ballet Theater has taken some heat lately for using canned music during its performances. Its dancers, however, are all real, and some of them have lived pretty interesting lives. Eddy Tovar stars as the Prince in The Nutcracker, currently playing at the Winspear before moving to Bass Hall next week. The native of Cuba has taken a winding path to North Texas, with stops in Brazil, Orlando and other ports along the way. And he says the jump to the Winspear may be his biggest yet. “Coming to Dallas, to this place, is so big,” he tells dallasnews.com. “It’s very important for our company. We need this kind of growth.”

PACK YOUR BAGS: Riverdance stops at Bass Hall this week for a “farewell tour” – as if there is such a thing anymore. And Punch Shaw of dfw.com says good riddance. It’s not that he has anything particularly negative to say about Tuesday night’s opening performance. He’s just had it with Irish step dancing. “Like a fabricated celebrity whose 15 minutes of fame has inexplicably stretched into hours, these green-tinted tapsters just won’t go away,” he writes in his review. Note to self: Invite Punch to next year’s St. Patrick’s Day party at own peril.

ETC.: Among the many things Jaap Van Zweden loves about his adopted home town is the Mavericks. “I’m a huge sports fan,” he tells forbes.com. (hat tip to Unfair Park) … The troubled New York City Opera has made huge strides of late, and former Dallas Opera chief George Steel is getting gobs of credit for the turnaround. (nytimes.com) … The Dallas Museum of Nature and Science broke ground on its new Thom Mayne-designed building late last month. So it’s good to see that Mayne’s similarly-charged building – an addition to the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York – is drawing raves. (wsj.com)