96 Hours: Elephant seals--Tour winter breeding grounds

This weekend and for the next few months, you can get more than a glimpse of one of the most unusual animals in California wildlife just off Highway 1, an hour and a half south of San Francisco. Each year, thousands of elephant seals come back to the beaches of Año Nuevo State Reserve, where hundreds of new pups will be born, and the adult males will duke it out with each other and find a female to mate with before returning to the ocean.

With its trunklike nose and ground-shaking, throaty roar, the northern elephant seal is one of the most impressive and strangest mammals in the ocean, making its home along the Pacific coast as far south as Mexico. On average, they spend more than three-fourths of their lives in water, but when the elephant seals come ashore, they like to vacation - like many humans - along the California coast.

Read more on the Chronicle website.

Dance review: Ballet San Jose's 'Nutcracker'

On the way to Ballet San Jose's performance at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts on Thursday night, a young man bantered with his female companion about being dragged to the "Nutcracker" yet another time.

'Oh, you know you wanted to come,' the young woman said playfully. 'You said so.'

'Well, there are two reasons I wanted to come,' her companion admitted. 'The music - I love Tchaikovsky. Plus, I figure there have to be some cute girls in it somewhere.'

True, though after two hours of flash and dash, of tiny yet painfully adorable mice, gutsy leaps and high-flying partnering, even the most restless of boyfriends might have conceded that this 'Nutcracker' offers a lot more than that."

Read more on the SF Chronicle's website.

Cheryl Burke: 'Dancing With the Stars' tour

Two-time 'Dancing With the Stars' champion Cheryl Burke has all the right moves, but she also has her heart in the right place when it comes to dancing. For Burke, 24 - who's been nominated twice for Emmys for her choreography - that means giving back to the community she grew up in, as well as teaching at her new dance studio in San Francisco and using her celebrity charm to promote one of the causes she holds dear: physical fitness. We caught up with Burke before she embarked on a 38-city 'Dancing With the Stars' tour with partner Maurice Greene.

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.

96 Hours: 'Peter Pan': Children get into the act

For an early holiday treat, the high-flying musical 'Peter Pan' fits the bill. But it's more than just a chance to take in an entertaining musical: An afternoon with Children's Musical Theater could also sow the seeds for a budding actor or actress.

The company got its start as the Cabrini Community Theater in 1968, founded by John Healy, himself a young performer who wanted to create a theater accessible to everyone. Deemed the largest youth theater company in the country - and now under the artistic direction of Kevin Hauge - the theater follows an unusually inclusive policy of casting every child who auditions. Last year, according to marketing associate Heather Lerner, thousands of kids turned up at the auditions, and all of them went onstage in at least one of the company's multiple-cast productions."

Read more on the SF Chronicle website.