Sales of Ballet B.C.'s Nutcracker tickets, critical to ensuring the company's ability to re-hire its dancers and staff and continue operations, have picked up.

The organization has introduced a progress bar to its website, which this morning reads at 37.5 percent of their goal of selling 12,000 tickets.

It's certainly progress, but it's not enough yet to guarantee that the dance company will live to see another pirouette.

If final ticket sales fall short of their target, it will devastate the lives of the dancers and staff who had their contracts terminated just weeks before Christmas, and whose extended health-care benefits run out today.