To those of us for whom Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without The Nutcracker, Hugh Nini is a very important fellow. Each year for more than 20 years, he has rounded up a cast of 100 dancers whose abilities range from breathtaking to “just tell me where to stand,” and molds them into an enchanting production of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s classic Christmas ballet.

Anyone who follows the dance community in Denton — and just about anybody who closely follows the local arts scene — knows Hugh Nini, or knows about him. But a lot of us who just hang out around the fringes of the arts in Denton, enjoying its myriad pleasures with blissful ignorance, may never have heard of him.

We are now educated, for the Greater Denton Arts Council has bestowed upon Nini its Community Arts Recognition Award, and he is now front-page news, as he probably should have been a long time ago.

The CARA, as it is known hereabouts, is a big deal in Denton, and that in itself speaks well for this good town. We do not know of another town this size in which the arts are more nurtured, or practiced to a higher degree of proficiency. We do not know which came first, and it’s probably silly to conjecture on the question; it is better simply to enjoy the reality, which is that Denton loves and supports artists, and it produces a stream of them, like Hugh Nini, who are worthy of recognition by awards such as the CARA.

As the Record-Chronicle’s Lucinda Breeding explained in detail in a front-page story ion Friday, Hugh Nini is much more than “the Nutcracker man,” though he would probably merit our praise, and the CARA, for that accomplishment alone. He is also the proprietor of the Denton Ballet Academy, a private ballet school that is well into its second generation of teaching young dancers the beauty and magic of the ballet. He founded the school in 1979; it is about time for the children of his first students to begin showing up in his classes.

Thirty years is a long time to do anything. It is a particularly long time to teach, for teaching is a demanding profession that saps the physical and emotional energy from those who undertake it, even those who love it and find it invigorating, as Hugh Nini obviously does.

Likewise, it takes a heap of dedication and energy to produce a large and difficult performance like The Nutcracker year after year, even one as magnificent as the Tchaikovsky classic.

In some ways, we suppose, the production problems get smaller, or at least easier to handle, when one has shepherded the same production for 20 years. But there are apt to be times when familiarity breeds — well, not contempt, really, but a feeling of, “OK, let’s trot this pony out one more time.”

Anyone who has seen Nini’s production of The Nutcracker in recent years knows he has avoided that intellectual and artistic lassitude. If anything, each year’s production is more polished, more exciting and more magical than the one the year before.

Part of that is Tchaikovsky’s doing, of course, and part of it is Denton’s long and intense love affair with the arts.

But a large part of it is the dedication, talent and fire of Hugh Nini, who shares those traits with a small group of lucky students all year ’round and with all of us each Christmas season.

He deserves his CARA, and he deserves the thanks and appreciation of all of us who have been enriched by his art.