The financially troubled Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, which recently made waves with a decision to lay off its orchestra in favor of recorded music, has canceled five of the performances it was scheduled to give of The Nutcracker this holiday season. It was the second such announcement in only a few months: back in June, PBT announced it would cut Nutcracker back to 17 performances from the 23 it mounted last year. The ballet says that its holiday schedule has been hurt by the addition of the traveling Radio City Christmas Spectacular into Pittsburgh’s fall arts lineup, but members of the laid-off ballet orchestra suggest that the public may not be interested in attending a Nutcracker with canned instrumentals.