Nutcrackering

 

The girls had so many parts in the Nutcracker this year! Fun to watch (and to participate in, I assume) but a bit of a nightmare as far as November and December rehearsals were concerned! I'm always a little mad about it as I'm driving them back and forth, but when it's finally time for the performances I forget that and just love watching them.

There's always a need for more boys in the cast, so this year they recruited Teddy to be a party boy. He worked hard to learn the dance and he looked so cute in his costume! It was fun for him to be part of something he's always just watched the girls do.

Here are their parts this year:

Teddy was a Party Boy.

Goldie was a Party Girl and a Snow Sprite.

Junie was a Party Girl, Party Boy (in the other cast), Snow Sprite, Jester, Arabian, and Flower.

Daisy was a Party Girl, Party Boy (in the other cast), Snow Corps, Chinese, and Flower.

Because of all their costume changes it was a little stressful the day of the performance! Junie wasn't quick enough into her costume for Arabian during the first performance, and didn't make it out on stage until halfway through the dance. She felt terrible and was crying afterwards, and then on top of that their teacher came and got mad at her and gave her a lecture about "goofing off" (which poor Junie tearfully assured me she hadn't been, but just couldn't get her pants on!). So that was sad. But then in the second performance about five other girls voluntarily rallied round to help her make that costume change, which I thought was very sweet, and all went well.

I think Goldie has the sweetest face looking at her doll!

Cute Teddy concentrating hard

Junie doing her jester gymnastics (the jester part was a solo, just her dancing for three minutes while everyone watched!)

Snow Corps (Daisy's first performance on pointe)

Waltz of the Flowers

Malachi provided some sorely needed entertainment for Clementine, letting her take pens out of his pockets and put them back in over and over. She did it happily for the difficult last twenty minutes of the performance, and we were so glad not to have to take her out!

Snow Curtain Call

In a rather unfortunate bit of planning (or non-planning), the girls had to do their hair in party girl ringlets for the second performance, meaning they couldn't just sleep in curlers the night before. So I spent the three hours between performances frantically doing ringlets with a curling iron. My girls have soooo much hair! My hands hurt afterward from holding the curling iron so long. 

The girls looked cute, though!

Teddy and Gwennie

Teddy and Jessica

The lighting inside the school is so sickly. It looks like a junior high school feels, if you know what I mean.

So I always try to have the girls run outside for pictures in their costumes if possible. But it was SO cold! Like 15 degrees. They were very brave posing for any pictures at all, let alone multiple ones!

Daisy was happy to be wearing a REAL tutu for this part.

Daisy liked her jester costume best as far as comfort! It didn't have any scratchy parts.

Blurry but cute

Seems right that they should both be flowers!

After the performance

Hamburgers for the ravenous dancers (and two for Malachi, who was at a debate tournament all day before coming to the performance and was also ravenous!)