How Nutcracker Went!

Hey guys! I know it's been over a month since Nutcracker, but here are the highlights!

On opening night I showed up about an hour before it began, and most of the girls were already in the dressing room costume for party scene (I was a soldier, so I didn't need to get into costume just quite yet). There were a bunch of different dressing rooms, I was in the Jr. Corps room. There were counters along the walls that had chairs at them, with a mirror surrounded by lights at each seat, just to give you a visual. There was also a row of sinks, and a little back cove with showers. 15 minutes to curtain, and one of the girls bursts in and declares, "They can't find the ladder!" In our Nutcracker, there's an important part where Clara climbs a ladder, puts the angel on the top of the tree, and everyone freezes for a second and the lights focus on the angel. Without the ladder, there is no angel on the tree, and about 15 seconds of awkward stillness for no reason. They eventually found it, about 5 minutes to curtain, in one of the storage closets. Apparently, one of the guys that worked at the theater thought it was just an old ladder and put it away. Crises averted.

There's a girl with down syndrome at my studio, and she was a soldier too. She's very sweet, 13 years old, but another soldier and  I were sort of in charge of making sure she didn't wander off and was in the right place. She kept getting nervous and declaring that she couldn't dance as we were waiting backstage to go on, and the other soldier and I had to convince her to dance because everyone wants to see her and she'll be amazing. When that didn't work, we got one of the boys she has a crush on (he was the Nutcracker, and in a few other dances, he's around 17) to give her a high five, which made her happy enough to dance. It was so cute, and Nutcracker was such a good sport about it.

There was also a mishap in which a flute for Mirlitons was lost, but again found right before the dance.

Oh man, but this is the really exciting story of the night. Ready for this? So there's this one girl in the Jr. Corps, very good little dancer, but her mom is one of those crazy dance moms. She makes these snide comments to the other girls, and isolates her own daughter by being mean to the other girls. For example, during the dress rehearsal she said to the girls, "My, Megan sure has a lot of frizzies." (as in, loose hairs sticking out), while Megan was right there! Later, the girls went to all go up to watch another scene being rehearsed, and the dance mom's daughter had just gotten there and her mom was doing her hair. As everyone was leaving, she said, "Oh, wow, looks like no one will be nice and wait for you." Anyway, this crazy dance mom was in our dressing room, and the girls are goofing off and practicing their Italian Fouettes (link if you don't know what they are) and one of the girls almost kicks this mom in the face accidently. She shouldn't even be in there, but she starts yelling at this poor girl for almost kicking her and screaming that this girl was always so mean to her daughter (she wasn't). So this girl is crying, and her best friend is crying, and another girl walks in and the mom starts yelling at her for no reason, so she's crying. Then, our artistic directer, the most flamboyant yet intimidating man I know tells all the girls to leave the dressing room, goes in, and is like, "Leave. Just go. Now." All the while, she's yelling about how she's going to sue the studio and all the girls ect.

We haven't seen that girl since.

Anyway, the show was generally very good. That I know of, only one person fell (and recovered very gracefully), and the show got great reviews.