You Are My Sunshine: Nutcracker

For Karena and Hannah's birthday their Great-Grandparents got them tickets to see the Nutcracker Ballet. A local dance studio was using it as their winter recital. The girls and I got dressed up and headed out to TPAC in downtown Nashville. We found our seats and waited about 10 minutes for the curtains to go up. During that time I got to answer the "When will it start question?" at least 2 dozen times. They were so anxious to see the play. I wish I could have taken pictures or video of the ballet. The younger kids were hilar-i-ous! Some had no clue what to do on stage. The russian dancers were probably the youngest group. There were at least 15 of them on stage. Each one of them had a little taped X on the floor they needed to find. At least half spent the first quarter of the dance wandering around the stage looking for their X. Some waved. Some twirled around in the typical little girl ballerina style. Once their dance was over they were supposed to back up about 5 feet and sit in a nice long row. They remembered in little groups of 2 or 3 to go sit down. My favorite though was the little girl that remembered to sit down just not where. She plopped herself right down on her X - content to stay there the rest of the show. An older dancer had to run out, scoop her up and plop her down at the end of the row. Just then a very experienced dancer came running out doing flips and cartwheels and all sorts of fantastic acrobatics. The little russian girl surely would have been squashed if she had remained in her previous position.

The dancing was okay but I enjoyed it. The girls were in awe the entire show. With each new dancer coming out they would ask, "Is that the Sugar Plum Fairy?"

Karena's favorite part were the Gumdrop dancers because their costume's made their bums wiggle. Hannah's favorite part were the Russian girls as well.

Because Karena and Hannah are girl scouts we got to go backstage and meet some of the dancers. The girls wanted to get autographs. They each had their own book and pen. They were sort of brave enough to ask for autographs. It did help that most of the dancers we met were in their early teens and loved giving out their autograph.