The Nutcracker

This morning as I was coming downstairs Natalie was stomping around the Christmas tree a touch while humming the sugarplum fairy theme from the Nutcracker. Pretty cute. Which reminded me of the post I had been meaning to pound out about the production Natalie and I took in last Saturday, with her friend Helen as an angel.

Susan Jaffe, late of the American Ballet Theatre, runs the Princeton Dance & Theater Studio, which put this on. It was pretty darn cool. First off, she must have had some ringers in there, cuz there were people who could flat out dance. So there was quality.

Just as importantly, there was range. In the first Xmas party scene, there was a couple in there 70s that played Grandma and Grandpa. They didn't dance much, just sat on a couch and then took a few graceful steps near the front of the stage. Later there was a little girl of perhaps 4 with a candle, who did mostly walking and sitting too. In between there was a bit of every age range. My favorite was a skinny black boy candycane with a hoop, the lone male on stage with maybe 11 girls. The whole time he was out there he was grinning from ear to ear, visibly enraptured. At school, you might think, he was a prime candidate for a fag-bashing ass-whupping, but on stage he was totally in his element. It's not everyday you see a production as able to enfold as many different life stages, but there it was. I'd see it again tomorrow, if I weren't so damned cheap.