What kind of nut does it take to be in the nutcracker?

My wife, Shantell, is a dance instructor at Utah Academy Dance Studios. The Rocky Mountain Ballet, directed by Connie Burton, share space with UADS.  Rocky Mountain Ballet performs the Nutcracker on a annual basis.  They were short some dancers, so Connie asked Shantell if she would like to be in the party scene as one of the parents.   Needless to say, I was roped into joining the performance.  I had my reservations, namely my two left feet, about accepting the role as a Party Parent.

I had to perform in two "easy" dances.  Dancing isn't as easy as my daughter Amanda makes it out to be. "Point your toes." "Look up at your hand." "Round your arm." "Make sure you are in a straight line." I struggled a bit with some of the choreography.  Needless to say, practice makes perfect, or at least practice makes you look like you know what you are doing.   It was a great experience and made me appreciate the difficulty involved in dancing.   The performances were great.  The dancers were all great. All in all I would rate the experience as an 8 out of 10.  I very much enjoyed the performance and Connie asked me back for next years performance.   Hopefully the choreography will remain the same. 

I also got to volunteer to be a stagehand for the show.  I got to pull the rope that made the thing-a-ma-bob shake and release the snow on stage.  I gave myself the code name "snowman".  It was fun wearing a headset and making the stage hands freak out with my follies of shaking the thing-a-ma-bob.  In one show I thought the stage manager was going to have a heart attack.  I proclaimed that I was releasing the snow in the middle of the "Snow Flakes" dance.  The snow is supposed to be released at the end of the their dance.   Good times.  My Mom, Dad, Rees, Jessica, and Jessica's mom were able to attend on the 12th.   

Here are some wonderful pictures.

Comments

Re: What kind of nut does it take to be in the nutcracker? I LOVE IT! I think you should wear makeup everyday- the RED is really your signature Color!! It really becomes you! ;) I wish you had some pics of yourself on stage so we could see the whole "party" scene. :: Comment posted by Jen on Fri, 14 Dec 2007 12:00 [Respond to this comment]

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