It’s pretty unusual that, only three weeks into a show, I have a strong opinion on how the show is going to go, but I can already tell that this year’s Nutcracker is going to be a good one. It is an interesting feeling, and definitely preferable to the overwhelming sense of dread I began to feel last year around this time when our director was throwing himself to the floor during flower scene rehearsal and asking us how we could have possibly gotten worse.

Alright, let me backtrack a little and explain.

Last year… well, let’s say we got off to a rough start in Nutcracker. Rehearsals were slow, and a lot of the younger girls, who were unused to dancing prominent parts, struggled to catch on and try to be leaders. Even the older girls started to fall behind a bit, especially in flower corps, which led to much frustration on our director’s part since we had just done this ballet the year before. He was actually worried about how well the flowers scene would go, especially when we started having to replace people about a month before the show because they were dropping out of company. However, we did manage to recover, and the show actually went really well.

This year has already started off much more positively. We finished learning the flower waltz in two rehearsals and snow scene in only one. That’s both the major corps scenes out of the way; all we have to do is rehearse them over and over (and over and over and over and over) again. Actually, that’s one part I’m almost a little upset about, because I’m one of the few people in those scenes who dances in each show, so when we do both casts I have to dance both times, which gets really exhausting. However, it’s nice to have learning it out of the way, because that means we just get to work on making it the absolute best it can possibly be.

I’m also excited about this year’s Nutcracker for a much more personal reason: I am finally the Russian lead.

This role is my dream role. Ever since I first started dancing at the American Dance Center, I have wanted to be the Russian dancer. The music is fast and fun, and the dancing is mostly jumps and leaps, which is what I’m best at. When I saw that I had gotten this part, it took every single ounce of self control I had not to start screaming and jumping up and down. We haven’t had a rehearsal for Russian yet, but the warnings from last year’s Russians (“Your quads are going to be so sore,” “You’re going to pass out,”) have only made me more excited. I’m always up for a challenge.