Showing posts with label ballet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ballet. Show all posts

Thursday, January 19, 2023

Three New Ballet Skirts, or, It's So Fun To Sew with Slippery Fabrics /s

 

The world of children's ballet is a Whole Thing, y'all. And I'm not even talking about the body politics or the stresses of casting or the superb posture training. My teenager has danced in the same pre-college ballet program since the age of approximately four, and so you'd think the uniform would be pretty standard. Leotard, tights, and shoes, and you can even skip the tights if you're dancing Russian-style.

But no. Every year, and sometimes every semester, is just a new, annoying way to spend my money because these people cannot seem to make up their minds about how they'd like the children to dress! At one point in time, several ages wore the same leotard color, so that switching to a new leo color was a momentous achievement. Then they decided that every level should have its own color. Annoying to buy all new leotards each year, but at least there was something of a resale market. Then they decided that kids could only wear camisole-style leotards, so we all had to go buy new ones. Then they kept everything the same for a year, which was cool, but in the last month of classes decided that the kids should wear a completely different color of leotard and ballet skirt just for the recital--here, by the way, is that white leotard and skirt that my kid wore exactly once. Then they decided that you could wear any style of leotard you wanted as long it was the right color, but they had two different levels wearing two different colors of green, and do you know how hard it is to tell online if a leotard is more mint green or forest green (this one is neither mint NOR forest, it was determined)? And don't even get me started about the level that had to wear "grey"--Friends, there are a lot of greys in the world! Then there was a year in which they did uniform by ages but grouped several ages into a single class, and that's how we discovered that my teenager is the only teenager exactly her age in the program, because she got to be the only black leotard in a sea of burgundy, and guess how much she did not love that.

Over the years we've gone from kids can wear ballet skirts to every class (everyone bought SO MANY skirts) to kids can never wear them ever (after, of course, everyone had bought and owned and loved 4-6 different skirts) to now kids can wear them on Saturdays. I think. For now.

My teenager is, as you might imagine if you've ever known somebody who submitted daily to a strict dress code, thrilled by the upcoming Ballet Skirt Saturdays. Because I can never just buy something and be done with it, I found this pattern for an asymmetrical SAB-style ballet skirt from DsSewingPatterns on etsy, ran it by the teenager, she approved, and then I bought it and we went fabric shopping.

Because fabric shopping is the funnest part!

Four-way stretch isn't really my jam, nor is sewing thin, slippery mesh and tulle, but the teenager had a fabulous time picking out a few fabrics to try, and she was so excited to have me sew them up for her that she literally stood next to the table as I worked, just, like, watching me stitch while listening to my Dolls of Our Lives podcast. I felt very attended to! 

Luna helped, too:

Fortunately, this is one of the best, easiest, and most straightforward patterns I've ever used. The magic is in the cut, which, as you can see if you look closely at the template below, IS asymmetrical!





This means that you can wear it truly asymmetrical, with one side longer, or the way my teenager likes it, with the longer part at the booty for a little more coverage.

The photo below is technically my muslin, although I have a Depression-era fear and loathing (thanks, Mamma and Pappa!) of wasting fabric, so I got the teenager to choose something on clearance that she would still reluctantly wear. She's got those October Saturdays pinned down now!


I did alter the pattern quite a bit in length after sewing this muslin, which is why you should always sew a muslin. Fortunately, the saving grace of this thin, slippery, asshole fabric is that at least it doesn't ravel, so I could just trim the bottom to my preferred length and didn't even have to hem it, hallelujah.

That spiderweb fabric also worked out perfectly when turned inside-out to make the black waistband on this, the most glorious of all ballet skirts:

My teenager and I are absolutely enamored with this skirt. To be honest, she's probably not gonna wear any of the others as long as this one is around. It's a sheer black mesh with these flowers and sequins appliqued on it, and it. Is. Stunning. Now imagine it in motion!

I'm just going to show you a few more close-up photos of it, I'm so proud of it:





Y'all aren't going to believe this, but over winter break the pre-college ballet department reorganized the levels AGAIN, so after having all the kids in my kid's class wearing black leotards all semester, even the ones who were technically supposed to wear burgundy, and me thinking that my kid was going to be wearing black leotards six days a week for the next two years and therefore buying her even more black leotards for Christmas, now they've decided that everyone should go back to... BURGUNDY. You know, the color that LITERALLY NOBODY WORE LAST SEMESTER. BECAUSE THEY WERE ALL WEARING BLACK. A CLASS FULL OF KIDS WHO NOW OWN SEVERAL BLACK LEOTARDS THAT FIT, AND THEY WANT THEM TO BUY SIX DAYS' WORTH OF BURGUNDY LEOTARDS INSTEAD. JUST FOR THE SECOND SEMESTER OF THE EXACT SAME CLASS FULL OF THE EXACT SAME CHILDREN.

I participated in the Great Burgundy Leotard Scramble of 2019, and I am not going back to that nightmare scenario of battling every other parent in the class for the, like, five burgundy leotards, total, that exist in the world--burgundy is not a popular leotard color for the ballet world at large!!! They can put whatever they want on their dress code, but they have pushed me, personally, too far. I bought my teenager a shit ton of black leotards back in August, and a shit ton more black leotards over Christmas, and two shit tons of black leotards is what she will be wearing to class next semester whether they like it or not. 

Sigh. Do you want to make bets on how many classes until I cave?

Tuesday, December 6, 2022

An Officer and a Mouse Dance Onto the Stage: Ten Photos from Nutcracker 2022

 

Another Nutcracker season is done and dusted! My anxiety eye twitch hasn't yet gotten the news, nor has my brain at approximately 3:00 every morning, but any moment now I'm sure all the stress of that most stressful week of the year will just magically drain away and leave me ready for some relaxing holiday cheer.

A sampling of the week's greatest triumphs and greatest WTFs:

  • I found out that the wig department has been having children share wigs, and that this has apparently been going on for YEARS. How on earth there is not a ballet program-wide lice outbreak every single December is beyond me, although the semester does end less than a week after the show wraps, so maybe parents never connect the dots as to why their kid suddenly has lice two weeks before Christmas.
  • When the kid playing Fritz in all performances and with no understudy got sick midway through the third of five performances, another kid had to step into the role with zero prior rehearsals, and that kid freaking NAILED it. The kid's wig was terrible, though. All the kid wigs are terrible.
The weirdest thing that happened, though, was the Thursday evening premiere performance. I dropped my kid off for her warm-up class, then figured I'd walk around campus for a while, get a little exercise before sitting down for two hours. 

My walk, though, was super weird. Normally, the university campus is bright and welcoming, and I've spent tons of evenings moseying along the paths around the buildings and through the woods and by the creek while feeling safe as houses. But on this night, campus most strongly resembled the opening seven minutes of a horror movie. I'd be walking along a brightly-lit path, then take another step and be in a pool of absolute darkness. Thirty feet ahead the lamps would be lit just like normal, then turn a corner and suddenly I was thrust back into darkness. I took my entire walk, but I was definitely about to be murdered by ghost-wolves or skeleton creek pirates the entire time.

I circled back to the parking garage to drop off my headphones and collect my ticket, then headed over to the theater. But it just kept being weird! As I was walking out of the theater's parking garage, whole well-dressed families kept walking in, clearly having just left that same theater. Was there some kind of early sensory-friendly Nutcracker for children that had just ended, I wondered? And maybe I didn't know about it because they didn't need their starring dancers, Mouse #2 or Officer #5?

And then as I got closer, I started seeing in some of the family groups small children wearing their hair in the very distinctive bun on the top of the head, hair slicked down smooth hairstyle that the program dictates for Soldiers and Angels. But... they were all leaving the theater, as they would if the show was over and their parents had picked them up from the check-out table next to the Green Room and they were headed home.

Had... I lost time? Was I, in fact, having a mental break? Had the ghost-wolves put me in a trance every time I walked through their darkened domain? Because indeed, the front of the theater was PACKED with people, all leaving. 

As I reached the theater, confused and wondering if I was safe to drive home or if my kid had brought her license or if I needed to call Matt and tell him I might have had a seizure and he needed to come get us, an usher popped her head out of the closest door and said, "Hi, are you here to see The Nutcracker?"

"Um, yes?" I said.

"It's been cancelled."

In that moment I was a parody of teenager textspeak, because I literally said, "Wut."

The bemused usher just sort of gestured around and said, "There's a power outage?"

And that was the moment that I actually looked at my own environment and noticed that oh, yes, there WAS a power outage! The theater was dark! No marquee lights, no spotlight on the two-storey Nutcracker statue in the lobby, DUH no street lights! I'd actually dropped my precious child off at a darkened theater and hadn't even noticed, had been walking in and out of the zone of the power outage for an hour and hadn't noticed the occasional building with blackened windows.

I went down to the basement to find my kid, forgetting that I own a pocket flashlight in the guise of a cell phone but still somehow by the grace of god not falling down a completely black flight of steps--yay, me!--to find SO many sobbing Soldiers and Angels at the check-out table, poor babies. My own kid was well enough, happy to have the assurance of the department that they'd find a way to re-run this canceled show.

And they did!

My teenager danced her heart out in all five performances, as well, this year, dividing her time between Team Mouse--


--and an Officer in the Nutcracker's army:


Neither role is meant to be particularly showy or special, but still. When you're an Officer, after all, you get to dance en pointe in front of an audience of thousands--

Suffolk Silhouette pointe shoes are the truth and the light!

--and when you're a Mouse, not only do you do a mousely pas de deux with your Mouse partner as one of only three people on the entire stage at the time (the third being that brat Clara, and all she's doing is sitting in bed so she barely counts), but you're a guaranteed kid favorite at every intermission walk-around:



And, of course, as always, the real treasure is the friends you make along the way, so even when they make you dance in pants and a coat and a hat, or a fat suit and a giant furry head, being a Nutcracker kid is still a guaranteed ticket to the best week of the year:


I chaperoned little kids backstage while getting to take an occasional break with my own kid who's now too big to need a chaperone--


--but mostly I hung out here and there, babysitting the world's heaviest ballet bag--

The kid isn't devoted to any one hairspray (I just buy her a big ole can of AquaNet seasonally), but MetaGrip bobby pins mean everything to her.

--watching a succession of curtains rise and fall--


--and having an occasional glass of pre-show wine while putting my butt in a seat for five Nutcrackers in 48 hours:

And now the kids' second-to-last Nutcracker year is over. It was messy and stressful and delightful. I love watching my kid dance, and I love seeing what a magical time she has with all of her sweet ballet friends. 

Just... knock on wood for me that all those shared mouse heads are lice free, okay?

Friday, December 2, 2022

Hot Chocolate and Captain Kangaroo: My Most Must-See, Trouble-Free Nutcracker Productions

Oh, just sprawling across a bank of institutional chairs and trimming one's pointe shoes with a pocket knife... you know, as one does!

Okay, did you traumatize your children or sprain yourself side-eyeing all of the weird and troubling Nutcracker productions, and now you need to look at something nice?

Yes, I might mostly fixate on the weird ones, but there ARE tons of wholesome Nutcracker productions out there in the world. Some productions are just charming and fun, with all sketchy innuendos and racist and sexist tropes deleted--you can watch these without having have any uncomfortable conversations with your children. Some productions have made especially thoughtful choices that demonstrate true equity and inclusion and mean you get to have GOOD conversations with your children--yay! And some productions stay weird, but also in a thoughtful, empowering, purposeful way--these aren't for children, necessarily, but they're interesting and entertaining for adults.

San Francisco Ballet: The Nutcracker


San Francisco Ballet boasts the first complete US production of The Nutcracker, performed in 1944. So watching any of their Nutcracker productions would be notable, but the 2004 production, in particular, choreographed by Helgi Tomasson, is super wholesome and adorable. For a pleasant change, Drosselmeyer does not give off a single insidious, creepy, villainous or sketch vibe of any sort, and actually manages to successfully play the role of an eccentric artist who's just excited to show off the cool stuff he makes, and then solicitously chaperones Clara on an overnight field trip and gets her back home safely. 

Here's a bootleg of the 2007 production on YouTube right now:


The production's conceit that Clara goes to visit the 1915 World's Fair is cute, and it makes the world showcase of Divertissements make sense. My favorite part is near the end, when the Sugar Plum Fairy briefly turns Clara into an adult ballerina so she can have a proper pas de deux with her Prince, and it's sweet but not romantic, and Clara wakes up as a child back in her bed again in the morning. 

Other fun moments: the Arabian female lead popping up out of a giant genie's bottle, a Prologue slideshow of iconic 1915 San Francisco sights, and ribbon dancing!


New York City Ballet: The Nutcracker (revised 2017)


The Nutcracker choreographed by George Balanchine is iconic, and after you've watched it once, ever afterwards you'll notice in every other production you ever see parts that were "borrowed" from his vision. Ahem.

Unfortunately, part of his iconic production that's often borrowed is more of that stupid racist imagery. Chinese Tea is particularly gross, with all the racist stereotypes and unflattering caricatures that you can imagine all just sort of stuffed into one very short number. For that reason, I don't recommend the pretty widely available 2011 New York City Ballet production, available on DVD and right now via this bootleg on YouTube:


Skim through the bootleg if it's still up, if you want, to check out the bullshit costume on the male lead of Chinese Tea. So unnecessary and offensive.

However, New York City ballet revised Chinese Tea in 2017, so now if you're lucky enough to be able to see it live, it will be uniformly delightful! I've long wanted to see this particular production, and I'm not even going to tell you how often I watch the Candy Cane dance from it:


It's part of the good vibes watchlist that I pull out when I'm bummed, along with Tom Holland lip syncing to Rihanna and the "How Far I'll Go" performance at the 2017 Academy Awards.

This updated Nutcracker, or excerpts from the DVD version, pairs with one of our favorite ballet books for children, A Very Young Dancer:


I read all of the Very Young series when I was a kid, and when my own kid was, herself, a very young dancer, I checked it out for her every year during Nutcracker season. It's about a child in the School of American Ballet who plays the role of Clara in the New York City Ballet's Nutcracker. It's written very simply, from the child's perspective, with a lot of black-and-white photos that make one feel like they're really getting a behind-the-scenes look at the school and the production. 

Joffrey Ballet: The Nutcracker


Joffrey Ballet seems to be very diligent about protecting their IP, so this is another production that I'm unable to find a bootleg for, nor can I find the 2017 PBS documentary, "Making a New American Nutcracker," about the Joffrey Ballet's production.

However, seeing this production remains on my bucket list because, as far as I know, the Joffrey Ballet is the only large-scale, prestigious company that includes a role in The Nutcracker deliberately designed for a child in their Adaptive Dance program:


I would LOVE to watch children with different abilities sharing a professional stage and performing a role that respects and includes them. I'd love to see every production behaving so thoughtfully with their casting.

Debbie Allen Dance Academy: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker


One year when we had Netflix for a month so we could catch up on Stranger Things (something that we clearly need to do again so I can watch Season 4!), the kids and I also watched Dance Dreams: Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, and now we super want to see it live someday. Will also did a biography project on Debbie Allen around that time, and Syd took some of her free online dance classes in the early days of Covid, so we're very much fans of Debbie Allen and her non-profit dance school.

Again, they do a great job protecting their IP (ahem), but they've got some approved clips of various numbers on YouTube.

Here's the Candy Cane dance:


Here's the Bollywood number:


Syd would be SO excited to learn a really fun and exciting genre like step, hip-hop, or Bollywood in concert with her classical ballet classes. It's just so cool what Debbie Allen is doing for the children in her program.

Captain Kangaroo: The Nutcracker Suite


So, if you've got little kids, this is the cutest thing EVER. In 1958, Bob Keeshan made a record in his Captain Kangaroo persona in which he narrated the story of The Nutcracker, including adding lyrics to some of the numbers, and it is charming! 

You can still buy the vinyl--



I didn't discover this album until the kids were too old to appreciate it, but if I'd known about it, I'd have spent every December of their baby through preschool years with it on constant repeat--it's THAT cute!

Somerville Theatre: The Slutcracker


Okay, you know this isn't for kids. But for an adult, what a way to work through the Nutcracker trauma of your youth and/or the Nutcracker trauma of your time parenting a child ballerina!

Somerville Theatre's The Slutcracker gets amazing reviews every year, and it looks like the most fun, lighthearted, irreverent spoof of everything sketch and suss in every Nutcracker production you've ever experienced. 

Once again, I do have a ton more Nutcracker productions that I could drone on and on about genuinely loving, but not only do I have Mouse milkmaid braids to do again in a few minutes, but some MAJOR wig drama went down during last night's dress rehearsal and so I also, as you can imagine, have about fourteen different chat threads to maintain and a lot of roasting to do.

Happy Opening Night, Friends! May the Mouse Army prevail!

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Sexy Coffee and Racist Tea: Weird and Troubling Nutcracker Productions


Once upon a time six years ago, there was a very tiny toy soldier bravely marching into battle under the direction of her Nutcracker General to fight off the Mouse hordes. 

Several promotions later, that child soldier has grown into an Officer, dancing her first role en pointe in our local university's production of The Nutcracker. But just between us, the Mice really have the more righteous cause. So don't tell the Nutcracker General, but his Officer will be spending half her time secretly as a Mouse, menacing that brat Clara and bravely fighting her sometimes-comrades, the soldiers. 

I think the Mice might have a real chance to win this year!

It's time, then, for my third-favorite holiday of the year: Nutcracker season! 

Here's a Fun Holiday Game For You: Find the Weirdest and Most Troubling Nutcracker Productions


If I was still working on a PhD (if only PhD programs could be twenty years long, because it took at least fifteen years before I thought of my first original research idea that would have made a good thesis, ahem. And now I get good thesis ideas on the daily!), I would 100% be writing my thesis on regional Nutcracker productions as cultural artifacts that reveal and complicate our society's understanding of gender, sexuality, and race, as well as the male gaze when directed at female-presenting adolescents. 

Particularly that last one, ahem. I thought our local university's production was a little heavy on the child predator grooming a future victim vibes, and then I watched literally any other Nutcracker ever choreographed. Most of the productions I've seen have been choreographed by men, and they seem to have a very hard time visualizing a relationship between a male and female, even one with a fifty-year age gap where the female is supposed to be, like, twelve, that's not somehow gross. 

Other Nutcracker cliches to look out for include how heteronormative and cisgender are the children's casting, costumes, props and choreography; is the "Arabian Coffee" dance meant to be "sexy" or not; and how racist does the "Chinese tea" dance present? Our local university's production is pretty racist; it was only a very few years ago that they stopped putting a Fu Manchu mustache on the male lead, recently enough that I still worry every year that it might show up again.

Here's an interesting mini-documentary about how Ballet West addressed racism in the tea dance a few years ago:


Joffrey Ballet now also does a dragon dance, and a nearby university's production invites a local martial arts school to do some sweet moves onstage during that number. 

Every November, then, in the lead-up to The Nutcracker, it's my personal mission to find the weirdest and/or most troubling productions. Partly, I just think it's interesting to see how different choreographers handle the exact same music and same basic plot. Partly, it's just me processing my sour grapes--like, sure, they make my kid dance in pants and ugly wigs every single year even when wearing that pretty party dress and having her hair in curls was her one dream and they 100% gave her height-related body dysmorphia for a while when she finally caught on that it was always the shortest girl who scored Clara, but hey, at least nobody's in blackface in OUR production! But partly, I also like to see how our various societal tropes are expressed in this one cultural commonality. You know, who's doing something different on purpose, and why? Who thought they were doing something different but it's just an even more overt expression of that same cliche? Who's tapped into a way to empower and include artists and audience, and who's actively fighting against equity and diversity?

Dutch National Ballet: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King


Many years ago during Nutcracker season, we found a Nutcracker production on YouTube that has, to date, the most bonkers plot twist imaginable: the Mice WIN the battle against the Nutcracker and take all of the child soldiers captive, including Clara's own brother, Fritz, who was commanding the toy soldier army. We were all, like, "Okay, that was weird," and moved onto the Snow Scene, after which Act 1 ends with Drosselmeyer leading Clara and the Nutcracker Prince into... his film projector, I think? There, for some reason, the Mouse King and his army appear again and this time the Nutcracker defeats him and now all the Divertissements dance while Clara and the Prince act cute and Drosselmeyer bops in and out occasionally like a matchmaking Gollum.

So we're just happily watching the Divertissements when Arabian begins with a guy cracking a whip, and then onto the stage stumble enslaved people wearing ragged clothing and chains. The male lead starts his dance, but then one of the enslaved men tries to escape and is dragged back by one leg and starts to dance this weirdly homoerotic S&M pas de deux with the Arabian lead and we all realize--OMG, that's FRITZ!!! Fritz has been sold into slavery to the Arabian dancer! He's got makeup bruises and his clothes are ripped and he's in manacles and now he's rolling around on the floor while the Arabian dancer thrusts over him and it is WILD. 

Every year since, we've tried to find this specific Nutcracker, but never ran across it again. But a couple of nights ago, in a completely hysterical fit of insomnia, I was all, "This is my mission. I will not rest until I have found this fever dream of a Nutcracker." I Googled various search terms involving Nutcracker, Fritz, and "abducted," "enslaved," and "kidnapped," etc. And finally, I cracked it! Welcome, Friends, to the Dutch National Ballet's production of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, choreographed by Toer van Schayk and Wayne Eagling. That YouTube version we watched absolutely was a bootleg of a 2011 filmed and streaming version (if your state university library has a Medici.tv subscription like mine does, you can watch it there), but at least right now you can also watch the 2021 production here

Also notable about this production: there's real ice skating in the Prologue and Apotheosis, Fritz tries to spy on his sister while she's changing clothes, and they skip Mother Ginger entirely.


Mariinsky Ballet: The Nutcracker


This is a fun one to watch, even before it gets super weird at the end, because the Mariinsky Ballet in St. Petersburg is famous for holding the very first production of The Nutcracker in 1892. Fun fact: audiences HATED IT! They thought, in particular, that it was so stupid to have children dancing in a professional production. Especially funny considering that child dancers are now The Nutcracker's biggest draw. The Mariinsky must have learned its lesson, because even though there are a few children's roles in this production, even Act I Masha and Fritz are played by full-grown adults acting like children. I love when they age Masha up for Act II so that she can do some proper dancing, but otherwise, full-grown adults acting alongside children while pretending to be their same age is a little Adam Sandler for my tastes.

This is the production choreographed in 2001 by Mikhail Chemiakin. At least right now, there's a 2007 production of Mariinsky Ballet's The Nutcracker available on YouTube:


Its portrayal starts off very comic and kid-friendly, with lots of funny noses and giant props and some pratfalls in Act I, and a low-key Voldemort-looking Drosselmeyer who obviously seethes with jealousy every time Masha and the Nutcracker Prince make goo-goo eyes at each other. Drosselmeyer also seems to maybe be in some kind of charge of the mice, who don't look very mouse-like and I really hope they're not actually caricatures of Jewish people. 

To get to the actual BONKERS part of the production, though, you have to hang on until the absolute last seconds of the performance, when Drosselmeyer raises a curtain to reveal that many of the characters are actually the treats in his candy shop. Masha and the Nutcracker Prince, who'd just finished up a joyful and romantic dance right before the curtain closed, are now revealed as the candy toppers on a giant wedding cake.

And y'all, crawling all over the cake and actively eating it as the curtain finally closes ARE THE MICE. THEY ARE LITERALLY GOING TO EAT MASHA AND THE PRINCE. 

My guess is that Drosselmeyer got fed up and figured hell, if he can't have Masha, might as well feed her to the mice.

Also notable about this production: the Arabian female lead is dressed in a skin-tight snakesuit and accompanied by snake puppets, and the poor Nutcracker Prince has to keep his horrifying Nutcracker mask on for an ungodly long time. There's also a DVD of a different Mariinsky Ballet Nutcracker production, originally choreographed by Vasily Vainonen in 1934, that's more wholesome than weird. Syd and I saw this in the theatre with her ballet buddies one year, and it's adorable.

New/Adventures: Nutcracker!


So, were you thinking that it might actually be easier in the long run just to traumatize your children with a terrifying Nutcracker production as young as possible so that they don't ask for expensive ballet lessons? 

Well, have I got the Nutcracker for you! 

Instead of casting children, let's cast adults who make big, childish movements and huge facial expressions in an uncanny valley version of childhood.

Instead of setting the scene in a wealthy household hosting an opulent Christmas party for all their rich friends, let's have Act I take place in an orphanage with a co-ed dormitory full of miserable adult-children. The grown men acting like little boys will also wear nightshirts that expose their legs to the upper thigh.

Instead of giving the kids dolls and drums and a random nutcracker, let's give them creepy shit like a ventriloquist's dummy and a working pistol. Fritz will literally shoot an orphan with the pistol, and the dummy will come to terrifying life just before the orphans revolt and one of them saws the head off of the headmaster, who is dressed in leather and wields some kind of stick... a riding crop, maybe?

Welcome to New/Adventure's Nutcracker!, choreographed in 1992 by Michael Bourne. It's not for children! 

Again, we watched this production several years ago on YouTube, in what must have been an excellent year for Nutcracker bootlegs, but right this second it's also available via a bootleg on Vimeo

If you don't watch the production with your kids, it's got some interesting moments that make it pretty fun. I can't completely figure out if it's Clara's little orphan buddy or the ventriloquist dummy who eventually is reincarnated as the Prince, but regardless, he's reincarnated shirtless, and their pas de deux would be charming and low-key sexy if the full-grown adult playing Clara didn't have to keep making those weird little kid faces and gestures. The overture to Act II that's normally danced by very little children playing angels or trees is danced by adults with wings wearing pajamas. Maybe they're dead orphans? It's also fun seeing how much sexual innuendo and camp and just plain bizarreness they can work into all of the Divertissements. 

In the end, Clara wakes back up in her orphanage, but who's hiding in her bed? Why, it's that hunky Prince again! 

Also notable about this production: Clara gets to dance blissfully with a whole troop of shirtless dudes, and she looks like she's having a fabulous time. The Arabian and Chinese dances aren't at all racist. And the Russian dance is, I think, a gay football theme?

Okay, I thought that I was going to monologue about all of my weird Nutcracker finds all in one place, but I actually have to go put a certain Mouse's hair up in milkmaid braids and then change into my black clothes for backstage and then drive her to campus for her stage rehearsal and then go chaperone the Party Scene children during dress rehearsal while my Mouse fights a battle and then check all the Party Scene kids back out to their parents and then collect my hopefully victorious Mouse and then drive us home and then eat Pizza Rolls in bed while watching hockey and then fall asleep without washing my face, so let's talk about weird Nutcrackers again later, okay?

And if you write your PhD thesis on the subject, send me a copy!

Wednesday, May 18, 2022

Ballet Photo Inspiration for the Enthusiastic Amateur Photographer of Sometimes Surly Teenaged Ballerinas

 

Railroad bridges make for terrific photo ops!

Why drag just one teenager out and about for an elaborate photo shoot session when you can drag TWO teenagers?!?

SO many reason why not, right? OMG SO MANY REASONS. The bickering, in stereo. The complaining, in stereo. The only break I get from them sniping at each other is when they join forces to snipe at ME.

But think of the cute sister photos I can take! Sister photos with one in a graduation gown and one in her ballet togs! 

And if the one sister is already there in her ballet togs, why not just go ahead and take some ballet photos?

I've dragged Syd out and about before to take ballet photos. Sometimes we're both really happy with them, and sometimes we end up with Syd mad that I got her pointe shoes dirty and me frustrated that I couldn't really think of cute photos to take and the ones I did think of didn't turn out cute. 

It's tough to be an amateur mommy photographer with severa myopia and an uncertain aesthetic!

This time round, I'm taking a lesson from my Senior photos shot list and making a similar shot list of ballet photos. I don't have as many specific locations in mind as I do for Will's photos, so hopefully I can assemble a large enough bank of inspiration photos that wherever we end up, I can flip through them and come up with something I want to try.

Here are some of my favorite inspo photos from my Ballet Photos Pinboard:

Teen Senior Pictures image via Treasure Layne Photography

I love this idea of using a bridge railing as a ballet barre:

Ballet Inspired Ames Senior Pictures via Amelia Renee Photography

Lexi Senior 18 Plano Senior via Clara Bella Photography


A Sunrise Ballerina Session in DC via Abby Grace

North Park Ballet Photos image via Jenna Hidinger Photography

I also got some pose ideas by scrolling through photos I've taken of Syd's various class observations and recitals over the years. It both gives me good ideas for poses in general and for poses that it would be cute to have Syd redo for comparison to her baby self:





I'm especially excited to have Syd recreate this one. Look at that teeny-tiny dancer!




Ballet photos are extra fun because you can also play around with clothing. I'm pretty sure my kid likes her emo garb and black Converse a ton better than she likes her burgundy leotard and pink tights! So I think some of the poses and locations I've got in mind will look even better with street clothing.

Just pray for me that I don't get her pointe shoes dirty again! She has literally NOT forgiven me for the last time that happened, even though I swear I just thought that since they were already filthy from dancing AND dead a little gravel wouldn't matter...

Thursday, December 23, 2021

Pointe Shoes and Twinkle Lights

 The other day I bribed my favorite ballerina into indulging me with a holiday photo shoot:


Syd badly needs a new pair of pointe shoes (something to add to the holiday to-do list!), and that is always my favorite time to commemorate how a well-used pair is meant to look.

A photo shoot with Gracie is generally all the inducement Syd needs to submit to her own set of photos. For each of the next images, imagine me in Photoshop painstakingly lassoing and filling in about a thousand cat hairs from her marley. 

Ah, well... the marley needed a wash anyway!


We then tried to get some photos of Jones, but turns out he's terrified of roll-up dance floors and twinkle lights.

So then Will and I tried to get some cute photos of Luna, and, well...

Back to pointe shoes and picking animal hair out in Photoshop, shall we?





We're not really a Christmas card or family holiday photo sort of people, so I think this will do for commemorating the season!

Saturday, May 8, 2021

When You Don't Want to Spend Thirty Bucks: How to DIY a Dance Skirt

 This tutorial was originally posted on Crafting a Green World.

My kid's ballet program generally isn't too outrageous when it comes to recital costumes. I know of other programs in our town that require two or more elaborate, brand-new costumes per recital, generally along the lines of rainbow-colored flapper outfits, or leotards with butt ruffles, that you're never going to get your kid to wear again, because no kid *really* wants to be a flapper for Halloween. I will tell you another time about my thoughts on the privilege of wealth that lets someone assume that just because you're sending your kid to dance class, you can blow a bunch of money on an elaborate dance recital costume that your kid will wear once. 

 Anyway, my kid's program usually doesn't pull that kind of crap, but this year they required that for the recital, every child wear a white leotard and white dance skirt. Why the children can't simply wear the uniform leotards and dance skirts that they already own, I don't know, other than the assumption that none of us would mind shelling out another fifty bucks just so we can have an even harder time picking our kid out of the group on stage. 

 A white leotard that meets ballet program specifications is twenty-plus bucks. That's a fair price for the fabric and pattern and technique that goes into sewing such a leotard, especially if you pretend that the person who sewed it was paid a fair price for their work. 

A white dance skirt that meets the ballet program specifications is thirty-plus bucks. That's... ridiculous. The thing is a half-yard of chiffon, a yard of 1/4" bias tape, and a rolled hem.

 Fortunately, something that simple is also simple to make! 

 You will need: 

  half-yard of chiffon. That's enough to make a dance skirt for a long-legged ten-year-old. Size up to get more length. 

  1/4" double-fold bias tape. If you have cotton fabric that matches the color of your chiffon, you can also make your own bias tape to save even more money. 

 1. Make the pattern for your dance skirt. If you already own or can borrow a dance skirt, all you have to do is trace it, adding an extra inch to the bottom and sides for the rolled hem. If you don't have a skirt to copy, though, your job is barely harder--as you can see in the image above, the dance skirt is nothing more than a u-shaped half-circle of fabric, longer in the middle and gradually tapering to a little shorter at both sides, bilaterally symmetrical. The longest part of the skirt should be the length that you want, plus an inch for hemming; the width of the skirt should be 1.5 to 2 times your waist measurement. The bias tape should be long enough to wrap around you and tie comfortably in the back.  

  2. Copy your pattern onto the fabric and cut it out. 

 3. Sew the sides and bottom with a rolled hem. Here's how to sew a rolled hem without a rolled hem foot for your sewing machine. Considering the learning curve that a rolled hem foot requires, it's not any quicker to use one if you don't plan to use it often. 

  4. Center the bias tape with the center of the top raw edge of the skirt; encase the raw edge in bias tape. Here's how to sew double-fold bias tape--it's even easier than sewing the rolled hem! When you're finished, your kid's ballet skirt will look just like all the other kids' ballet skirts-- 

 --so be sure and sit close to the stage, so you can pick her out from all the other kids in white!