Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Dancing The Nutcracker with the Moscow Classical Ballet

In December, I was lucky enough to dance with the Moscow Classical Ballet!

The Moscow Classical Ballet is a ballet company from Russia. They have won 15 Gold medals for their performances and come to the US every year with "The Nutcracker".

"The Nutcracker" Ballet is based on a German fairy tale and is written by the Russian composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky.

Tchaikovsky lived from 1840 to 1893 and followed a musical carrer against the will of his parents. I am very happy he did, because I really like his music!
He composed symphonies, operas, chamber music and famous ballets like "Sleeping Beauty", "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker".


Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky






 The Moscow Ballet  needed girls for a Christmas scene and 12 girls from my dance school were picked to dance with them. I was so excited to be one of them!
   Eight of us played little girls in fancy dresses and 4 of us played mice. I was picked as a little girl.
   We did not have a lot of practice time and needed a translator, because everyone spoke Russian.
  There were Russian signs everywhere, so the dancers would know where to go backstage.





I  adored the ballerina who was assigned to be my mom on stage. She spoke English and helped to ease the butterflies in my stomach.



My stage mom and I


Our parts were small, but performing with world class dancers was thrilling! I don't even remember seeing the audience!

My real mom helped us girls to get ready for the show and watched from backstage.




View from backstage



Some people say that ballet is easy, but everything in ballet is supposed to hurt!
I started two years ago, it is hard work, but I really love it. My ballet teacher is always sweet and patient and makes me want to practice all the time. She says the more you work on becoming a better dancer, the less it hurts.
My dream is to be "en pointe" ( dancing on the tip of your toes wearing special pointe shoes), but it will take me another three years to earn this special privilege.



En Pointe


Maybe I can be a prima ballerina one day!



Ballet Barre Practice

First Testing




What's your passion?