The Nutcracker

Last week we attended the Let's Dance Studio production of Frozen.  This week; however, it was our girls' turn to perform in the Northern Plains annual Christmas Production: The Nutcracker.  Among dancers, The Nutcracker is probably the best known production in the world, and moving up through the ranks is part of each dancers individual dancing saga.  For the past two years, our girls have cried over being out of town on audition weekend.  As a result, this year we canceled all travel plans and worked our Fall schedule around the Production.  The girls were ecstatic!  They gave it their all in their first dance audition, and each girl received a part in the ballet.  Emma was one of the four little cherubs, and Madison was cast as the lone trumpeter.  As we made the decision long ago not to perform or play sports on Sunday, we had to make a special request to have our girls be double cast.  This was no big deal for Emma because many of the little girls are double cast.  As you get older; however, double casting becomes a bigger issue.  Still, the dance studio did their best to accommodate us, and instead of making Maddi one of the soldiers, they gave her the special role of trumpeter and split her role between the two casts.  It was a great blessing, and I hope they will continue to work with us as the girls progress in their dance career.  Here are the girls' group and individual photos.

And here are the girls greeting their proud family members and friends after the show.  As a special surprise for the girls, we flew in both of their Grandmothers to attend the show.  They could both only come for the weekend, but the girls were so tickled that they could be in the audience.  They also loved all of the flowers and souvenirs given to commemorate their performance.  I think for a little while they were both wondering if dance class was worth while, but being on stage definitely gave them the performing bug. Therefore, don't be surprised if this becomes a now annual post with only the slight variation of roles.