Nutcracker

So I took the girls to see the Nutcracker tonight. It was nice. They love dancing but don't take lessons ($$, schedules, and moving all the time make that tricky), and have always wanted to see the Nutcracker. I've seen it once before, and I have to admit that while parts of this performance were abbreviated or modified for the specific production group, this was easier to watch. The cast had a nice sense of interaction/camaraderie that pulled you in (also, this Clara was not anorexic, like the other one, whose ribs I could count from the balcony of BYU's DeJong concert hall). It's a good show to put on because there's something for every level, from the tinies all the way up to full, professional-level dancers. Naturally, this being my town, we had a well-accomplished grandmother dancing, and I'm sure the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Pas de Deux people probably each had six kids or something. There was one change I wondered at (but it's been a while, and I've only ever seen it once before)--isn't Clara supposed to save the Nutcracker by throwing her shoe at the mouse king? That never happened, which was odd, since plotwise, isn't that the reason the Nutcracker takes Clara to his candy kingdom, anyhow? To say thanks for rescuing him? Ah, well--the original story has a bizarre plot, anyhow.

I have a feeling we'll be seeing a lot of little girls flitting around the house on their toes in the weeks to come...