Nutcracker 2013.

The nuttiness that is The Nutcracker has come to a close for this year!! Ellie was awesome!!! It was a Nutcracker week from start to finish. Dress rehearsal Monday afternoon until 10:30 PM. Then performances Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, and in bed after 11:00 both nights. Then...last minute invite to perform at The festival of The Trees in Salt Lake on Thursday....so no school for Ell Thursday. And finally, cast party Friday night for a few hours. She was pretty worn out after rehearsal Monday night, but took the rest of the week in stride and never stopped flitting about.
Ellie had three roles this year in the Nutcracker. All three parts took place during Act 2, which is a switch from the past three years. So far she has always been in Act 1 playing a party girl, Clara's little sister, and the baby mouse. This first role was the "Candy Cane" dance, better known as Russian.  I think she looks the part! Beautiful!

Her partner was her friend Addi H. and they were fabulous! Here they are coming off their round-off back-handsprings. 

It was a super energetic number with some serious applause and cheers from the crowd! Russian is always such a fun number for the audience!

 

 

She also played an angel. The angels lead Clara into the wonderland of her dream, along with the ladies in waiting.

 

Ellie was the oldest, and lead angel, along with London B. It was so fun for her to have a bunch of little angels look to her for direction and Ellie had fun entertaining them while they waited. 

Her third role was that of a "Snake Charmer", better known as the Arabian dance. There were three dancers charming the snake, with Ellie as the one who played the flute to charm the snake out of her basket. 

 

Here the snake dances out of the basket as Ellie "plays' the flute.

In some pics Ellie's costume looks huge....because it WAS! But most of the time you couldn't tell. Their costumes had a shipping issue and arrived via UPS just hours before the first show. She didn't even have it for rehearsal. She literally put it on for the first time 30 minutes before the show. So...there was no altering of the costume. Ellie didn't mind at all. For one night she pulled up the legs, left them down for the next night. it worked out fine. Only moms freak out about these things. Thank goodness!!

 

 

 

 

Such a great Nutcracker season for this ballerina girl! She totally thinks it was worth all the Saturday practices and hours in rehearsal. She loved the whole experience....so THAT makes it more than worth it to me!! You were awesome Ellie girl!