Something that most of you online don’t know about me is that I took dance lessons for years. I started with ballet when I was 4, and continued taking ballet until I was 15 or 16. I also took several years of tab, jazz, and even acrobatics. But ballet was my thing. When I was in middle school, I got to go en pointe for the first time, and I loved it. Ballet, and other dance, although it looks easy, requires muscles most people don’t even know they have. It’s a fantastic workout.

Because of my interest in ballet, my mother started taking me to see the Nutcracker ballet each year. A local theater by the name of Ruth Eckerd Hall always had the Nutcracker every year at Christmas, and it was always a wonderful troupe, usually the Russian ballet, who would perform. Of course, if you’ve ever seen the Nutcracker, you know that there are quite a few parts for children, and children don’t usually travel with a professional ballet company. Because of this, each town that the Nutcracker traveled to would hold Nutcracker auditions a few months before the show for children who wished to join the show when it came to town. I was never one who tried out, I was quite content to keep performing on a much smaller stage. I did perform a solo though, when I was in high school, at the performance of my own dance troupe, to music from the Nutcracker. I loved it that much! (I love most of Tchaikovsky’s work). I used the piece known as the “Chinese Dance”, because the choreography in the real ballet was a favorite of mine. I did my own choreography of course, but the music inspired me.

I haven’t seen the show in years now, but my mother takes MY little girls to see it each year. I should join them sometime! When I hear the music, it always reminds me of Christmas and my solo.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 7th, 2007 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Colleen, Exercise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.