Ballet with Butterfly Wings


My brother is lovely. He's hairy, too. But he's lovely just the same. And he's especially lovely because he treated Rhiannon to her first ballet, a professional performance of The Nutcracker at the Phoenix Symphony Hall, the matinée show on Sunday, the Ides of December, where Caesar might have been stabbed 32 times by an icicle had the conspirators not waited so long and Rome had actually been in the Alps. Ah, history. But I digress.

We had great seats: Row 26 in the orhestra, stage right. We could see everything perfectly (but Rhiannon insisted on looking at the dancers' heads through our binoculars). The accoustics were grand, the dancers flawless, atheletic, and full of grace, the symphony pitch-perfect, the audience young.

Rhiannon took ballet class for a semester when she was three but got kicked out for...um...wanting to dance. Her teacher was a militant 15yo. Now, I'm all for discipline, but 3yo kids should be allowed to play and be encouraged to dance and express themselves so that when they are older, they do not become jaded, 15yo tyrants who think they are North Korean gymnastics coaches. But I digress.

Rhiannon was amped to go. We bought her a new, black velvet dress with silver sparkles. She wore her white tights and black shoes with silver and pearls. Around her neck she through a pink velvet cape, and on her head a silver (plastic) tiara. I took her for a haircut the day before, and she had a bath and everything. In the South, she would have been called a debutante, albeit about ten years' too early for that rite of passage. She looked gorgeous, and she insisted on carrying herself in a regal manner, speaking in clipped sentences with an affected English accent. That is how all princesses talk, you know.

So off we went, and when we arrived, much to Rhiannon's horror, we saw hundreds of girls, ages three and up, ALL dressed like something out of Cinderella's Ball, an entire auditorium full of cute, blond things speaking in clipped sentences with English accents. As parents, we all laughed and let the girls go do their thing.

Fifteen minutes prior to curtain, we were all treated to the story of the Nutcracker as dramatically interpreted by a local television newswoman. to her left was seated a real-live ballerina, one of the Sugarplum Fairies. The kids were quiet and listened, but all the little eyes were on the dancer. When the story concluded, Rhiannon pushed her way through the crowds of adoring children in order to give the ballerina a hug. The dancer was surprised and smiled, and then it was time to find our seats.

At the front of the stage was a large screen upon which was displayed a projection of snowflakes on a blue backdrop. Rhiannon thought she was in a rather posh movie theater, and was amazed when I pointed to the conductor and told her that there was an entire orchestra in the pit. The overture started, and Rhiannon watched the baton move up and down, and bobbed along to the music.

For those of you whom are fuzzy with what happens when in this ballet, Act I features the Christmas party where the eccentric uncle gifts his niece, Clara, the nutcracker, after which she falls asleep downstairs on the couch and awakens in the midst of a fight between the armies of good and the evil army of King Rat. The first half of the first act did drag a bit, and five minutes into the performance, Rhiannon turns to me and loudly whispers:

"DAD!"

"Yes, Rhiannon?"

"When do they talk?"

"They don't talk, Rhiannon. This is a ballet."

"NO! This is a PLAY!"

"Well, kind of. But instead of talking, the people tell the story with dance."

"Oh."

And Rhiannon temporarily settled into a long, winter's nap. But her interest was aroused again by the battle against King Rat, played by a dancer wearing an enormous rat costume with an enormous butt and glowing, red, electric eyes. The death scene included lots of flops and spasms and arms akimbo. Then the lights came up and we rose for intermission.

After dosing Rhiannon with candy (she had refused to eat anything earlier in the day and I had brought hard candy in case we had coughing fits), we returned to our seats for Act II which is much better suited to children (and parents) with short attention spans. Act II features lots and lots of dancing in two- and four-minute chunks by dancers in fantastical imaginings of what Spanish (Rhiannon insisted they were Scottish dancers), Russian, and Chinese people actually wore at the time in which the Nutcracker was set (c. 1947...kidding).

Rhiannon sat on my lap for most of Act II, and at the end, with the Ice King and Ice Queen are finishing their dance, and all of the other dancers come into the scene, and the music reaches the crescendo of the entire performance, Rhiannon starts waving her arms as if in religious ecstasy, nearly smacking the old woman next to me in the face. I half expect Rhiannon to be shouting "Hallelujah!", but instead she is singing in her falsetto voice (but not sotto voce) as loud as she can, in tune with the orchestra until the cymbals crash and the timpanis sound and then it's dark again as we are returned to where Clara sleeps.

Rhiannon settles down then and watches as Clara awakens, nutcracker in her hands, and it's over and we are all clapping and Rhiannon is thrilled to see everyone come back out onto the stage to wave and bow.

Mom and I ask Rhiannon what she liked best about the show.

"I liked all the parts the best."

Pause.

"Can we go get pizza now?"

Rhiannon. First-position Cute.

Andrew (Papa)