New Costume?

You know we're officially into the Nutcracker season when Steven starts wearing his special fleece candy cane warmup suit.


It must not only keep him warm, but also give him amazing jumping-through-hoop powers. The guys started rehearsing the Candy Cane role today, so we'll be seeing a lot of men hanging around with hula hoops after class, working on folding themselves in half fast enough in the air to whip through the hoop twice before landing. It's pretty fun to watch!

Actually, seeing everyone start working on the old familiar steps has made me think about how
as well as we know the Nutcracker choreography, that doesn't make it any less challenging. Each of the divertissment in Act 2 has its own tricky steps or moments. It's interesting to continue exploring the choreography year after year, seeing how it feels as we continually grow and evolve as dancers. Nutcracker is also a unique opportunity to consider how to expand upon the work you've done in previous seasons. It would be too stultifying to simply do it the same, again and again, so each year I like to figure out ways to do certain things differently--- how to do the same steps, but in a more interesting way, for both me and the audiences.