The Nutcracker

Beau and I went to see The Nutcracker ballet at the Eisemann Center last weekend. This ballet is truly one of my fondest memories of Christmas time and I really want to make this a tradition with my family as my Mom made it for us. I was actually in the ballet for three years when I was young in Corpus (shout out to all the mice and angels out there!) and that's when I really fell in love with it. Everything - the storyline, the music, the beautiful costumes and of course the dancing! So I was really excited to take Beau - it was his first ballet ever and he said he really liked it! I've always thought it kind of drags toward the end of the Walt of the Flowers but otherwise, it kept his attention, which made it a success! He even bought me a gorgeous Nutcracker for our house - I kind of want to keep him up year round ;-)

This particular performance is done by a pre-professional ballet and they are all local so of course it's not going to be like a performance by one of the professional international companies but it was done very well for a local group!

In case you are looking for a recommendation on this ballet, here's my take:

Wins

• Nice, intimate theatre
• Great prices
• Really nice costumes
• Mother Ginger - anytime they make her really big where the kids hide under her dress is a big win for me!
• Precious little girls! Some of the cutest angels and mice I've ever seen :)

Not so wins

• TINY Nutcracker dancer! Seriously he was shorter than Clara, which doesn't make for a very dramatic fight with the Rat King
• Dinner Party Scene - it was nice but they didn't have many adults, maybe 6 couples. Which makes it difficult to explain the 40+ kids on stage (waaaaay too many). And I have always liked when the couples dance - they always had a lot of adults in the one in Corpus :)
• Some contemporary twists - I'm uber sensitive about people jacking with traditional pieces of work. So a partial booty dance by the Rat King was a big miss for me
• The Russian Dance - we were robbed! My favorite part is the male dancer(s) like the ones in this video but this one just had 2 female dancers. It's just not the same.
• There was no orchestra :( The sound system was amazing and I didn't even notice after a while but it's just cooler to have the musicians there with you

So there you have it. I really didn't intend to critique this ballet but it looks like I did. I recommend it for an easy, fun night out. However, I really want to do the Moscow Ballet's Russian Nutcracker next year! We passed on it this year since their Dallas stop was the weekend before Thanksgiving and I refuse to get THAT in to Christmas before Thanksgiving!