December 17, 2009

Happy Holidays!


Wouldn't be the holiday season without a little Nutcracker! I heard it playing in the store yesterday. Sure, there are Nutcracker ballets playing all over the place, but I liked my Sugar Plum Fairies a little frosty.

Nutcracker On Ice!

And I'll tell you why!

We had a good thing going .... I think the producer/choreographer cut some forty minutes out of the original musical score to keep the show moving along.

Then we started with the "children" in the Opening scene acting like real children, stealing presents, shoving their siblings around, and skating away from their moms. Usually they upstaged the Nutcracker himself.



To spice things up for the dads forced to watch the show, the Arabian number, during the Land of the Sweets, featured two female skaters backing up the soloist, with costumes straight out of "I Dream Of Jeannie".

The Dance of the Reed Flutes - sometimes called Petit Fours - became an all-out comedy, complete with competing diva cupcakes pushing and shoving each other right off the ice. The kids loved it.



And then for a finale, we had Brian Orser doing a backflip. The audience loved that too.

We certainly didn't follow the tradition, but we did entertain! And isn't that what the holidays are all about?

3 comments:

Alexandra said...

This is great-- we just finished out annual Nutcracker on Ice with our community skating school-- 220 skaters in an annual tradition. Now I want to do the "Flutes" as a comedy act next year! That's great.

Ice Charades said...

I'm the one with my nose to the ice and it was a lot of fun to do. Our choreography evolved, so by the end of the tour, they added two stagehands standing my the curtain to catch me as I went flying off the set.

Ice Mom said...

Your ice Nutcracker sounds more fun than listening to Ice Dad snore at the ballet performance.