The Season of Hard Work

In dance, especially ballet, dancers must learn to focus on themselves, and how they can get better. They look at their feet, and wonder what they can do to make their turn out better. Seeing their arms, they try their hardest to make them looks soft and elegant. They watch their grand jetes, and contemplate how to make them more of a split.

I admit that I have done this numerous times. I usually only really care about how I am doing and how I can become more advanced. That is why it's so interesting to just observe other dancers. These are people who care a lot about dance and to them, it's an important part of their life. Watching them, I can see them lose themselves, forget about all of their worries, and focus solely on dance. It's really a beautiful thing.

Winter is rapidly approaching, and that means that the Nutcracker Ballet is coming too. Now I don't know how many of you have heard the story of the Nutcracker, but I'll give you the run down:

A girl named Clara is putting on a Christmas party and her Uncle (or Aunt, in our case) Drosselmeyer comes to give out gifts. He pulls out a couple dolls for some kids, a couple clowns for other kids, and a nutcracker for Clara. Then he makes all of the toys come to life to dance for the party. When the Nutcracker is dancing, one child is so jealous of Clara's beautiful toy that they run up and break the Nutcracker, but Drosselmeyer fixes it.

The party continues, but soon, the children grow tired and go home. Clara also goes to bed, but wakes up at midnight to find a group of giant mice that try to attack her. Before they can get to her, the mice are met by an army of life-sized toy soldiers, led by her Nutcracker. The Mouse Queen and the Nutcracker fight, and the Nutcracker ends up killing the Mouse Queen. As a reward, Drosselmeyer takes Clara and her Nutcracker to the Land of Snow to watch the Snow Queen and her snowflakes dance.

The Snow Queen takes them to the Land of Sweets where they meet the Dew Fairy and the Sugar Plum Fairy. After the Nutcracker recounts the fight, they arrange for the people of the land to dance for them as they eat: chocolate, a Spanish dance; coffee, an Arabian dance; and tea, a Chinese dance. They are also welcomed to dances by the Russians, the Merlitons, the court jesters, Mother Ginger and her children, the Dew Fairy and her corps, and the Sugar Plum Fairy and her corps. They then join the whole land in a final waltz. At the very end, Clara learns that she is asleep and has to wake up. She is bid farewell by the whole land, and wakes up to find her Nutcracker beside her, once again a small toy.

Every other year, my dance studio puts on the Nutcracker Ballet as our Christmas performance. It's one of the most hectic times of the year at my studio because not only do we have the Nutcracker to perform, but we also do a small Halloween performance at a pumpkin patch, as well. So overall, this season is quite a busy one for Jenny's Studio of Dance.

Although we might be very busy with the Halloween show and the Nutcracker performance, it's still important to work on technique. It's interesting to see how before special parts are cast, people work really hard to show how advanced they are, and how perfect they would be for one of these coveted roles. But after lead roles are announced, people stop trying. They don't feel the need to try their hardest because either they got the part they wanted or the didn't. (Observation: Sept 22) The reason I say this is because I noticed Sarah, one of the girls in some of my dance classes. When the teachers were still thinking about roles, Sarah would always try her best. She may not have been the best, but she would always try. When she was cast as the Head Court Jester, instead of a "Queen" or a "Fairy", I could see a difference in how she worked. She didn't try anymore, got more and more corrections, had bent knees, sickled toes, just didn't seem to work as hard anymore. It's just sad to me, that people only seem to try in order to get huge benefits, instead of working hard because they want to.