Nutcracker on Fire
Nutcracker season is, by definition, hectic. There are casting drama moments where the official company cast list is taken town and changed three times in one day. There are costume fittings and refittings and new costumes to be made because there's no way two people with a foot in height difference are fitting into the same cavalier costume. There's the chance that the orchestra will play something way too fast or way too slow and your muscle memory will take over anyway and everything will look awful.
It gets more hectic when your studio and town and home are surrounded by the fourth largest wildfire in California history and the flames happen to be seven miles from your house and your theater is in a voluntary evacuation zone.
But the show must go on.
At least, the Sunday show, because the fire got even closer on Friday night and the Saturday shows were been cancelled.
Five girls in our pro-track program were kept away by smoke and asthma or by concerned parents even during the rehearsal process, and I totally know where they're coming from. I was fielding both requests from my mom that I fly home early--change the flight plan and just head over to Maui before they got there, as well as requests from my good friend that I just fly to LAX and she would drive up from San Diego and get me.
While San Diego was almost on fire at the time, it was less of an issue than the Thomas Fire in Ventura.
Our main teacher/ballet mistress's Ventura Nutcracker was postponed a week and so that means she wasn't really there to rehearse us or oversee our spacing, which means we were all sort of guessing the details of the choreography, but combined, I think the twelve of us knew the whole dance and the introduction and the finale. We decided that we'd survive. We wore N95 breathing masks in class and took constant water breaks and didn't jump, but we survived.
The Granada Theater in Santa Barbara is the nicest theater that I can remember. I emphasize this because I have full run of the Granada but I'm 90% sure that Seattle's McCaw Hall is newer, nicer, and bigger. I was just restricted to one singular dressing room (though we were allowed to stand in the dressing room doorway and look into the hall sometimes). The Granada backstage is spacious, bright, and has enough room for a ballet company. However, it doesn't necessarily have enough room for a ballet company plus trainees plus all the students in the production, which means the boys will change in a supply closet and the little little girls change in the warm up room.
We received news that the Sunday show would be on at about 9am Sunday morning. None of the girls in my class had expected to perform, and so we dragged ourselves out of bed and sped back from LA and took class onstage and jumped into our costumes to put on the opening and closing show of State Street Ballet's Nutcracker.
When I studied abroad in France, I saw Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris in Swan Lake during a workers' strike. I remarked on the energy of the dancers and the audience. While sitting in the Opera Bastille, never in a million years did I think that I would participate in a performance with the same atmosphere, but standing onstage, next to dancers who had been evacuated until right before call time, dancing for a rather full theater who cheered on their feet for the performers, I was flooded with a euphoria that can only be experienced after performing despite chaos. I am so incredibly grateful that I was able to perform in the one Nutcracker this year and I look forward to State Street's many, many productions in years to come.
It gets more hectic when your studio and town and home are surrounded by the fourth largest wildfire in California history and the flames happen to be seven miles from your house and your theater is in a voluntary evacuation zone.
But the show must go on.
At least, the Sunday show, because the fire got even closer on Friday night and the Saturday shows were been cancelled.
Five girls in our pro-track program were kept away by smoke and asthma or by concerned parents even during the rehearsal process, and I totally know where they're coming from. I was fielding both requests from my mom that I fly home early--change the flight plan and just head over to Maui before they got there, as well as requests from my good friend that I just fly to LAX and she would drive up from San Diego and get me.
While San Diego was almost on fire at the time, it was less of an issue than the Thomas Fire in Ventura.
Our main teacher/ballet mistress's Ventura Nutcracker was postponed a week and so that means she wasn't really there to rehearse us or oversee our spacing, which means we were all sort of guessing the details of the choreography, but combined, I think the twelve of us knew the whole dance and the introduction and the finale. We decided that we'd survive. We wore N95 breathing masks in class and took constant water breaks and didn't jump, but we survived.
The Granada Theater in Santa Barbara is the nicest theater that I can remember. I emphasize this because I have full run of the Granada but I'm 90% sure that Seattle's McCaw Hall is newer, nicer, and bigger. I was just restricted to one singular dressing room (though we were allowed to stand in the dressing room doorway and look into the hall sometimes). The Granada backstage is spacious, bright, and has enough room for a ballet company. However, it doesn't necessarily have enough room for a ballet company plus trainees plus all the students in the production, which means the boys will change in a supply closet and the little little girls change in the warm up room.
We received news that the Sunday show would be on at about 9am Sunday morning. None of the girls in my class had expected to perform, and so we dragged ourselves out of bed and sped back from LA and took class onstage and jumped into our costumes to put on the opening and closing show of State Street Ballet's Nutcracker.
When I studied abroad in France, I saw Ballet de l'Opéra national de Paris in Swan Lake during a workers' strike. I remarked on the energy of the dancers and the audience. While sitting in the Opera Bastille, never in a million years did I think that I would participate in a performance with the same atmosphere, but standing onstage, next to dancers who had been evacuated until right before call time, dancing for a rather full theater who cheered on their feet for the performers, I was flooded with a euphoria that can only be experienced after performing despite chaos. I am so incredibly grateful that I was able to perform in the one Nutcracker this year and I look forward to State Street's many, many productions in years to come.
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