Nutcracker

Natasha and I went to see the Nutcracker last weekend.  Mid-February does seem a little late for this particular ballet, but that is when it was playing in Tbilisi, and I really wanted to take the girls.  We ended up giving away two of our tickets because poor Z came down with the pox, so it was a mommy-and-me night for me and my oldest.

She sat on my lap during the ballet because, although tall for a 4-year-old, she is still too short to see while seated in those comfy blue chairs.

She was enraptured for the entire first act and a good chunk of the second.  The show was more or less what I expected, having seen this ballet a few times.  The production did put a national twist on it by clothing the Coffee dancers in traditional clothing and having them do Georgian-style dancing.

Around the Sugar Plum Fairy's third entrance, N decided enough was enough, and we went home.  I didn't really blame her - I always felt like the Sugar Plum Fairy's repeat appearances were actually the most boring part of the whole ballet.  I much prefer all the dancers before her, especially the Tea dancers and the Trepak dancers.

This was Natasha's favorite part:

And N doing some reenactment on the way to the car.

Ballet bunnies

A couple weeks ago, the girls' ballet class performed a short dance to the Dance of the Snowflakes from the Nutcracker.  Natasha is one of the more advanced dancers in the class (I swear, this is what the teacher told me -I'm not just bragging), and so she was supposed to be a snowflake.  But she was sick and missed three rehearsals.  Since she didn't have time to learn the snowflake dance, the teacher had her be a bunny instead (Zoia missed a few rehearsals too, but she was always destined for bunny-dom).

Neither girl was very pleased about this, as the snowflakes got to wear proper tutus and the bunnies had to wear ears and made-by-me bunny tails.  I thought they looked adorable but they were very grumpy.  We used the camera to take video (which I can't get to upload for some reason) during the performance, so all I have is this photo of my reluctant rabbits.  I was so proud of the tails (which I made out of tulle), but they hated them :(