A Long Weekend Onstage

It has been a busy few days. All four of us were on-stage together over the weekend in the Sussex Ballet production of The Nutcracker. This entailed dress and tech rehearsals on Wednesday and Thursday evenings and performances on Friday and Saturday evenings and on Sunday afternoon. Those rehearsals were long and tiring, but performances are great fun.

Christina, who is becoming a very good dancer, took the lead role of Clara for the Friday and Saturday performances. She did a lovely job. Colleen is a seasoned and dependable member of the corps de ballet and took some featured spots on Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, Colleen danced the solo "Arabian" dance and hit an absolute home-run. We were terribly proud of both our girls.

It's a great treat, by the way, to watch your daughters perform from on-stage with them. I had to be careful, at times, to keep from getting too misty-eyed. Wouldn't have worked for the minor character I played.

And it is fascinating to watch a Ballet from backstage. What is carefully choreographed grace and beauty on-stage is equally carefully choreographed chaos offstage.

Above all, it was great fun to get to know better a wonderful group of young people; some of them we've known since they were toddlers, others we have just met. All of them are great kids.

So I am tired, but happy.