I was in the Nutcracker four times when I was a kid - when I was 8, 10, 11, and 12. This meant that I spent every Sunday afternoon for most of Fall rehearsing. (I can't believe my mom's patience and dedication, driving me down to the studio on a sketchy corner of some Peachtree Street all the time.)
We rehearsed for what felt like months, years. The scenes - the performances themselves - seemed like they took half an hour. I mean that in a good way. The first two years, I was one of the toy soldiers. Our scene felt like a battle. It was action packed - it must have gone on and on, right?
The first year, I was the Littlest Soldier - the drummer. I was on stage the longest - the second soldier to move and the last soldier to leave the scene. I was the only soldier not carried off my a mouse; I stayed to the bitter end and pulled the Rat King's tail to distract him just long enough that the Nutcracker could get the upper hand. In the moment, and in my memory, it seemed like this scene took at least 20 minutes. I mean, it was a battle - it had to be long, right?
According to my Nutcracker CD, this scene is 3 minutes and 21 seconds.
Oddly enough, the scene that I felt was shorter, the opening of the second act where I played and angel two years in a row, is 3 seconds longer.
Now granted, despite the shortness of these scenes, I was on stage quite a bit. The first year I performed, there were 2 children's casts who alternated performances. I think each cast performed a total of about 20 times. By my last year, more performances and more casts were added - 4 children's casts in total each performing about 10 times.
As you might imagine, these shows took up a large portion of my December (in addition to the rehearsals taking up most of the Fall). There were even a couple days each year that I got to miss school, as there were several matinee performances on school days specifically for local school field trips.
The last year that I was in The Nutcracker, my younger sister was also in the show. She was 8 that year - the minimum age for the children performers with the Atlanta Ballet at the time. She actually was onstage for the half-hour that I perceived my scene to last. She was one of the Party Children, and if I thought my time was taken up by the show, hers was more-so. In addition to her longer scene, her hairdo took about 2 hours.
We were in the Nutcracker the last year that The Atlanta Ballet did the Balanchine version - the version that is still performed by the New York City Ballet. The next year, neither of us got in. We were devastated. There was a rumor that they weren't casting kids who had been in the old version. I don't know if it's true, but we comforted ourselves with both that idea, and the fact that the show we loved just wouldn't be the same now, so maybe it was better to remember it the way it had been.
4 years. Approximately 60 performances. 3 minutes on stage each time. That doesn't sound like a lot in the grand scheme of things. But it was such an integral part of Christmas for me, and the memories are still so bright. I could probably still follow most of my choreography for each scene, and, for that matter, some of the other scenes that I just watched.
Pick up your feet. Listen for your cue. It's Christmas - the time when memories and magic happen.
Behold 12-year-old me and my 8-year-old sister in all our giant-sweatshirted mid-90’s glory! Notice her curls. My mom had to redo her hair after every performance; she wore curlers to school sometimes.