The Nutcracker in Petersburg

Shelley, Amy, and I went to see the performance of The Nutcracker presented by the local dance studio. It was a full house -- there were only a few isolated seats empty in the auditorium.

The previous two performances that I saw were by the Oregon Ballet Theatre a couple years back, and one performed by the San Francisco Ballet nearly fifteen years ago.

Of the three performances that I recall in my memory, I think by far, tonight's performance was the most, truly enjoyable one. It's almost absurd to compare this with the professional performances, but it's hard not to. When it comes to technical difficulty, precision, and accuracy; and the elaborateness of the costumes and the sets -- there is absolutely no comparison. The million dollar budgets of the professional companies win hands down.

But the absolute love and joy of performing that shows through -- I think that our local company can stand proudly with the world's best.

I didn't think The Nutcracker was supposed to be comedy, but there were certainly places in tonight's performance that elicited laughter from the audience. Most of it, I'm quite sure, was not intentionally that way. But when you've got a bunch of wee little kids (perhaps as young as 3 or 4 years old) as part of the choreography, the unexpected has to be expected. They run when they're supposed to sway, they sway in all different directions, and when going off stage, they forget to take their props with them and so one of them runs back on stage to pick up his prop. Or, how many Nutcracker performances include a dance to the song, O Christmas Tree?

Amy, who in the past has not shown too much enjoyment of ballet type performances, agreed that tonight's was enjoyable. I guess it's the magic and charm of a small town. We know the performers, and we can identify, if just a bit, with them as they perform. Strangely enough, it may be the imperfections that create the "magic."

What wasn't so magical was afterwards, going out to the car (borrowed) to go back home, it wouldn't start. I immediately realized that I had left the lights on. Our own pickup automatically shuts the lights off, and if the switch is left in the "Always On" position, the warning chimes. But the borrowed car has neither, and as habits are (obviously) hard to break, I simply left the lights on.

The other "magic" of the small town is that everything is close by. Elise is working tonight and the hospital is just a block away from where we parked. So we trudged up the hill, got the key from Elise, and drove back. Tomorrow morning when I go to pick up Elise, I'll have to stop by the car and jump start it.

The temperature has dropped into the low 20's. The weather forecast says it will get even colder over the next couple of days. Shelley insists it isn't that cold. She went to church and to The Nutcracker in a knee-length, sleeveless dress. Tonight, she was reluctantly convinced to also wear a jacket.

Our basement is reaching refrigerator temperatures. That isn't actually a good thing, because if it gets into the freezer temperature range, the pipes will start to freeze. So, reluctantly, I fired up the big heater for a few minutes this evening to warm the basement with some of the escaping heat. I'll have more "opportunity" to use this heater tomorrow when we host a retirement party for one of the nurses.