Sugar Prune Fairy

YOU GUYS. In ballet tonight we started learning the Sugar Plum Fairy variation.

For the first few minutes I did not think much about the fact that this experience represents a milestone in my ballet life.  I was busy thinking “Oh, cool, Sugar Plum.  Wonder if I will get to perform this at some point?” (haha, “at some point.”  See what I did there?)  And then I was thinking “Gaaaah, so much pointe work that I’m not sure I can do” and then “I don’t understand these counts and second arabesque and flip around and somehow second arabesque again and WHAT.”

Then we started doing it to the music a couple of times.  I got a sense of where the accents are and thus an idea of how the choreography is supposed to look (note to self: watch some videos).  And I went out to get some water with that music thrumming in my head, remembering how excited I was as a kid to learn that it’s not a HARPSICHORD and it’s not a XYLOPHONE, it’s a celestina.  And it finally struck me (I’m slow to catch on) that at age 38.5, I am learning Sugar Plum for the first time ever.

Holy Nutcracker!

It is very exciting even though I’m not very good at it right now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever do it in front of people, and I’m not sure I am Sugar Plum material in the first place.

Every version of the variation is a little different but this is the one I found that is most like what we are learning:

This is the part I think I’d like, but I’ll have to start working now on lifting my leg up next to my head. Daniel already thinks I’m totally capable of doing the partnered penché move at 2:43: