A Day at the Ballet

Last weekend, the Civic Ballet was performing Cinderella. Since Tamsen just adores Cinderella, I thought it might be fun to take her. They were allowing children three and older to attend the matinee, so I figured we'd give it a try! When I told Tamsen that we were going, she could hardly wait for Saturday to get here. (Its a good thing I waited until Friday to tell her!) I had never been to a real ballet before, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I'd explained to Tamsen that they weren't going to talk or sing, but that they were going to dance the story of Cinderella.

She dressed up in her Cinderella dress and had to have a bun in her hair, like Cinderella at the ball. She kept telling everyone at the theatre that she was "ball gown Cinderella". It was cracking me up. Once the ballet started, she was mesmerized. She loved watching the dancers and loved clapping at the end of each different dance. She did great the first half. At intermission she told me "I didn't know they would be real". I guess she thought it was going to be like a movie. During Act II she wasn't quite as good. The scene was Cinderella at the ball, but each group in the ballet troupe came out and did a different dance -- so that part was more dance than story and she got a bit restless. Between Act II and Act III, I told her to dance, dance, dance and get all those wiggles out. She danced and danced and wanted me to pick her up (like the prince lifted Cinderella). Once Act III started and it went back to the story of Cinderella, she enjoyed it again.

After the ballet was over, we went to the foyer and met several of the dancers. One of my friends from work played one of the ugly stepsisters. He had been given a boquet and when we went to talk to him, he pulled one of the roses out of his boquet and gave it to Tamsen. She thought that was the greatest thing ever and each dancer that she talked to, she told them that the ugly stepsister gave her a flower. She also kept asking me "The ugly stepsister is your friend, right?" I wish I had taken pictures of her with the dancers. I didn't see any other people taking pictures with them until we were walking out the door, so I didn't know if it was proper ballet etiquette! Oh well, next time. As we were about to walk out the door, Tamsen yells, "Mom! It's the prince!" Then she goes running after him, "Prince! Prince!" He was so sweet and stopped and talked to her for a minute. She had a great time! She told me as we were leaving, "Next time I want to dance with Cinderella and the Prince on the stage". And now she tells me that when she gets big, she's going to be a princess ballerina.