My little ballerinas – Part II | Photographing ballerinas in Ho-Ho-Kus

I don’t have any visions of my children becoming world-class ballerinas but when I was researching a ballet school for them (who knew that in a 5 miles radius there were so many choices!) I decided to go with a hard-core Russian ballet school – owned and operated by a former leading ballet dancer from Bolshoi Theater, who defected to the US in the 70s and had performed all over the world.   I figured that even if they were just learning the basics, they would learn them the right way.

This school is known for putting together The Nutcracker performances at a local performing center every December.  So when we were asked if the girls would like to participate as Angels (the only role they could do given that they were just 3.5) I immediately had visions of them dressed up in Angel costumes and looking incredibly cute so of course I could not resist.   Having to take them to additional rehearsals (and therefore adding more stuff to our already-busy weekends) was not great but hearing them talk about they they were going to be Angels and perform like real ballerinas made it all worth it.

The process to have kids perform is a bit odd – we needed to pay extra to have the girls participate in the performances AND we had to buy tickets to watch them perform.  I told Victor that it was a double scam and I would not fall for it next year.  However, as soon as the curtain went up at the first show I knew that we would do it next year and the year after that.  The show exceeded all our expecations.  We went there just to watch our kids look adorable but ended up watching a beautiful production of the Nutcracker -it was really well done!  The girls looked super cute and as soon as Mia saw us sitting in the audience she started to wave at us.  Towards the end of their number she could not contain her excitement any longer and said (right during the performance) – ‘Hello Mama!’.  Afterwards, an email was sent to all parents stating that we should tell our children to refrain from waving and talking as it decreases the level of professionalism the public has come to expect from these performances… was it prompted by us? I guess we’ll never know :)….

Cameras were not allowed during the performances but I was able to get a few image of the girls before and after the show:

After the show – in ‘full makeup’:

This little Angel was more interested in her pretzel rather that a bouquet of flowers from Daddy:

And here is a ‘mandatory’ snapshot of us – proud parents and two little Angels: