The Nutcracker Ballet! It is often a child’s first taste of ballet or live theatre.
Here are some tips to make your child’s first Nutcracker experience a success.
Here are some tips to make your child’s first Nutcracker experience a success.
- Explain what ballet is. Dancers express their feelings and tell the story through movement. There is music, but nobody speaks. Dancers wear costumes and pretend to be characters. The theatre will get dark before the show begins.
- Explain the difference between a movie and a live performance. Talking may distract the dancers on the stage and bother people around them.
- Leave electronic devices at home. Noises and lights in the audience are distracting and dangerous to the dancers.
- You may want to tell very young children the story of the Nutcracker so they have an idea of what to expect, especially when the giant mice and soldiers are fighting.
- Give them things to watch for: the toy Nutcracker turns into a life-size prince, the Christmas tree grows, a snowfall, the Sugar Plum Fairy’s arrival.
- Finally, tell children that at the end of a dance they should clap to show they enjoyed it and, at the end of the ballet, they should again clap in appreciation of the hard work the dancers did throughout the show.