My name is Alia Jadad-Garcia and I’m in the 10^th grade at Branksome Hall in Toronto. I’m super excited to be in The Nutcracker this year as a rat and cavalry. I have loved to dance ever since I can remember. My parents constantly repeat a funny story about me as a little kid; whenever I met a musician on the street, I would stop and dance and dance and dance, drawing a crowd. We could never pass a street performer without me stopping to dance a number.

I have danced in different versions of The Nutcracker for the past 6 years – in both Hamilton and Toronto. In this Nutcracker, the main scene that I am in is the Battle scene. This scene is a lot of fun but it is pretty tough as I have to learn everyone’s parts in case anyone gets sick. When we finish the Battle scene, we get to watch the rest of the show from the wings, which I really enjoy. While backstage, I like to hang out with the other kids in the show and we talk about “regular” things like movies, school and, of course, ballet!

My favourite scene in The Nutcracker is the Arabian Coffee scene and it takes place in the palace of The Sugar Plum Fairy. I absolutely love the music and the pas de deux and all of the lifts, which are so graceful. I want to dance for as long as possible and my dream would be to one day perform in this scene.

During the rehearsals leading up to the show, things get very chaotic because there are many people both on stage and backstage. The rat and calvary costumes are big and really hot so waiting around sometimes is hard. But now that we are on stage in the theatre, the timing and choreography have all come together and the months of rehearsal have paid off. It is very rewarding and I love being a part of it!

What do you experience when you walk through a beautiful, lush garden and what would that same stroll be like the 799^th time you took it? Hi, my name is Sonia Klimasko Leheniuk. I’m a violinist in the National Ballet Orchestra and have performed The Nutcracker over 800 times.

So, you have to wonder what a musician could possibly do to keep interested during 800 performances of The Nutcracker. Let’s go back to the garden analogy. Being an avid gardener, I can’t help but use this analogy. Every visit to a garden is new if you want it to be and every angle can present a new vista. Similarly, no two performances are ever the same. Different dancers require different tempos to accommodate their interpretations, so the orchestra has to always be poised to catch each dancer’s individual tempo. This is achieved by interpreting the millisecond upward wave of our wonderful conductor David Briskin’s baton. Sometimes, the surprised look on his face is an indication that even he wasn’t expecting that tempo. I imagine dancers have their lyrical or high energy days like all of us so there is never any daydreaming in the orchestra when performing ballet. Our string sections rotate which means I get to sit with a different violinist every week. That of course means that with each rotation, we get to hear the orchestra from a different angle as well as experiencing a different violinist. Each rose examined individually has it’s own color, fragrance and shape, much the same as each violinist has a unique sound and style. We, as a violin section, are constantly working together to weave our collective styles into the perfect tapestry of sound. Appreciating a rose blossom individually changes completely when you step back and perceive a garden from afar. I can just imagine what the guys in my violin section will say when they read this bit about the roses!

What is it like to perform 800 Nutcrackers? It would be hard to imagine it being anything but wonderful to play great music with terrific musicians for gorgeous dancers to dance to. It’s like a stroll through the Garden of Eden without the apples.

Ahhhh… after a great Fall season of West Side Story Suite’s not-so-real fights that caused real pain and Merry Widow’s fabulous facial hair, there’s nothing I want to do more than a nice relaxing run of The Nutcracker. Sure, there’s twenty-six performances in a span of three weeks, but it seems to go by in flash, most of the time. The smiling children in the audience and on stage, the all too familiar music (I’ll talk more about that later), and the horse. That horse! FYI - the horse IS real! The NBoC purchased it from the same guy that sold Jack his bean stalk seeds. Just kidding!

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Our little boy, Mateo, has been teething so we’ve been sleeping less and less. Andreea [Olteanu] calls him “The Sleep Terrorist.” His first two “choppers” came in two weeks ago but I think he’s going for a second round now. It’s more difficult to deal with the lack of sleep during the shows because my schedule is so erratic. It’s pretty amazing to see my boy at the theatre though – he is showered with attention and he loves to flirt with the girls.

Andreea will still be on maternity leave until after The Nutcracker is over. This will probably be the first Christmas season in 15 years that she will not be dancing in a production of The Nutcracker. There’s no escaping the music though, it plays everywhere: stores, restaurants and elevators… it’s like The Sugarplum Fairy is stalking you 24/7.

We’re debating whether or not we should travel South for the January break. We’re not sure if it’s too soon to travel to a different country with Mateo. Plus, our house has looked like such a war zone since he was born that we haven’t been able to find Andreea’s passport for over two weeks now!

(Photo: Sian Richards) 

Just a little follow-up: I drove up to our physiotherapist’s house early Saturday morning to get my foot taped up. His baby girl, Athena, had a rough night so the whole family was still sleeping, but he got up for me. It shows you how dedicated our medical staff is that he would do that for me. I drove back home to pick up Greta [Hodgkinson], who was dancing Hanna in the show [The Merry Widow], and drove to the theatre. I did a bit of warm up class and started debating with Magdalena Popa, our coach, whether I should do the show or not. I was on the fence until a couple of hours before the show, but I finally decided to dance. Rebekah [Rimsay] was great and we had a blast on stage! The few jumps I had to do kind of killed me but now I can limp home and rest until Tuesday.

I managed to get into the studio a bit today. I tested my foot, which has some nice shades of blue but is really not too bad considering. My ambitious goal at this point is to be ready for the Saturday matinee when I do Camille [The Merry Widow] with Rebekah [Rimsay]. I would not usually consider dancing 72 hours after I sprained my ankle but luckily, Camille has a lot of pas de deux and not a lot of jumping, so I might be able to do it. Piotr Stanczyk is kind of on stand by in case I wake up tomorrow and it’s not better. Until then, it’s back to the bucket of ice with intervals of physio machine treatments. I’m getting delirious with the cold. I have designed ways of using my bucket as a boot. A bucket boot… I’ve lost my mind.