My sister and I were unlike most children. When other kids were watching The Care Bears and Power Rangers we were watching tapes of West Side Story and Meet Me in St. Louis. We loved musicals and couldn't get enough of them. Our parents tried to keep us pretty cultured and often took us to the local theater, the Renaissance in Mansfield, to see plays. We saw The Wizard of Oz, Little Orphan Annie, The Music Man, Oklahoma!, Singing in the Rain (it actually rained on stage!) and one of the most memorable, The Nutcracker Ballet.
We had seats on the floor, rather than our typical balcony ones, and were only about 5 rows back from the stage. We could see the symphony in the orchestra pit - I can still remember them tuning their instruments and playing that great swell of miscellaneous sounds that I thought only happened in movies. We were glued to our chairs as we watched the dancers twirl around the stage. During the finale they made it snow on stage, big fluffy flakes falling from the rafters as if we were actually outside during a storm. It was magical. It was like that scene in White Christmas, when at just the right moment the doors open to a perfectly picturesque snow scene - it felt like couldn't get any more Christmasy than that very moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment