Before the sugar plum fairy dances, the flowers waltz, and Mother Ginger lets her kids run wild from beneath her incredibly voluminous skirt, the dancers in Robinson Ballet’s annual production of “The Nutcracker” have a number of little rituals they go through so they’re psyched up for a good show.
“Dancers can be very superstitious, and their unique pre-performance routines can rival that of any athlete’s playoff superstitions,” said Stevie Dunham, executive director of Robinson Ballet, which will perform “The Nutcracker” with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s iconic score at 2 and 7 p.m. Dec. 19 and 3 p.m. Dec. 20 at the Collins Center for the Arts in Orono. The Orono performances, the only with a live orchestra, will cap off nearly a month of “Nutcracker” performances all over the state.
The day of a show, dancers arrive two hours before the performance starts for a barre rehearsal led by artistic director Keith Robinson. After the physical preparations, it’s time for the mental ones.
“Most will retire to the dressing room to do hair and makeup, where the youngest dancers will be tied to a curling iron and giggling for the next 30 minutes,” said Dunham. “The older dancers will share spritzes of their ‘Nutcracker scent’ while Snapchatting and Instagramming their ballet buns and funny Nutcracker faces.”
Every dancer is different. Some will put their headphones on and stretch on stage, oblivious to everything going on around her. Some obsessively check and re-check prop and costume changes. Some of the young boys tell jokes and riddles to anyone that will listen.
Perhaps most notably, there’s a group of young female dancers that have adopted some rather colorful pre-show garb.
“[They wear] adult-sized animal onesie pajamas, and they run through spacing and choreography,” said Dunham. “Seriously, we have a unicorn, giraffe, pandas, raccoons, tigers, cheetahs.”
Maureen Robinson, who shares artistic director duties with Keith, spends the pre-show hours in her own special way: mending costumes that have received wear and tear after countless rehearsals and performances.
Finally, it’s showtime.
“As the curtain goes up, there will be lots of jittery shakes and small jumping in the wings as dancers whisper ‘Merde’ to each other in the wings,” said Dunham, referring to a French word for an English word that cannot be printed in these pages. “One last check of tiaras, toe shoe ribbons and undergarments, and the dancer finally steps on stage hoping all of his or her rituals will lead to onstage magic.”
Tickets for this weekend’s performances of “The Nutcracker” with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra — which will feature Lucas Richman in his debut as conductor of the yearly “Nutcracker,” are priced between $21 and $37 for adults and $11 and $27 for children, and are available online at collinscenterforthearts or at the CCA box office.
