Sensory Performing Arts

After the big Christmas Tree afternoon at Mimi's house, Jupiter and I went to the Nutcracker on Saturday afternoon. I had originally thought that going to Boston to the big Nutcracker day at the Children's museum would be our Nutcracker for the year. But Jupiter saw the ad in the paper and begged me for days to take her to the whole entire performance. So the Thursday before I called up Porttix and ordered two tickets for the Nutcracker.

I got the cheap seats. I had to get the cheap seats..especially since they charged me an extra $10 to order the tickets on the phone. I wonder if the phone rep really makes $600 an hour to take the calls and print out the tickets? But anyway, the cheap seats were right up front. They were actually in the first row of tickets that were actually being sold. They were also very close to the orchestra.

We were not close to the side of the orchestra with violins and the harp. We, of course, were on the side with the brass instruments, the tympani, and the cymbals. Jupiter does not like sudden loud noises. She loves loud noises when she's causing the loud noises. In fact, she would like a drum set for Christmas. But when they happen unexpectedly, not so much. She sat on my lap the entire performance. Which was nice, actually. She made me hold my hands over her ears the entire performance. She tried to go without my hands once. The cymbals crashed, and that was it for the hands free ballet watching. I missed a lot of the dancing as I was trying to keep an eye on the conductor and the cymbals person. But despite the loud noises, Jupiter loved the ballet. It was entirely worth the ticket price and the surcharge to see her enthralled with the Nutcracker. And during intermission, we wandered to the other side of the auditorium to see the harp up close (have to remember for next year, we need to be in the house RIGHT section. I think.) and the harp lady even let us come up and touch the harp strings. That was SO COOL! ( I always wanted to touch the harp myself, actually.) So the Nutcracker was great. Totally recommend it. There are a few pictures of the show at http://www.mainestateballet.org/.

Jupiter, by the way, does not want to take dance class, as much as she loves dance. She did take class for a half a year when she was three and a half. But now she's too worried she will make a mistake to enjoy it. I'm hoping she may have a change of heart. I took dance class myself (very ineptly) when Maine State Ballet was a dance school in the instructor's basement. But Jupiter is already asking if we can go to the spring performance of Cinderella. I think we will.

Sunday afternoon, we went to see MimiX in her school performance of The Time Machine. Jupiter did not get bored. But as you might suspect, the Time Machine itself occasionally does things like explode noisily. So while she liked the play itself, she didn't like the loud noises so much. I watched that play with my hands over her ears too. MimiX was the Queen Morlock. (We must now bow down to her.) Jupiter is not fond of Morelocks. She thought there were scary Morlocks hiding in the shadows for three days afterwards. She felt a little better after we got home from the play and I decided we should decorate our Christmas Tree, which has been sitting undecorated for two days.