Ballet Under the Stars

For the past three years we have loved attending Ballet Under the Stars in Woodland Park to see both the pre-show performance of the kids and the professional ballerinas.  Well this year it was a different story entirely because Callie was part of the pre-show event.  She tried out in May and was selected to be one of the chefs in the Little Mermaid production.  This meant that she had rehearsals from the end of June until the shows in early August.  And it also meant she would have to be there each of the four nights the show went on.

We had high hopes that her good friend Lydia would be in the same routine, but unfortunately this didn't pan out.  Nevertheless, they still got to spend a lot of time together backstage.  We think you will agree with us that Callie looks pretty cute in her chef outfit.  However, we must share that this costume brought her to tears because to her it was far too simple and plain.  I guess this is what the Diana Evans recitals do to a young dancer.

Another wonderful part of the whole experience was that we got to watch Katherine, the daughter of one of Sarah's colleagues.  Katherine has been in Ballet Under the Stars for four-plus years at this point, and this time around was one of young Ariel's sisters.  She did a wonderful job and both Callie and Reese were a bit taken with her.

Katherine went out of her to make Callie feel comfortable during the rehearsals and performances.  And Mary Beth, Katherine's mom, made Sarah and John feel extremely comfortable every night as well.  It is a tradition that you can lay out your tarps and blankets to reserve a spot in the grass seating area for each performance.  To get the prime spots you have to put out your blankets before noon for the 7pm performance.  And every one of the four nights we had the pleasure of sitting next to Mary Beth and her husband Everett.  And we were always front row center.

Because of our prime real estate in the seating area we tended to get lots of visitors.  And the cool thing is we got new sets of visitors every night who sat with Reese to take in the spectacle of it all.  This is one of the cutest pictures we got of Reese and Harper giggling as the Kiss the Girl routine played out on stage.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the Little Mermaid, part of the story has a chef trying to cook a crab named Sebastian who is one of Ariel's friends.  Here we see Callie's perfect "surprise" face as she and the other cooks realize that Sebastian has escaped their grasp.  Callie did a great job all four nights and seemed to get more and more at ease as the performances went on.

Sebastian was played by one of the high school ballerinas who was extremely talented and very nice about taking pictures with the little ones.  She and the other ballerinas had once been in Callie's ballet slippers, for it was not abnormal for some of the high schoolers to have been a part of Ballet Under the Stars for ten years or more.  We are pretty sure Callie is going to want to do it next year.  And we are looking forward to hanging out on a blanket under the stars for four nights enjoying the show.