Miss Russo started her dance career at the age of 4, when she was chosen to play a tiny mouse in the Christmas "Nutcracker" performance.
At an international party involving a wide variety of dance styles, Tiny's gift is not a nutcracker but a firecracker, a Chinese symbol of celebration.
We came away with a 14-inch-tall handmade nutcracker ($70) and a basketful of tiny, detailed, hand-carved and hand-painted ornaments: a 1 1/2-inch wooden angel playing a trumpet ($15); a jolly farmer driving a cart with a smiling pig in the back ($14); a tiny cuckoo clock ($12.50) and a 2-inch-high puppet stage with puppets that looked just like a Punch and Judy show ($11.50).
Clara is the most innocent of ballet heroines, a tiny guileless protagonist around whom the magic of The Nutcracker unfolds.
She wants an answer, but she also wants to practice ballet dancing, so she takes many quick tiny steps back and forth, back and forth, like a "Nutcracker" snowflake in toe shoes.
So what?" It's a tiny comfort to hear that the composer of Swan Lake and The Nutcracker doesn't meet with presidential condemnation.
Page C1 TINY DANCERS IN THE 'NUTCRACKER' There are 105 children in this season's production of "The Nutcracker," and Gareille Whittle is the caretaker of all of them, ensuring they learn and keep the choreography prepared for them by George Balanchine.
This year, tiny, doll-faced Kochetkova, who is a wonderfully proficient ballerina, danced Juliet so girlishly at first, more Clara in Nutcracker, I wondered how she would handle the transition to sudden love and lust for Romeo.
STAMFORD Stamford Center for the Arts "The Nutcracker," Connecticut Ballet.
Is this "Nutcracker" heresy?
THE NUTCRACKER By Geraldine McCaughrean.
