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Photograph by Skye Dunlap
Stuart's Little Sisters: (Clockwise, from bottom left) Emailie Chandras, Alexandra Ronco, Brittain Melehan and Marissa Jackson show off their inner mice natures.
Mice in the House
Four young ballerinas from Willow Glen don mouse garb for 'The Nutcracker'
By Genevieve Roja
There's a minor rumbling inside the School of San Jose Cleveland Ballet. The floor of the dance studio, located on North Second Street in downtown San Jose, is teeming with dozens of little mouse-children, who are rehearsing for this year's production of Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker.
The little girls, whose ages range from 6 to 11, aren't in costume today. They're dressed in traditional ballet garb--black leotard, pink garter belt, tights, slippers and bobby-pinned bun. There is one red-haired boy with glasses wearing a white T-shirt, black leotard pants and slippers.
Donna Delseni, school director and principal teacher, suddenly turns on the music and, from what will be "backstage," the mice emerge in single file and jump into formation. One after another, they pitter-patter their feet, hunched over, elbows tucked in and palms faced downward, like dogs begging for food.
Soon, the mice are marching with high knees, stretching toward the ceiling, then on their backs, wiggling their feet in the air. Along the glass wall of the studio, underneath the wooden bar, about two dozen other mice fidget in their seats, making silly faces at one another or gazing at the mice in front of them, waiting for their cue.
Other non-mice are involved, too. About five or six "soldiers"--the teenagers of the company--are lying prone with the mice, who are currently gnawing and scratching at their legs. Then ballet teacher Charles Torres does a mock death scene, and the "mourners" come out, with yellow and pink scarves, shaking their heads in disbelief. The music subsides; the audience claps in the background; and the curtain goes down.
"I really want you to remember to keep the energy," Delseni instructs the mice. "And lift the knees! Okay, go take a break."
Some of the mice bolt toward the bathrooms while others make a beeline to the water bottle dispenser.
In the flurry of ballerinas, I track down the four Willow Glen natives: Emailie Chandras, 7; Alexandra Ronco, 7; Marissa Jackson, 7; and Brittain Melehan, 11. After an hour of rehearsal, they're ready to talk. This is Alexandra's first year in Nutcracker, and she's excited. Being a mouse is more difficult then one might think.
"It's kind of tiring, scratching [with mouse paws] all the time," admits Alexandra, a second grader at Willow Glen Elementary.
Jumping onto the tall soldiers is a feat in itself, the mice say.
"The first time I jumped on my soldier, I only got up to his legs because he was so tall," says Emailie, a second grader at Reed Elementary. A veteran mouse, Emailie has been dancing since she was 5.
"This year, my favorite part of dancing is the one-two-three-four-five part," she says, demonstrating a marching move. "And scratching the soldiers."
The mice are the bad guys in The Nutcracker. Led by the evil Mouse King, the tiny armies attack the Nutcracker and his toy soldiers.
"We make a lot of noise and attack the soldiers, we jump on them and knock them down and do lots of things to torture them," explains Brittain, who plays a mouse in the third row, first person in. "We jump on them. We scratch them. We pull their arms and legs, and we eat them."
Brittain, a fifth grader at St. Mary's, has been dancing since she was "almost 2." She's short, and that's why she's been a mouse for three years running, she explains.
"I'm the leader," Brittain says. "It's really fun. I get to go on stage, I get to see a lot of professional ballet dancers, and a lot of my friends think that's so cool."
At this point, Marissa, a third grader at Booksin cuts in.
"Can I add something?" she asks, wildly waving her hand in front of my face. Marissa was a mouse last year, too, and "it's very fun." She turns serious as she delivers a deep thought.
"There's nothing I don't like about ballet," Marissa says. "It's exciting and hard, and there's nothing I don't like about being a mouse."
'The Nutcracker' runs Dec. 2-12 at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. For ticket information, call 408.288.2800 or visit www.sanjoseclevelandballet.org.
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Willow Glen, California Since 1992
