The Nutcracker Suite

The dancers “floated across the stage.“
So says Charlotte Herbert of Dyke, who attended a performance of the Nutcracker Suite that played to standing-room only at the Dance Barn on Spotswood Trail in Stanardsville last weekend.
Nancy Ford of Stanardsville mentions joy: “The kids were so full of fun while they were dancing. It was contagious,“ she says.
But then, The Nutcracker Suite is a joyful ballet. It is a two-hour fairy tale by Tchaikovsky centered around a girl named Clara and the nutcracker she receives as a gift on Christmas Eve.
In the Dance Barn version, Clara, her little brother Fritz, and their mother and father are celebrating with friends and family when a godfather, Herr Drosselmeyer, enters with gifts for all the children. Clara receives a nutcracker doll, dances with it until the party ends, and falls asleep beside the tree, holding her new doll close.
As Clara sleeps, the Sugar Plum Fairy comes, transforms the nutcracker into a prince, and transforms the house into a magical land of living sweets. The prince and Clara dance; he invites her to sit and watch the dancing sweets. As the “sweets”  finish dancing, the Sugar Plum Fairy - played by Caitlin Lennon of Charlottesville Ballet—reappears with the nutcracker doll, and Clara realizes it was all a wonderful dream.
The “kids” who performed it in Stanardsville last Friday and Saturday nights were between the ages of six and 13. Some had been taking lessons from Kelly Silliman, who owns the Dance Barn with her husband Tom, since it opened last April. Others had started in September, but all, said Silliman, “have gone beyond my hopes and expectations.“
That may be so, but they had a talented teacher.
Silliman studied ballet as a child, and then fell in love with modern dance when she was a young teen. Degreed in Theatre Arts, she had co-directed a program for emerging artists, co-founded a dance ensemble, performed with a dance theatre, and had spent years choreographing and teaching before her move to Greene.
She had known she wanted to produce an abbreviated version of The Nutcracker in Stanardsville even before the Dance Barn opened its doors.
“I love The Nutcracker,“ says Kelly. “I first performed it when I was 13. I was a snowflake and a Spanish chocolate. I didn’t do it again for several years and then in college I taught at a studio that produced a shortened version. It worked because a lot of kids can’t sit through a two-hour performance.“
Just as it worked for the studio Silliman taught for while she was in college, it worked for the studio she owns last Friday and Saturday nights.
“Close to 200 people saw the show,“ Silliman says. “This production of The Nutcracker … was a project I took on in my first year as a studio owner under questionable sanity.  I had no idea who would show up to auditions, or how I would manage to stage a full production—even a shortened one—with only ten rehearsals.“
She is overwhelmed, she says, by “how hard (the kids) worked. They have learned not only choreography, but also acting, stage presence, and dance and theatre etiquette.“ It was the kids, she adds, not her, who created the magic on the Dance Barn stage last weekend.
Such magic was - and will continue to be - the Sillimans’ - gift to the community.
The Sillimans settled in Greene because they inherited a farm. They opened the studio because wanted to bring dance to Greene, and, she says, “because Stanardsville has a really nice feel to it … I would really like to be involved in its revitalization, and this seems a way to be a part of it.“
While Silliman still works with dance companies in Charlottesville, she teaches ballet, jazz, tap, and modern dancing at the Dance Barn. Her husband Tom, an electrical engineer who got hooked on ballroom dancing when Silliman took him to a class 13 years ago, teaches ballroom and social dancing at the Dance Barn. Together, they work with couples to choreograph wedding dances.
The Sillimans last performed together at First Night in Charlottesville 2007.
Ford, for one, is glad they’ve come to county. “I take lessons from them … I will support them in any way I can … I don’t want to drive to Charlottesville to dance.“
As for Silliman’s Nutcracker: It’s a performance she intends to continue.
“I want this to become an annual event that people in our community look forward to as a part of their holiday traditions,“ she says.
Still, the kids have not danced their final dance of the year. Some of the cast will be performing five pieces from the second half of Nutcracker at First Night in Charlottesville on New Year’s Eave.