NUTCRACKER!

(The SP backstage after his first evening performance of The Nutcracker. He's loosened his coat and is showing me the shockingly tiny and cramped "gentlemen's dressing room"

In the time honored tradition of the female dominated world of the dance the girls get a whole floor for their dressing room while the three boys have to make do with some old flats propped together in a corner to spare their modesty. Hey, at least it's something!)

It's that time of year again; the time when every ballet school, ballet company, or person who has ever been in the same room with a pair of ballet shoes decides to produce a version of NUTCRACKER!
From ABT to the little ballet school down the road in Yourtown USA, comes the Tchaikovskian sound of nuts being cracked.

The prince's school is no different. Today he performed as...what else...the Nutcracker Prince in our own local Nutcracker.
I don't know if any of the other Nutcrackers feature a self deprecating royal personage who smiles wryly down on the dancers from his throne in the Kingdom of Sweets but this little Nutcracker did.

Every royal should have a good strong sense of the ridiculous. It keeps him from taking it all so seriously. The one thing the SP seems to take seriously is dance. I'm thinking this could be the real thing.