With Thanksgiving over, students can look forward to Christmas and all of the possibilities for entertainment this holiday season.
“Every year, the Arts and Lecture Committee brings performers and lecturers to campus as part of the Arts and Lectures Series. This year, they decided to bring two events—the first was Nell Painter, who came last month and the Nutcracker,” Administrative Assistant for the Academic Senate Arts and Lectures Committee Sylvia Maixner said.
Performing at many universities and event centers across The United States and Canada, the Nutcracker is brought to Ferris by Canada’s Ballet Jorgen. It has been at least 15 years since The Nutcracker was performed at Ferris.
“I have not seen a ballet before —I’m more of a heavy metal lady than a classical music one. However, now that I have a child, I’m more open to going to see different things, if just to open her mind to all of the great things that are possible out there in the world,” Maixner said.
Like Maixner, there are students on campus who have never seen a professional ballet performance before but can respect the musical art it entails.
“Ballet is known to have instrumental music rather than popular music, so people just look past it and think instrumental music is slow and nothing exciting,” Ferris music industry management sophomore Megan Yuchasz said.
Yuchasz has never been to a ballet before but has respected the form of dance ever since she took ballet classes when she was younger.
Ferris digital animation and game design sophomore Angela Dato is another student who hasn’t seen a professional ballet performance before but has practiced her own forms of dance.
Dato has been practicing tap since she was 6 years old and started taking ballet and jazz classes around the age of 10. Dato is part of a tap company, the Detroit Tap Reparatory and used to be on a competitive dance team in middle and high school.
“I imagine that the average college student would view ballet as being painful to do but beautiful to watch,” Dato said.
The performance of The Nutcracker by Canada’s Ballet Jorgen will be held Wednesday, Nov. 29, at 7:30 p.m. in Williams Auditorium.
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