Nutcracker magic - Dance Directory - teacher and former ballet dancer Patricia Rozow shares her thoughts on The Nutcracker ballet - Brief Article

Dance Magazine, Dec, 2003 by Wendy Perron

"Dancing Sugar Plum is like moving through cotton candy,' says Patricia Rozow, Dance Department Director at the School of Creative and Performing Arts in Cincinnati and co-director of the SCPA ensemble. Rozow learned the role from Irine Fokine and her mother Alexandra Fedorova, (see "Pipeline to Petipa," DANCE MAGAZINE, December 2002 page 62).

Later, at the Cincinnati Ballet, she was mentored by Frederic Franklin in the same role. Now she teaches the pas de deux to students as an essential classic. Rozow, who was also a principal with Ballet West, remarks on the wonder of the ballet: "To me The Nutcracker replaced Santa Claus, because I started doing it when I stopped believing in Santa Claus. I love that sense of rapture and total belief in the fantasy that children have. One time when I was at a restaurant after a performance, a mother came up to my table with her five-year old and said, "There's the Sugar Plum Fairy." I had no make up and my hair was hanging. The little girl looked at me and said, 'What happened to yon?' " See www.scpaballet.com.