Auditions for the 20th anniversary of the Ahwatukee Foothills Nutcracker Ballet were held on Saturday August 10th. Over 70 young dancers and actors ages 3 – 18 come to audition. The audition process started at 10:00 am and finished at 5:00 pm with a set cast.
A special tradition following auditions is for Kimberly Lewis, the producer of the Ahwatukee Foothills Nutcracker Ballet, has cast name yard signs made and she goes to the houses of the twenty two soloist, and puts yard signs in the front of their yards, in the middle of this night, so when they wake up, if they find a yard sign, they know they are a soloist and they find out which part they were cast as. Kimberly waits until after midnight to start her adventure. This year Kimberly brought along her assistant Elsa to help put up the signs, they grabbed coffee and they were off to start their adventure. They started at midnight and finished at 5:00 am. The Nutcracker music played throughout the night as they drove to each home. Those five hours in the middle of the night were filled with a lot of funny stories, and a lot of coffee! Some dancers live in gated communities which Kimberly did not have the access gate code. Kimberly was not about to disappoint a dancer who earned a yard sign just because she did not have a gate code….so Kimberly decided to crawl under the gates. Walking up the hill in a gated community in the middle of the night in darkness was a little scary for Kimberly, especially when she spotted a coyote and had to make a run for it. Elsa was able to capture some fun memories of this night. It was worth the coyotes, bug bites, jumping cactus, and digging through rock solid landscaping to put each sign up in all the soloist yards. To see the videos and photos the parents posted the next morning of their chid finding a yard sign was priceless.