The snow used at the NC School of the Arts when I was there was the treacherous, plastic stuff (but I think of dry-cleaning bags, not trash bags). We always had a heavy snowfall, but the entire load of snow had to be used during a performance, so if the snowfall wasn't heavy enough early throughout the scene, we'd get it dumped on our heads at the end. Loads of fun! Added to that was the problem of it getting blown into our eyes by the large fans in the wings.

I thought it was really scary dancing on that stuff, and it made it hard to dance full out. But there was one very short dancer who did an amazingly fast circle of pique turns once the blizzard got going, and I never saw her slip.

I would never ever willingly use the plastic stuff, for the very reason you cite, djb; it's dangerous and, even if no dancer gets hurt, if they feel endangered, it limits their performances.

This is, of course, too late for this year, but below are some sources for "snow"; perhaps it will help some folks next year.

Consolidated Display Co., Inc.

Jauchem & Meeh Inc. (say that one three times fast!)

<small>[ 23 December 2002, 09:52 AM: Message edited by: salzberg ]</small>

Saying it's not bad; try typing it 3 times fast.

So you actually go out and buy this stuff! Somehow at our school I pictured several dozen financial aid students spending hours hand-shredding dry-cleaning bags.

The fire marshall generally prefers that people use store-bought, flame-retardant snow.

From what I remember at the Met the snow seemed like paper. What was bad was when after La Bohem on Tuesday flakes would still fall in the midst of Aida on Wednesday.

We've always used paper snow. This year it turned out to be plastic. I don't know why. When we tried it on a tech rehearsal, we discovered how dangerous it was. The end result is that this year, we only get snow for the last little bit of the dance, when everyone's done doing anything that would be dangerous with plastic snow. It's kind of too bad; I hope this won't happen again.

I'm a parent in our party scene, and I'm supposed to take candy from the kids after Drosselmeyer gives it to them. This Sunday, one kid asked me, "can I have it back"? I figured, hey I'm bored, I'll try to give it back to him. But I have to do it ON STAGE and make sure NO ONE notices; that's the fun in it. Later in the scene, I got my chance and shoved the candy into his hand in an inconspicuous manner. It helped make my day. I had lots of energy for my parts later in the ballet.

There was also some couple-switching on that night: you enter with one party mother and exit with another. People DID notice that...

<small>[ 25 December 2002, 01:09 AM: Message edited by: citibob ]</small>

When there's a small production of Nutcracker that uses the theater's existing masking curtains (instead of having their own full set of curtains for each scene), it's pretty common for snow to still be falling in May or June.

<small>[ 25 December 2002, 07:07 AM: Message edited by: salzberg ]</small>

Citibob, I've been to a few Christmas parties like that.

Purely as an observer, of course.