Dance Along

Four shows in two days.

The San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band's Dance-Along Nutcracker is now over for another year.

This was the band's fifteenth consecutive Dance-Along to be held at the Forum at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

The band is currently searching for a permanent artistic director and conductor. This year's Nutcracker was guest conducted by Jadine Louie, who was the band's conductor and artistic director from 1996 through 2006.

The stars of this year's show were Trauma Flintstone and Donna Sachet. Caroline Carvajal choreographed yet again, featuring many dancers who have performed in the Dance-Along several times in the past (Corinne Levy, Kelly Collins and Juan Crovetto, to name a few).

This year's theme was "Bah, Humbug!", combining the story of the Nutcracker with the story of Charles Dickens's "A Christmas Carol."

This afternoon, during intermission at the last show, I spoke with someone from NPR about the history of the Nutcracker. I hope I didn't embarrass myself or the band too severely with anything I said.

Chip seemed convinced that my Jack Skellington costume would scare kids. He swears that he heard people booing when I came in this morning. Conversely, I know that a woman and three kids ran up to me immediately after the show to ask to have their pictures taken with me. Proving, yet again, that one man's quivering terror is another's pure delight.

Yesterday, I was up at 6:30 a.m., and we got home at 11:30 p.m. I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. processing photos and reviewing videotapes in order to map out the cameras for today's shows. Then I got up at 7:30 this morning and got home around 7:00 tonight. Needless to say, I'm a little tired. Chip fell asleep on the sofa, and now is snoring away in the bedroom (I convinced him to relocate).

At least I have tomorrow off work to recuperate.

(Note: If you saw any of these photos on Facebook and are annoyed by the repetition, click on the photos. They're much larger than the ones you see on Facebook.)