PREPARING THE `NUTCRACKER'

Like the other three local boys who will appear in the upcoming production of the "Nutcracker," Jeff Koeller didn't have to try out.

He was drafted.

No boys showed up at auditions last September when Allen Fields, artistic director of the Minnesota Ballet, came to Cape Girardeau to cast the "Nutcracker." Fortunately, a few of the girls who were cast had willing brothers.

The ballet will be presented the evenings of Dec. 19 and 20 in Academic Auditorium, with matinee performances to be given Dec. 20 and 21. Additionally, a free performance will be presented for more than 1,000 area schoolchildren the afternoon of Dec. 18.

The event is a benefit for the Community Counseling Center Foundation. For information, phone 1-(888)-693-2244.

Every Saturday since the auditions, the 65 local members of the cast have been rehearsing under the tutelage of Academy of Dance Arts owner Jo Ann Ruess and instructors Corday Reid and Cara Hammes. The schedule is rigorous: Party scene from 10-11:30 a.m., Battle scene from 11:30-noon, Mother Ginger from noon-12:15, Angels 1-2, Arabian 2-3.

The local part of the cast includes six adults, most of them college students.

Thirteen-year-old Jeff, a student at Jackson Junior High School, actually had started taking a ballet and tap class at the Academy of Dance Arts in Cape Girardeau just about the time of the auditions. So he wasn't reluctant to join the company.

His sister Becky also will be in the ballet, and his mother had urged him to enroll in the class in the first place. Not everybody in the family is as supportive.

"Our brothers call him a sissy," said Becky.

Jeff's response: "I don't care."

Getting boys to participate in dance is "not a problem where the culture does not denigrate it," Reid says.

Studies have proven that more energy is expended in the first 20 minutes of a ballet class than in an entire football game, she said. That's because a dancer uses every part of his body at different tempos.

"Then the finesse has to be done," she said. "It's not good enough just to jump."

Fields taught the dancers and the instructors his choreography for the ballet back in September. Now, while the dancers rehearse each scene, the instructors play a videotape of a Minnesota Ballet performance to make sure Fields encounters no surprises when the troupe arrives for rehearsals in December.

"Cara and I are making sure they do his choreography correctly," said Reid. Motioning in the direction of one of the dancers, she says, "Pretty soon she's going to have to point her feet."

Part of the difficulty of rehearsals is that many of the principals are professional members of the Minnesota Ballet. "We have to rehearse with a lot of missing people, and we're not on the same stage," said Ruess. "There's a lot of compensation."

But, she said, "the kids have learned their parts exceptionally well."

One of the ballet's principal roles, that of Clara, will be shared by 14-year-old Tamara Ballinger of St. Charles and 12-year-old Amy Mangieri of Sikeston. Tamara's grandmother, Helen Gibbs, lives in Advance and saw the audition announcement in the newspaper.

Tamara has been dancing for 10 years and described herself as "surprised and excited" when she won the role of Clara. She has never appeared in a "Nutcracker" before.

Now Tamara and a parent drive down from St. Charles every Saturday. Because she is in so many scenes, Tamara usually spends the entire day.

Teresa Williams' 8-year-old daughter, Emily, gave up a pizza party and an ice-skating party to rehearse Saturday. Dancing in the "Nutcracker" is a willing sacrifice for Emily.

"She's really excited," said Williams, whose husband is Cape Central baseball coach Steve Williams.

Williams herself took ballet and tap classes as a child but says dancing has been Emily's idea. "From the time she was small she's always been dancing to music," she said. "She said she wanted to be a singer and dancer."

Amy Mangieri, the other Clara, is a Sikeston Middle School student who has been dancing only 3 1/2 years. She says she enjoys the challenge of making her dancing better and better.

Of the "Nutcracker" choreography, she said, "I don't find it particularly difficult. Well, some parts are difficult. It's difficult doing it correctly."

Alma Schrader fourth-grader Susan Zimmer will play a mouse and an angel in the production. She wanted to be in it after seeing the Saint Louis Ballet's production of the "Nutcracker" two years ago at the Show Me Center.

Excitement is starting to build for the dancers. On the Tuesday before the performances the mice and angels and soldiers and others will be fitted for their costumes, and on the Wednesday before they will see the company's striking sets for the first time during the only dress rehearsal.

No parents will be allowed backstage.

"There is excitement but we have to keep them organized," said Ruess.