Let there be light!

When I was a polichenelle in The Nutcracker, I was assigned the position of "light boy". 

Not all productions of this ballet feature this role.  In this production there were eight of us in each show: four 'boys' (wore pants and hats) and four 'girls' (wore dresses and a flower in her hair) who all emerged from and retreated to the Mother Ginger's enormous dress at the beginning and end of the dance, respectively.  I was a "poli boy", so every show I had to wear a bun on the top of my head concealed underneath my hat, which added an extra three or four inches to my height.

Offstage, in the wings, the eight of us would duck into the skirt part of Mother Ginger's costume and form a circle around the legs.  The man who played Mother Ginger-- it's always a man who plays this role, go figure-- wore stilts, and all nine of us had to step in perfect time to the music so that we'd get on stage together and not get trampled.  Getting on stage was half the fun, half the magic: the stage lights shone brightly on Mother Ginger, and we polis were bathed in a shocking pink glow within the skirt, all flushed from the lighting and the excitement of another performance.  We would get ourselves even more pumped up then, talking excitedly and counting the beats in the music in preparation for our grand entrance.

After our little dance we had to scurry under the skirt once more, and I had to perform my duty as the "light boy". There was a small keychain flashlight that hung on the inside of the frame of the skirt, and thanks to the order in which we re-entered the skirt it was just above my right shoulder.  It was my duty to turn it on and focus it on the stilted feet as we step-by-stepped our way back to the wings on stage left.  Lighting on stage and off stage was like day and night, and under the skirt it was nigh impossible to see anything without that flashlight.  Every night we'd wait until we heard the "okay" from the stagehand and saw the feet stop moving, and then we'd crawl back out and remember how nice it was to take a deep breath in the cool backstage air.