Life of a Ballerina – Diary of a Daydreamer

Nutcracker 2020 Recap (Blogmas Day 1)

Published on December 14, 2020December 13, 2020 by hannah rose26 Comments

On the first day of Blogmas, my true love gave to me…

Hey daydreamers! It’s finally the start of 12 days of Blogmas, and I’m so excited! I’m feeling a little bit overwhelmed, since today when this post goes up I’ll actually be taking finals, but hopefully after that I’ll be able to get the rest of the posts scheduled! I’ve never done this before, and I think it’s going to be really fun! I have a ton of post ideas lined up, with a few special guests too!

To kick off Blogmas, I was originally planning on doing a Christmas-themed giveway…but then finals and Nutcracker happened and I never got around to it. I’m really sorry, but hopefully y’all will enjoy it anyway! 😉 Today, I thought I’d do a recap of this year’s Nutcracker!

I’m a ballet dancer (obviously, based on my blog design XD), and my studio/company’s annual Nutcracker is a huge part of my Christmas and is really special to me. I look forward to it every year, and this year would’ve been my first year performing as a member of the company! Of course, COVID messed it up, and in order to safely put on the production we had to do a virtual version of our show. It was still really fun even though I missed performing!

It took a ton of rehearsals and we ended up having to push filming back, but we were finally able to film the weekend before last weekend! I was super nervous the night before. Here’s what was in my performance backpack:

hairspray
hair bag with bobby pins, pins, hairnets, hairties
Wet Brush
extra pair of company tights and an extra leotard
my company jacket and warm-up pants
company earrings
huge bag of stage makeup with eyeliner, mascara, eyeshadow, foundation, concealer, brow product, etc.
light-up mirror
some homework to do backstage

Both days I had to wake up super early to do my hair and makeup and get there by my call time. We filmed at a fancy ballroom where people have weddings, and it was so cool: spiral marble staircases, elegant double doors, intricate tile flooring, tons of glittering chandeliers, and there were even peacocks walking around in the parking lot!

We didn’t have a normal dressing room, so we hung out in this huge bathroom that was maybe the nicest bathroom I’ve ever been in. XD There was even a chandelier in there! While we waited for our time to film, we touched up hair and makeup and hung out backstage. That part was kind of boring and made me miss the actual show a lot, since filming got really delayed and we were there from 7:00 to 4:00 and 5:00 on each day.

The actual filming part went pretty well! It was kind of stressful, because there’s so many moving parts and we couldn’t always start over since we got really behind. My feet were also dying – they were stuffed in pointe shoes for 5 hours and we danced on concrete, ouch!

I played two parts this year: a Petit Fluer (Aka little flower) in the Waltz of the Flowers, and a party girl in the party scene. It was my first time performing en pointe! We had to wear masks while we danced, which we were all super used to from filming, so that was good!

This was my party girl costume! (Taken in the fancy bathroom, lol) Both of my “big sisters” had also worn this costume when they were party girls, so that was cool! I liked the pink/peach color and it was so fun to dance in. We also had to wear these hairpieces to look like 1800s ringlets.

We had to film the party scene twice, since there were two Claras. I’ve watched the first one and it turned out pretty well, even though we had to retake it a few times! I haven’t seen the second one, though, and I randomly started doing the wrong steps and we didn’t have a chance to refilm it. That was probably the most stressful part: we didn’t have a dress rehearsal or a lot of time to prepare!

This was my costume for Waltz! The bodice/corset thing was super tight and kind of hard to breathe in, but the costume was so elegant and professional.

Filming Waltz took a lot of takes, and we had to film it three times for each Dewdrop Fairy. It was difficult to dance on the slippery/textured floor, but we figured it out and the end result was really good!

Overall, Nutcracker 2020 was definitely a different experience than normal and I really missed performing, but I had a ton of fun and the end result was really cool. Doing a virtual Nutcracker was definitely better than having no Nutcracker at all, and I’m really greateful for the experience!

I kind of liked making this type of post! It is Diary of a Daydreamer, after all, so do you think I should do more journal-entry type of posts? Or should I stick with more informative ones?

What kinds of posts do you like to see? Have you ever seen the Nutcracker? Or have you ever been in the Nutcracker? If so, what roles have you played? Are you excited for Blogmas?

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How I Do My Makeup for Performances // Stage Makeup Tutorial!

Published on January 11, 2020 by hannah rose28 Comments

Hey daydreamers! You guys really seemed to like my morning routine post, so I decided to do something sort of similar to that today.

In this post, I’m basically going to be showing you how I do my makeup for shows and ballet performances, and this is pretty much how I did my makeup for Nutcracker a few weeks ago! (I miss Nutcracker so much!!! *cries*)

First off, I am in no way a professional makeup artist or anything, I have no idea what I’m doing and this is basically what I’ve figured out by experimenting and trying out products and stuff. And also, this isn’t sponsored or anything (haha as if, I wish this was sponsored lol)!

Without futher ado…my attempt at a makeup tutorial! 😂

This is just my face pre-makeup. 😂 Onstage, it’s really important to wear heavy makeup because the huge stage lights completely wash your face out, and you have to make sure the back row of the audience can see your facial expressions. You mainly just have to focus on brows, eyes, lips, and cheekbones.

Lol, I should know…once I was in a play and I didn’t wear ANY makeup at all, and it looks like I don’t even have a face in this picture! *Cringes*

The first thing I do is just pull my hair back into a simple ponytail, just to keep my hair out of my face.

First, I’m using a beauty blender and a Neutrogena product (I think it’s supposed to be cover up, but I sort of use it like foundation.)

Next, I apply the cover up on my chin, forehead, cheeks, and under my eyes. Then I blend everything in with the beauty blender by sort of bouncing the blender on my face and smoothing everything out with my fingers.

Next, I put some highlighter around the corners of my eyes to brighten them up a little.

Sorry this is out of focus! I’m using the light to medium matte bronzer, matte rose blush, and gold highlighter from this palate from the Nuetrogena makeup case I got for Christmas.

My face in this picture, lol! First, I take the matte bronzer and lightly dust it over my cheekbones, and blend with a beauty blender.

Next, I apply some blush to my cheekbones – a little more than I would usually do, because it needs to show up onstage. Once again, blend!

Lastly, I dust a touch of shimmery gold highlighter slightly above my cheekbones. And I – you guessed it! – blend it all in.

Onto brows! I’m using the light brown brow cream from the same case thing.

Using a brow brush, I brush on a thick line at the top of my brows, which looks really funny and strange at first, lol!

After that, I blend it together by rubbing my fingers over my brows, and then I fill in any sparse spots with the brow brush.

Next, I apply some glowy nude eyeshadow base with an eyeshadow brush. I really like using this because it smooths everything out and gives your eyes a bit of a natural glow!

Moving onto my favorite part – eyeshadow! I’m using the Candelight, Amour, Midnight, and Sparks colors from this palate, and a crease brush from a brush kit I got.

First, I dust the Candelight shade all over my lids. Then I go over that with the Amour color. After that, I brush the darker Midnight color from the bottom of my eyelids to my crease, and then go over everything with the light shimmery Sparks color.

Ta-da! Eyeshadow done, now onto lashes and eyeliner.

Doing my own eyeliner is really hard for me, so I usually have my mom do it…but I tried, and kinda failed, haha! For shows I always, always, always do winged eyeliner! I attempted a wing here and it’s kinda uneven…oh well?

Second-to-last, I apply mascara! I use this really big, thick one for onstage. I don’t know why, but mascara is really fun to put on for some reason. 😂

Normally, when I’m in a group dance, we all have one lipstick color that we all share so we look the same, so I usually put it on there. It kinda depends on the role: sometimes it’s pink, and sometimes it’s red.

Finally, fill in your lip liner with a bright red or dark pink shade, and you’re done!

I’m pretty happy about how this turned out! The eyeliner is only a little bit messy, and the eyeshadow turned out pretty well! I probably would’ve done everything a bit more exaggerated for a real show, but I didn’t want to put a TON on because it’s hard to take it off, especially thick eyeliner. 😂

And that’s it for this post! I hope you guys found this interesting, and maybe you can use it to try out some stage makeup of your own. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Have you ever done stage makeup? Do you like makeup everyday, or only for shows and special occasions? Pink or red lipstick? Are you bad at eyeliner like me?

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What’s In My Dance Bag #2 – Updated Dance Bag Tour!

Published on November 9, 2019November 9, 2019 by hannah rose12 Comments

Hey daydreamers! Random question: how early is to early to listen to Christmas music? Usually I strictly ban it until after Thanksgiving, but the Jonas Brothers just came out with a new Christmas song and okay, I admit I’ve listened to it about 15 times since it came out…

Anyway, I know I just did a “what’s in my dance bag” in like August, but my dance bag has changed a LOT since then. First of all, volleyball season ended, I got pointe shoes, new leotards, I’m now at the dance studio 24/7…and oh, yeah, I got a new bag. So yeah, I think that justifies a new tour! If you want to check out the first one, click here.

Let’s just dive headfirst into the post, since I can’t wait to get started!

First, we have the actual bag! I got it for my birthday, and it’s this really cute duffel bag from Rebok. I love the blush pink color! (Pretty much everything I got for my birthday is blush pink…) There’s a mesh pocket on the side, another side pocket with a zipper, and a front pocket with velcro. There’s one main strap that goes over your shoulder, and two smaller straps that velcro together to hold stuff on top of the bag – I use it to hold my pointe shoe bag in place!

In the mesh side pocket, I keep my ballet shoes! I normally just stuff them there after class. That way they can air out after getting all sweaty from dancing (ew). My ballet shoes are leather split-soles from SoDanca, but I’ve been thinking about switching to canvas ballet shoes so I can point my foot more easily.

And next, my pointe shoe bag! I keep my shoes in a blue mesh bag that I stick in the outside pocket. Like my ballet shoes, that gives them a chance to air out after getting sweaty, so they won’t break down as easily!

In my pointe bag, I have my toe pads, toe tape, and of course, pointe shoes! I wear Pillows For Pointe Gellows toe pads, and I love them because they’re reversible! I really like the gel side on my toes – for the first few releves, it’s actually comfortable because the gel feels really soothing. (After that, well…not so comfortable.) I also use Gaynor Minden Microfoam toe tape, which I don’t use super often since I haven’t gotten any blisters yet (thankfully!).

Then, of course, my pointe shoes! Like I said in my pointe fitting vlog, I wear Bloch European Balance, size 4, No X. Translation for non dancers: the number of “X” you have determines the width of your shoe – so if you had XXXX, you’d have really wide feet, and No X means your feet are so narrow that they’re not even wide enough to have one X. Like me. 😂

Here are some gorgeous pictures of my feet. 😂 These involved me tying them, standing on top of my desk, bending down and desperately grabbing the wall while I tried to balance on one foot in the left picture. You’re welcome. 😜

The side pocket contains a very dirty-looking Ziploc bag that contains a travel hairbrush and used to have bobby pins and hair ties in it, but I don’t know where those ended up…and also my red Theraband, which looks really cool in front of my desk lamp, lol!

Finally, let’s look INSIDE the bag!

First, I have another mesh bag containing all my shoes that aren’t actually ballet-related. I’ve had this in my closet since like fourth grade, and I just decided to use it to keep all my shoes together. It’s really cheap and flimsy, but it works!

Inside my purple mesh bag, (how many times have I said the word “mesh” in this post??) I have my jazz and contemporary shoes! When Payless had this huge closing sale I got these tan jazz shoes for only $4 or $5. I think I got the contemporary/lyrical shoes off of Amazon?

Some more slightly weird looking pictures of my feet that also involved standing on top of my desk! In the right one, you can see how the contemporary/lyrical shoes fit over your foot. I actually don’t use these very much; I’d rather go barefoot. The other day in contemporary class, I tried to wear them, and I actually got annoyed that they were slipping off my feet and took them off! I just keep them in my bag anyway.

Then I have my pink leg warmers I got from Target in my birthday shopping haul post that I love! I wear them all the time, especially in my early-morning weekend classes to help me warm up.

Then I also keep this warm grey sweatshirt in my backpack to wear in between rehearsals and on the way to class! It’s really cozy and now that the weather is FINALLY cooling down here in southeast Texas (😂), I wear it all the time.

I love how the filter made my dirty desk look like a clean white background, lol! I also keep these black Spandex shorts that I wore under my uniform during volleyball season in my bag, but now that volleyball is over, I always wear them over my leotard and tights during class! I also keep blackish-navy biker shorts in there too in case I don’t have my Spandex for some reason.

My level color is royal blue, so I have two leotards in that color! The first leotard has spaghetti straps, a lower neck, and V-cut back. The only problem is the straps are a little loose, but otherwise it’s really pretty and comfortable!

My other one is like the opposite of the first leotard: it has a very high neck, thick straps, and back that’s higher than the top. Both are really cute and comfy, though! I also have a black leotard, but when I was taking the pictures for this post I was actually wearing it since I had just gotten back from class. 😂

And, of course, I have tights. I always wear convertible tights, because it’s so much easier to put on toe pads and go barefoot for contemporary class! Once again, I have another pair, but I was wearing them at the time…

I also have a random hairbrush and spray bottle that I use to do my hair for class and rehearsal on the go. There’s not actually thickening spray in the misting bottle – it’s actually just a totally random bottle that I’ve had since the beginning of time, and it’s full of water.

I also, quite randomly, have a pinkish-red fox Squishmallow in my dance bag! Isn’t it cute? For pre-pointe class, we would do releve exercises in parallel, and we’d have to keep a small stuffed animal in between our heels without dropping it. We’d also have to do bourres with them in between our thighs to keep your legs together! Now that I’m on pointe we don’t really use this that much, but I still keep it in my bag in case we do.

(Okay, but the picture on the right actually looks really pretty?) I also keep Spenco 2nd Skin™ Squares in my bag. They’re like little jelly squares with blue backings on them. You stick the square on your blister and peel off the blue backing, and finally attach it with toe tape, and it completely covers up your blisters and keeps them from rubbing! Once again, I haven’t had to use these a lot because I haven’t gotten a blister yet (YAY).

Finally, I have a bag with all of my pointe sewing stuff in it! (Not sure why there’s an empty band-aid box?) The bag is actually the baggie my pointe shoes came in! Inside is scissors, some ribbon and elastic scraps, stretch ribbon that I don’t use but came with my Bloch stitch kit that has some thread and a seam ripper plus some ribbed elastic, a Bunheads stitch kit that has thread and needles, and some measuring tape.

And that’s it! Wow, that ended up being way longer than I expected, and I even left out some stuff. Applause if you made it to the end! 😂

Also, don’t forget: There’s still time to ask questions for the Q&A next week! All you have to do is simply comment down below, and I’m going to be answering all of your questions this Saturday!

I hope you enjoyed looking at what’s in my dance bag, and happy Saturday! *waves*

How early is too early for Christmas music? Do you dance? What’s in your dance or sports bag? How do you organize everything? Any questions for the Q&A?

GETTING MY FIRST PAIR OF POINTE SHOES?! | First Ever Vlog

Published on October 23, 2019 by hannah rose16 Comments

I’ll never forget the day I found out I was getting my first pair of pointe shoes. It had been a long, crazy, horrible day, and I was feeling so stressed and frazzled when I walked into the studio, I couldn’t remember where to put my bag. I was pretty suspicious, though – there was supposed to be a parent meeting that day. And that could only mean one thing!!

My mom and I walked into the studio to find my class huddled in a circle around my teacher. She handed us each a packet that read-

Dear Emmie*,

The image of dancing on pointe as effortless is a mere illusion. Much energy and skill is required to assimilate hundreds of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bones to rise up and dance on pointe. Many dancers have impatiently waited for their first pair of pointe shoes only to be shocked at how difficult dancing on their toes can be. the results of such misunderstanding can lead to frustration, disappointment, and in some cases, injury.

As you begin your pointe study, please be aware that it is a privilege that is accompanied by significant responsibility.

1. Your attendance to each class is imperative.

2. You will be required to dance in the summer to maintain your sill and strength. If you don’t dance at least 4 weeks in the summer, you will not be able to return to pointe study at the beginning of the next fall term.

3. Don’t work at home in your pointe shoes on your own, as you may develop improper habits. Be patient and endure!

*Not what the letter actually said, obviously, it said my real name lol.

As soon as I saw the packet, I knew – it was real. It was actually happening. I was going to get my pointe shoes! And after 3 weeks of waiting, the day of my first pointe shoe fitting had finally come.

Hey guys! Today I’m doing something a little different – I decided to make a vlog about my first ever pointe shoe fitting! I filmed the entire day, from waking up, heading there, the actual fitting (sort of), and when I got back! I’m so excited about how this video turned out and I really hope you guys will like it!

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CREDITS – Intro: Taylor Layman https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEI…

Intro Music: Wanderlust by Nomyn https://soundcloud.com/nomyn Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0 Free Download / Stream: https://bit.ly/wanderlust-nomyn Music promoted by Audio Library https://youtu.be/Q66WFX4eeVw

Background Music: Audio Library

I really hope you guys enjoyed! I’m so sorry this video is SUPER late, but that’s because this took so long to edit and upload, plus I’ve been busy with dance and school so I haven’t had time to actually type this post up.

Do you have pointe shoes? Opinion on microwave mac-and-cheese? Have you ever danced before? How far can you go on your splits? Who’s your favorite YouTuber?