Learning the Fezziwig Dance

By Megan Delaney, Belinda Cratchit and Fan in A Christmas Carol

One of my favorite scenes is at Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig's party where we get to dance. We started learning the dance on day two of rehearsal. Ms. Susan and Ms. Robyn are our dance teachers. They are both really great and have tons of experience. The first day we did everything in a line, learning moves like one called “sevens” and two types of jigs. The one called sevens is really fun because it moves really fast with seven steps in one direction or the other. On the second day they gave us partners. One thing that is a bit uncomfortable at first is dancing with boys because in fourth grade, girls and boys don't usually dance together nowadays. Back in 1860 it was more normal. But after the first few times dancing I remembered it is my character dancing and then it becomes fun.

I am a Fezziwig guest so in the show I dance at the party. My partner is Grant who plays Boy Scrooge and Peter Cratchit. By the third rehearsal everything came together and you could really see how it would look on stage. We have rehearsed the dance scene five times and it seems like we are ready now for the show.

One part that is fun is that the character Belle starts doing the sevens dance and we have to pretend that we don’t know how to do sevens even when we are good at them! After I pretend to learn the dance on stage, I then get to act like I am teaching Eric who plays Young Scrooge to do the dance the sevens. When he starts to dance on his own, he does really bad! It is fun to be the kid who teaches an adult how to dance even if it is only pretend.