Arts & Entertainment

Dancing Toward a Dream

A Doylestown Township girl is among the cast of Pennsylvania Ballet's production of George Balanchine's The Nutcracker.

When the curtain rises this weekend on Pennsylvania Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, the cast will include a dedicated young dancer from Doylestown Township.

By day, Sierra Levin is a ninth grader at Tamanend Middle School. In the evenings and on weekends, though, the 15-year-old blooms into a ballerina in training.

This is the third year Levin has performed in The Nutcracker with Pennsylvania Ballet, her mother Mina said Thursday. It’s a wonderful opportunity for the girl who has been dancing through life since she learned to walk.

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“Sierra started dancing when she was 3, because her older sister, Marlee, was in dance,” her mother said. “As a parent, it was just easier to put her into dance class, too. Slowly, we realized that she really loved it and wanted to pursue it.”

Sierra learned all forms of dance, from jazz to hip hop to ballet, and studied at several dance studios around the area, her mother said. But by the time she was 10, she knew she wanted to train in classical ballet.

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Today, she studies with Lisa Collins Vidnovic at the Metropolitan Ballet Academy in Jenkintown. She is driven down to the studio every day after school lets out, her mother said. She does her homework at the studio and typically doesn’t arrive back home until about 9:30 p.m.

It’s a grueling schedule, but Sierra says it’s worth it.

“I am hoping to become a professional dancer in a company someday,” she said. “And my school’s been very supportive and willing to work around my schedule.”

Sierra has performed in several shows as part of the Metropolitan Ballet Company.

She was a stepsister in “Cinderella” and Lead Mazurka and Dawn in “Coppelia,” her mother said, in addition to other roles.

In The Nutcracker, Sierra plays the role of a mouse during a battle scene and a “hoop” – a candy cane that dances with a large hoop.

The Nutcracker has two casts, and each performs about half the shows. This weekend, though, Sierra will appear in all five performances, as her counterpart in the other cast was unavailable.

It will be a busy weekend for her, but she wouldn’t have it any other way – especially when the audience is packed with other small dancers in training.

“I really love performing for little girls, because I like the way they look up to us when they come backstage,” Sierra said. “Plus, I’ve gotten to meet a lot of different people and make a lot of friends from other schools.”

Next year, Sierra will go to Central Bucks High School South, where her sister Marlee is now a senior. And, of course, she plans to continue her intensive study of ballet, working towards her goal of a career on pointe.

In the meantime, she and her family are enjoying The Nutcracker and all it has brought them.

“The Pennsylvania Ballet have been so wonderful to us,” Mina Levin said. “It’s been such a great opportunity for the kids to actually perform with them. It’s been a wonderful experience.”

The Nutcracker continues this weekend and runs through Dec. 31 at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. For information on performances and tickets, click here.


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