Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows it’s cold and rainy. But inside the studio at the Maryland Youth Ballet in downtown Silver Spring, students, including myself, are sweating enough to fog up the windows. We bounce off the one yellow wall in the room to the white walls with enough speed and agility to make anyone’s head dance. This is my fourth year in the Maryland Youth Ballet nutcracker, and my 14th year in ballet.

Fluorescent lights make every detail noticeable and the matte grey dance floor shows the wear and tear of hundreds of pointe shoes pounding into the springboards below. Wooden ballet barres line the middle of each wall, with a wall-to-wall mirror at the front of the room.

In the center of the chaos, around 80 high school and middle school students are in rehearsals for the studio’s annual production of The Nutcracker.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the ballet school’s annual production. Choreographed by school principal Michelle Lees, and co-run by senior faculty member Harriet Moncure Fellows and faculty member Austin St. John, the performances will take place at Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center Dec. 20-28.

Teenagers pirouette and grande jéte to the iconic Tchaikovsky music, acting out the classic holiday ballet. Students dedicate hours of their time to the production to do something they love, with friends who have become a family.

“I love Nutcracker because I love the feeling of family that I get when I rehearse with my friends and I love seeing our hard work pay off during each performance,” senior Carly Baker said.

All of the students spend up to 18 hours a week in classes and eight hours each weekend in rehearsals preparing for the Dec. 20 opening show. Students perform in six, hour-long mini Nutcrackers the weekend of Dec. 13-14 and 10 full-length productions from December 20-28.

The entire full-length ballet is not run through until the technical rehearsal on Dec. 18, two days before the first performance. The technical rehearsal uses lights and scenery as well as falling snow—the most technical part of the show.

The last rehearsal is the dress rehearsal, which is the only rehearsal with costumes, hair, makeup, and quick changes. Teachers sit in the middle of the audience frantically scribbling notes on pads of paper in the dark, and yelling into the microphone if something goes wrong.

Performance days are a whole different type of hectic. Students can be at the theatre from 10 a.m. until around 9 p.m. on a given day. Students will enter the theatre through the stage door at the side of the building around 10 a.m. for a one o’clock performance.

The dancers start to get dressed, which includes false eyelashes, eye shadow, and lipstick, and then wait downstairs in the back hallway until the sound director calls for places for act one. Everyone runs around looking like someone else if only for a little, hugging each other and whispering ‘Merde’ (which means good luck) in each other’s ears.

We all go to places for the first act and begin the show, dancing and pretending to be someone else from the Victorian ages. While dancers may look like they are exiting calmly from the stage, as soon as they have cleared the wings they are sprinting up the stairs to make a costume change for their next part.

The nutcracker is an amazing bonding experience for young ballerinas. It’s something that we work towards for months together and base our relationships on. It’s where I have made my closest friends and where I have found the people that I can relate to the most, and spending every holiday season with them is something I wouldn’t trade for the world.