02 Dec 2024 Kid of the Month: Olivia Sherbet
By Donna Lampkin Stephens
For the Sherbet/Lo family of Little Rock, the holidays are all about “The Nutcracker” ballet.
Their daughter, Olivia, 10, will play Clara in Ballet Arkansas’s “Nutcracker Spectacular” with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra on Dec. 13-15. The Sugar Plum Ball, part of CARTI’s Festival of Trees, is a tradition on the family’s calendar. And from mid-November through the holidays, their home brims with nutcracker-themed decorations, thanks to Christina Gore Design Studio.
Drs. Daniel Sherbet and Monica Lo are cardiologists at Arkansas Heart Hospital.
“It’s all Christina,” Lo said. “She knows that Olivia’s really into ballet. One year, she surprised us with a nutcracker tree. Since we’re both physicians, we don’t have a lot of time to really pick out stuff, and she knows, just from working on different projects with us, what we like and that we get easily overwhelmed with too many choices. I tell her, ‘You do you,’ and she goes with it. The nutcracker tree was a real big surprise. And a good one.”
Olivia is the family’s first ballerina. “We’re a lot more left-brained,” Lo said of herself and her husband. “But I’m learning a lot about it. We put her in different activities just to kind of explore different things, and she really gravitated toward ballet. She was 3 when she started, and she did different sports, and in the end, we consider ballet the most graceful sport. You have to be athletic to be able to do ballet.”
Olivia’s “Nutcracker” experience goes back several years. Lo said she debuted as a little mouse, then became an angel and then a party girl last year. Rehearsals began shortly after Labor Day. Between those and her other lessons, she is dancing seven days a week.
“We look forward to this time of the year,” Lo said.
Gore, too, is a “Nutcracker” alumna. “I was a baby angel, and I ran across the stage,” she said. “I have the best memories from that. I relate to Olivia so well.”
Gore has worked with the family on several decorating projects in multiple homes. “I’d gotten to know the family very well, and I knew Olivia had a love for dance, especially ballet,” she said. “And what is more Christmas than ‘The Nutcracker?’”
When the family moved into their current home, Gore created all new Christmas decorations for them. “Olivia also plays the piano beautifully, and the piano is near the Christmas tree, so I just thought with all the beautiful music in ‘The Nutcracker’ and then with her loving ballet, it fell into place for me, and this is what we needed to do,” Gore said.
The tree in the family’s piano room is decorated with scenes from the ballet, nutcrackers are on the mantel, and Gore transformed the dining room with a sugar plum theme. Lo remembered the family’s first glimpse of Gore’s nutcracker handiwork several years ago. “We gasped,” she said. “Olivia jumped up and down. Just seeing that magic in her eyes was just great. You can pick out all the details on the tree, every scene of the ballet. It’s just great to be able to find little surprises in the tree. Every year, she adds a little something different, special ornaments she finds.
“I can’t wait to see what I find when I come home.”
This year, Gore has added silver and gold nutcrackers to the curved staircase, extra branches and ribbon for the tree and a pair of 9-foot illuminated nutcrackers for the front porch. “We want it to be really magical,” she said. “We try to incorporate something from every scene (of the ballet). You can stand there a good bit and follow the scenes.”
Gore said when she watched Olivia in last year’s Ballet Arkansas production, she thought she could be Clara. “I was trying not to be partial, but I thought she did a beautiful job,” she said. “I wasn’t really surprised when Monica texted me this year that she got the part.”
Lo said the role was almost like every little girl’s dream. “This is so fun, just magic,” she said. “When she found out she was Clara, she was jumping up and down, screaming. It was so exciting.”
They will entertain family and friends from across the country and beyond for the performances. Lo and Sherbet moved to the 501 from Texas more than a decade ago. Her mother is coming from Taiwan and an uncle is coming from California to support their little Clara.
Olivia and her passion have influenced her family in other ways as well.
“I didn’t know anything about ballet, but because of her, I’ve learned a lot,” Lo said. “I’ve joined the board of directors of Ballet Arkansas. It’s great to have a company like this with the opportunity for her to be able to do this on stage with professionals.”
“The Nutcracker Spectacular” is Arkansas’s largest and longest-running holiday production presented with live music by the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra, according to balletarkansas.org.
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