On opening night this year, just like last, I’ll be watching her on a TV monitor in the dressing room. “Why on earth are you backstage?” a friend asked. But, having seen the mouse corps file into the dressing room last year with the entire student cast congratulating them and the proud looks on all those faces underneath that crazy mouse headgear, I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

The mouse costumes alone are worth a trip backstage. The outfit comprises a pink ankle-to-wrist unitard supporting a huge midsection that looks like it was stuffed full of something, but in fact the puffiness is ingeniously achieved through yards and yards of ruched tulle with a zipper buried in its bulk. I was told that Tamara Cobus was hired to make them as a freelance project for the Ballet and that her son helped her gather the acres of tulle they required. Now she is Costume Director at Richmond Ballet.

The mouse heads were made in London, and backstage they are guarded like the crown jewels because the Ballet hopes to get at least another decade out of them. The whole thing—huge pink ears, beady eyes and all—sits on top of the dancer’s head. Inside, a hidden baseball cap that the dancers pull their ponytails through is what holds it on their heads. A fabric hood hanging from the mouse head is tucked into the neckline of the costume, and the dancers’ faces pop out at about where the mouse’s neck would be. Standing upright, the mice look pretty strange, but onstage they are crouched over, so all they see is the floor. This goes a long way toward offsetting any chance of stage fright as they can’t even began to see the audience, which is probably a good thing as usually the mice are the youngest dancers in the production. This year, the mice got together and figured out they are only on stage for 58 seconds. That probably helps get the tiniest ones through it too.