'Nutcracker' appearance is dream come true for mother of 'soldier'

Published: 2003-12-31

MILWAUKEE (CNS) -- With doelike brown eyes, hair pulled into pigtails, a slight frame and quiet demeanor, 12-year-old Vivian Razo looks nothing like a soldier. But in December, she and her army mates regularly slayed giant mice at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts during performances of the Milwaukee Ballet's "The Nutcracker." It marked the fourth straight season that Vivian Razo was part of the popular holiday production. She danced an angel part for two years and last year was a goose. This year, the sixth-grader at Notre Dame Middle School said she tried out for the more difficult role of the soldier. Vivian is just one of 26 soldiers who performed during the 18-performance run of "The Nutcracker," but her route to the Marcus Center stage is most certainly unique. No one knows that better than her parents, Ana Maria and Petronilo Razo, who moved to the United States from their native Mexico about 13 years ago with little more than the clothes on their backs. "When we came here, we had nothing, no home, no jobs," recalled Ana Maria Razo, a nurse at the Madre Angela Family Medical Center in Milwaukee.

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