I stared into the dressing-room mirror, and a Gingerbread Girl stared back at me. I laughed out loud.

My dress was gingerbread brown with big red plastic buttons. My cookie hat was round with a rim of white frosting. It was plastic, though, so as soon as I put it on my head, my scalp started to itch. And the hat was hot! I felt as if the top part of me really was a cookie, baking in an oven.

It was Sunday, the day of our dress rehearsal, and I couldn’t wait to see Jade’s costume and some of the others that I had helped to design.

Renata stepped in front of me, hogging the mirror. When Agnes complained from behind us, Renata half-joked, “You’re just a maid. It takes a lot of work to make a duchess look like a duchess.” She was putting on artificial lashes that were so thick and long, they reminded me of spider legs.

Jade had already done my makeup, including circles of rouge on my cheeks. When she had put on her own costume and makeup, she turned around so that Luisa and I could see. Luisa linked her arm with mine as she admired my sister. “Wow, Jade,” was all she could say, and I couldn’t agree more.

Wardrobe had put ruched V’s—or chevrons, as Mr. Kosloff had called them—on the skirt of Jade’s costume, just as we had done on her rehearsal skirt. The sleeveless red costume was breathtaking. My sister had never looked more radiant, or more confident.

As Jade and I followed Luisa out of the dressing room, we couldn’t help giggling. The fluffy tail of Luisa’s furry fox costume waggled behind her with each step. Luisa looked back at us, and with her sly grin and pointy ears, she looked every inch the fox. She wriggled her tail even more as she gave a little hop.

When the three of us crowded into the wings, I saw that some of the boys in the party scene were wearing buttoned-down shirts and T-shirts now, just as I had suggested. And as a small mouse ran past, I saw that the head of her costume was cuter and more rounded, like the sketches I had created for Mr. Kosloff. He had taken my suggestions! My heart leaped in my chest. I could barely stand still.

“Let’s check out the theater,” I said to Luisa. We peeked around the heavy curtains and out into the theater beyond. The chandeliers on the ceiling burned like huge suns, and row after row of plush seats swept away from the stage like the waves of a red velvet sea. In the pit in front of the stage, a live orchestra was tuning its instruments.

As I stepped back into the wings, I saw a dancer in a colorful doll costume sliding her shoes back and forth in a pan of rosin on the floor. The rosin would keep her from slipping onstage. Next to her, another dancer rose en pointe several times, as if stretching out her feet or shoes. Another was checking the ribbons tied around her ankles.

“Isabelle! Luisa!” someone called. It was Agnes, letting us know that Ms. Ferri was looking for us. We followed Agnes to a space backstage where the rest of the cast had gathered.

Ms. Ferri was sitting on a chair, strapping her stilts onto her legs. A huge wig with auburn curls perched on her head. Seeing her wig made me think of my own costume, and I fought the urge to scratch beneath my cookie hat.

In heavy mascara, eye shadow, and rouged cheeks, Ms. Ferri looked like a painted doll. An elegant fan dangled on a strap around her wrist. From the waist up, she was dressed in a teal satin bodice, but from the waist down, she wore workout pants and running shoes. She looked like two different people who had been jammed together.

“Time to stretch,” Ms. Ferri announced.

We did the best we could to warm up in our costumes. Agnes didn’t have much trouble in her milkmaid outfit, but Renata’s brocaded gown was stiff and heavy, so it made it hard for her to bend certain ways. Her tall, curly white wig nodded back and forth as she exercised.

Emilio’s police outfit got my vote for the funniest. He had a high-domed helmet and a blue coat that reached down almost to his knees. His big fake mustache wiggled on its own, almost as much as Luisa’s fox tail.

My costume, I’m sure, was the sweatiest and itchiest. My hair was already sticky beneath the hot plastic cookie hat.

When Ms. Ferri thought we were ready, she stood up on her stilts with the help of a stagehand. “And now, what every well-dressed giant wears,” she said, glancing up at the large oval frame that held her skirt. The outer fabric was teal satin, like her bodice, but inside, the skirt was lined with plain white cotton material. Ms. Ferri held both arms up in the air as more stagehands started to lower the skirt over her.

Once the huge skirt had settled to the floor, the stagehands helped position it around Ms. Ferri’s waist. To show us what it would look like to the audience, Ms. Ferri began to step sideways, the skirt bouncing up slightly on one side and then on the other like water lapping at the edges of a bowl.

“Now let’s practice getting inside and out,” Ms. Ferri said, beckoning us over.

Two of the stagehands lifted one end of the skirt, and we formed a line to file under it. As the hem settled back down to the floor, it was suddenly very dim. Only a faint light found its way through the layers of cloth. As roomy as the skirt might look from the outside, it was crowded for eight dancers in costume.

Above us, Ms. Ferri tapped the frame to get our attention. “I know it’s a little stuffy inside,” she warned, “but don’t let that throw you off. Stay focused.”

When Ms. Ferri pulled a drawstring, a panel rose on the front of her skirt. A thinner piece of material acted like a screen, and we slipped around that to step out of the skirt. In the crowded backstage area, we couldn’t rehearse our full routine, but we could practice leaving and entering the skirt. So Ms. Ferri kept us busy making entrances and exits. We also practiced moving short distances back and forth in the skirt.

We stopped only when it was almost time for us to go onstage. Stagehands went ahead to clear chairs and props out of Ms. Ferri’s path. She moved toward the stage slowly, like a satin-covered whale. When we reached the wings, I caught just a glimpse of Jade and Paul sitting on a throne upstage before I had to get inside the skirt with the others and wait.

As the first shivery notes of the tambourines began, Ms. Ferri’s right stilt rose and sank slowly.

“One.”

Her left stilt went up and fell.

“Two.”

At “four,” she took a step toward the stage and then stopped. We took our own step, moving slowly onto the stage. By now, we were used to the stilts themselves, but it was a little strange walking under the dim skirt instead of in a bright studio.

When Ms. Ferri halted and the panel went up, it was a relief to see the bright lights of the stage. But we’d no sooner left Ms. Ferri than Mr. Kosloff had us repeat our entrance and exit again.

And again.

And again.

It felt like riding in a racecar that had to halt every few yards. We never reached full speed or practiced our full routine, but at least I danced okay and didn’t knock anyone over.

When we were back in the wings again, we were all glad to get out from under Ms. Ferri’s skirt. “Coming?” asked Luisa, nodding toward the hall that would take us to the dressing room.

I was about to follow her when I realized that the next number was “The Waltz of the Flowers.” I’d danced a shorter version of it at the Autumn Festival, so I wanted to see how real professionals did it.

“Do you want to stay and watch this with me?” I asked Luisa, and I was glad when she nodded yes. I gripped her arm excitedly as the flowers surged across the stage. They were all en pointe, and they seemed as light as dandelion fluff as they danced in intricate patterns and combinations of moves. The dancing was a lot more complicated than the routine I had done at our school show.

Luisa leaned her head against mine. “That’s going to be you someday,” she whispered to me.

“I hope so,” I said. But these dancers seemed so flawless. I watched them carefully, waiting for one to make a mistake. “Everyone makes mistakes,” Jackie Sanchez had said. But maybe she had just said that to make me feel better.

“The Waltz of the Flowers” finished without a hitch. That’s when anxiety started to creep back into my mind. Sitting in this elegant theater, watching professional dancers in full costume onstage, everything felt so important and spectacular. What if I make a mistake during our performance? I wondered. Worse yet, what if I’m the only one who makes a mistake?