Catherine Hurlin, an 11-year-old White Plains sixth-grader, has been studying dance since she was 3.

Her family has gone to many recitals.

Last year, she danced the part of Clara in Purchase College’s “Nutcracker ‘06,” a huge undertaking with hundreds of other dancers from across the Lower Hudson Valley. But even that pales in comparison to her latest project: Starting today, she plays Clara in the 75th anniversary production of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular.

It’s not the entire “Nutcracker,” just a little scene, she says. “We learned it really fast and now we’re doing tech, and that’s basically rehearsals onstage with the lighting and the spacing.”

“Clara is this girl who basically, here, is in this big, big room that has humongous boxes in it,” she explains. “And in the boxes are teddy bears and all the teddy bears come to life and dance around.”

She dances pointe – one of those ballerinas who spin and move on tiptoes – a skill she learned two years ago.

“It can hurt your feet,” she says, adding that it’s harder to move around when she’s not on her tiptoe than when she is.

She studies at Westchester Dance Academy, and she has also studied at Scarsdale Ballet Studio. She takes jazz and ballet but hasn’t tried tap yet.

At Radio City, there are two Spectacular casts – the blue and the gold – with two Claras (Catherine alternates with Allie Parsons, from North Carolina) and two separate groups of Rockettes.

So what’s it like to stand next to a Rockette?

“They’re really tall,” Catherine says with a laugh. “When they come off the stage, they’re sweating and dripping.”

There is one wrangler to chaperone the show’s six boys and two girls, taking them to rehearsals and tutoring and to the stage door to be picked up.

When she’s in rehearsal, Catherine studies what her classmates in White Plains are studying, only faster. “There’s a lot less time,” she says.

Having danced on the huge stage at Purchase College, Catherine says she was surprised by the size of the Radio City stage.

“I thought it was going to be a bigger stage,” she says, “but the Christmas tree is huge and it takes up a lot of room, with the big boxes, too. But I like … that Clara gets these big presents in this gorgeous room.”

This year’s Spectacular has several new elements, one of which is the opening to the Live Nativity scene, where animals are brought out onto the stage. Just before the scene, Catherine and two boys playing her brothers read the Nativity story from the Bible and then it comes to life, she says.

“In real life, I have a little brother,” Catherine says. “His name is Henry and he’s 7, but he doesn’t dance. He’s a gymnast. He does backflips all the time.”

As Clara, Catherine doesn’t flip, but she did flip over some of the trappings of her new holiday home.

“I get my own dressing room and my own table and mirror,” she says. “And I get to decorate it.”

PHOTO: Catherine Hurlin, a White Plains native, has won the role of Clara in the 75th anniversary production of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular in Manhattan. (Photo by Carucha L. Meuse/The Journal News)

Radio City Christmas Spectacular
Where: Radio City Music Hall, 50th Street at Avenue of the Americas.
When: Today through Dec. 30.
Tickets: $40 to $100.
Call: 212-307-1000.