one of the first things that bothered me struck me about the disney movie is that they used music from the ballet for the movie score, but not the way the ballet uses it. the first 80 times we watched the movie :D i was completely distracted by the fact the music didn't "fit"--when aurora goes to the tower and pricks her finger, they used music that in the ballet belongs to two cats--when the three good fairies take baby aurora to the woods to live, they used music from the vision scene in the ballet--and worst of all (at the time) was that they turned the garland dance from the ballet's birthday act into a song.
argh. it was too much for me.
and ella noticed.
so i explained to her that i had danced this ballet many, many times, and that the music in the movie was in different places from the ballet. ella asked me to show her the dances that went with the ballet, and then she found out i had a video of it, and that is how that can of worms got opened--it was my fault.
storytelling: to my complete astonishment (and i am not easily astonished), ella watched the entire ballet--all 2.5 hours of it--straight thru at least four times the first week. she was fascinated by the fact that the whole story was told without one, single word. that week, we started using "ballet sign language", aka ballet pantomime, to tell stories, starting with sleeping beauty, of course. she has since branched out to telling other stories that have similar themes and thus make use of similar pantomime motions, and of course she has started making up her own pantomime, which is really quite beautiful and each of which makes total sense.
anyway, the ballet and the movie are so different that completely new questions have come up and have lead us to other lines of inquiry. again, the fairies are the chief characters of interest--why does the ballet have so many fairies? what do their gifts represent? why does each fairy bring her specific gift? and why is the lilac fairy the "head" fairy? she didn't even bring a gift! :D
and then there are the characters at the wedding--how did all those fairy tale characters get invited but not the fairy godmothers that had protected her all those years?
other storytelling details of interest: why does the nurse take care of the baby and not the queen? why doesn't the queen check on aurora when she pricks her finger? why does the master of ceremonies get in trouble for not inviting such a mean fairy?
do you see where this is going? these are questions about the construction of the ballet, of the way the story is told, of how the characters have been developed for the particular production we've been watching. and this is just my guess but i believe ella would not have looked at the ballet in quite this probing manner if she had not first experienced the clear, straightforward storytelling of the movie. damn your genius, disney.
vocabulary: there is a lot of overlapping vocabulary in music and dance. allegro, adagio--dynamics, tempo, rhythm--we've used most of it to discuss movement but by experiencing it with her body she has become able to recognize it in music as well, and to give very convincing demonstrations of these ideas with her own collection of instruments.
music: the cool thing about the music is that it really does work the way disney uses it. and it works the way petipa used it too. damn your genius, tchaikovsky. so we have spent quite a bit of time listening to the music, learning about various instruments and discussing how different ones make a sound that is just right for mystery or for sorrow or for combat--drawing the kind of birds or creatures that the fairy music inspires--listening to the ballet version (which is performed complete) and then listening to the movie version to see how the music was edited or adapted to fit the scenes.
ella has also started experimenting with her own instruments to see what characters their sounds suggest. so far she has tried the harmonica, the recorder, the xylophone, and various whistles, she has assigned them roles and improvised music for various characters and scenes.
history: we've learned a little bit about tchaikovsky himself, which has involved learning about the end of the 19th century, about russian czars, about marius petipa and the imperial ballet. plus the ballet is filled with references to court life--the master of ceremonies, the presentation of the guests, etc--all refer directly to court life as it was known in russia at that time. we've pulled books off the shelf and out of the attic--books i've had for decades but have had little need of since leaving the stage--and looked at pictures of real dancers and real russian royalty from the time, talked about how the costumes developed for ballet and about how stage conventions mimic courtly conventions regarding rank and order.
we've even gone a bit into my own personal history, which is only now becoming clear to ella. to a young child, of course your mother was a ballerina, that just makes sense. but ella's mother really was a ballerina, i have pictures to prove it. :D and so i've gotten a chance to tell her a little bit about me, about what my life as a dancer was like, and now ella has decided to be a ballerina too. so that is how the second can of worms got opened up--again, it was all my fault.
physical education: yes, we crossed that bridge--ella has asked to learn ballet, and she asked me to teach her. <insert sound of mama's heart strings swelling here>. mostly what she's learning at this point is ballet vocabulary--a pirouette is a turn, a jete is a leap, a saute is a jump--that sort of thing. that appears to be enough for her, thank goodness, as she is still only five and hardly ready for the kirov. :D she has an instinctive use of levels and dynamics that make her improvised dances really beautiful to watch and i have been reluctant to do anything more with her in terms of choreography, but we have started paying more attention to how each fairy moves in her own special way (she loves the finger fairy) and now ella has begun choosing the movements she needs to express the personality of each character she wishes to create.
more about the names: ella was intrigued that the characters in the ballet have different names from the ones in the movie (except for aurora, who gets to keep her name when she goes to the big screen). the funniest part to both of us is that everybody has a name except one: aurora's mother. she is just "the queen". everybody else has a very specific and unusual name: maleficent from the movie is carabosse in the ballet (and is almost always played in the ballet by a man)--the master of ceremonies is catalabutte--all of the suitors, all of the fairies, everybody has a name except "the queen". even the ding-dang tutor has a name (gallifron). so we know where the queen stands. :D
about the song: in time, i came around on aurora's song. first, this sort of thing was actually pretty common at the time the movie was made--composers were putting lyrics to all sorts of classical works so that people like perry como would have material. so we investigated what other songs had been made from or inspired by classical music, including one of my favorites, "could it be magic" by barry manilow (sorry people, i am who i am).
but the clincher for me was the day ella sat in her carseat and happily sang aurora's song--"i know you, i walked with you once upon a dream.... " that melted my heart, and it taught me a lot about my own pride. i'm thankful for that and for the many other lessons she teaches me each day, including my growing love for the DDP.
