iARTS
Tchaikovsky & Barbie®
have in common ?
What do
The Nutcracker
Swan Lake
Christmas Eve, and stories of Alice-InWonderland proportions begin in the
Stahlbaum household! The new nutshellcracker gets broken and leads to a vicious
fight between gingerbread soldiers and the
Mouse King's army! Wacky? Certainly. And
in the Nutcracker ballet, we've not even got
to the bit yet where sweets and drinks from
around the world perform a waltz for the
Sugar Plum Fairy..!
17 years before composing the Nutcracker,
Tchaikovsky had been commissioned to write
what proved to be a truly beautiful ballet score
for Swan Lake, (premiered by The Bolshoi
Ballet in 1877).
Although the Nutcracker's musical score is
complex and dates from over 100 years ago,
it remains one of the most-loved works of
composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. As new
sounds come into fashion, reworkings of the
Nutcracker's themes emerge; from a narrated
introduction that describes the original
Classical music – to a Rock version!
In fact, even the tale itself has had a number
of new looks; Tom & Jerry®, for example, or
the 2001 movie Barbie in The Nutcracker,
which uses early motion capture rotoscoping
techniques for the dance scenes.
The origins of the actual storyline of Swan
Lake are hazy, but you may have watched the
animated Swan Princess (1994) movie, full of
humour and new songs? -Princess Odette is
turned into a swan during daylight hours by the
evil Rothbart and kept in his castle at Swan Lake.
In Barbie and the Swan Princess (2003),
modern computer animation blends with the
original Tchaikovsky. At the start of this film,
Barbie and her sister Kelly pick out the the star
constellation Cygnus; 'the swan'.
Wait a minute! -Didn't we suggest you
could write about Cygnus in our section on
Storywriting Using Myths (pages 13-15)? ✸
Why not let Tchaikovsky -or even Barbieinspire your Golden Lyre?
CHECK OUT:
• ACTIVITY: STORYWRITING
USING MYTHS
• ACTIVITY MIX
• COOL WEBLINKS
8
FUSE