Wednesday, April 3, 2013

The Skeleton Dance: Skeletons can Dance!


Day 12: A Favorite Animated Movie

There are many great animated movies out there – for example, “Finding Nemo,” “Cinderella,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” and most Pixar movies.  I chose to write about “The Skeleton Dance” because I recently saw it’s a precursor to these animated movies.  It’s the beginning of animation and the short film is still relevant and amusing today.

“The Skeleton Dance” features skeletons that are nicer than cats (two cats hiss and spit at each other) but keep the creepy graveyard atmosphere.

Repetition is a key element in this short.  Once character would do something and the other character would mirror it and repeat it.  Everything happened in twos (an action and then the action repeated). 

The skeleton dance itself was innovative and used choreography staging techniques like varied heights, skeletons in the foreground and background, and focusing on two skeletons and then bringing the rest of the skeletons back for a group ensemble routine.  One skeleton used another as a xylophone and another used a cat as a violin, connecting the musicality to the screen.

As a short in “A Silly Symphony,” it was silly and entertaining.  Who knew skeletons were so talented at dancing?

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