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?

Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h03QBNVwX8Q

How THE SWAN PRINCESS Stands Out from Traditional Disney Princess Movies

DAY 11: A favorite movie from childhood

“The Swan Princess” begins in a traditional storytelling manner: The narrator introduces us to the main characters in a once-upon-a-time format.  The rest of the movie appears to be a Disney princess movie at first glance but it’s not.  “The Swan Princess” is not even a Disney movie – it’s made by Nest Family Entertainment and Rich Animation Studios. 

“The Swan Princess” differs from Disney in the following ways:

The story is actually mainly from Prince Derek’s point of view.  We follow him on his journey to find Princess Odette and we learn that he genuinely cares for her.  Disney princes vary in their role to princesses – some are actively in the story and others are not – but Derek is a different kind of prince.  His purpose in the movie is to find Odette and he does so because he cares for her as a person and he can’t live without her.

Princess Odette is proactive.  She constantly searches for a way out of Rothbart’s spell.  The “No Fear” song adds to this: Odette is not afraid of danger and she’ll risk everything to break the spell.  When she was younger and Derek and Bromley threw tomatoes at her, she threw tomatoes back at them.  Also, after Derek says that “you’re all I ever wanted” and said to arrange the marriage, Odette asked him, “what else?”  Being treated like an object was not all right with her.  She needed to know that he was in love with her and not her kingdom.

Derek is a prince and Odette is a princess.  Their parents want them together to bring their kingdoms together.  Neither Derek nor Odette gains anything significant over each other by marrying and neither loses anything significant (except for the merging of their kingdoms).  They are already equals because they are in the same class.

Odette has purple eyes!  How many people do you know with purple eyes?

Can you think of any more differences?