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Last week I wrote about the picture books we’ve been reading as a way into enjoying the music of Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky. As in the past I found the easiest way to get the girls to become familiar with the music was to play them clips from YouTube. The advantage of using these clips, apart from them being free, is that they tend to be short (5-10 minutes, which is great for ensuring kids don’t get bored), and that there is something interesting to look at whilst the music wafts over you.

Here are some of our favourite clips:

This clip shows Odile and the prince dancing at the ball, performed by the Kirov Ballet.

This clip shows the Pas de Quatre, peformed by the Bolshoi Ballet. My girls particularly like this and tried immediately to copy what they had seen!

Once M and J had seen the Bolshoi’s Pas de Quatre, I showed them Matthew Bourne’s Pas de Quatre. They were amazed to see men dancing ballet!

This was perhaps my favourite clip (I watched it 5 or 6 times with the girls and each time it brought tears to my eyes!). It shows the spectacular finale to Swan Lake by the American Ballet Theater.

This clip, from the Great Chinese State Circus, isn’t one for ballet purists, but my girls just adored it – they were amazed by the acrobatics.

Having listened to lots of shorter clips of music it was then easier to put

Welcome to the sixth post in our mini-series here on Playing by the book – Stories in tune – all about picture books inspired by classical music. In the last month or so we’ve been listening to Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky, doing a fair bit of dancing, and of course reading some lovely books.

Ella Bella Ballerina and Swan Lake by James Mayhew was published less than a month ago and couldn’t have arrived at a better time for us - Ella Bella Ballerina and Swan Lake turns out to be the perfect book to introduce this amazing ballet to the youngest of children

Ella Bella is a young girl (I imagine her to be 6 or 7) who takes ballet classes in a gorgeous old theatre with the grand but kind Madame Rosa. At this particular class Madame Rosa introduces her students to the music of Swan Lake, telling them some of the key elements of the ballet’s storyline whilst they dance to music created by Madame Rosa’s wind-up musical box (complete with a spinning ballerina). When the class ends Ella Bella is so entranced by the music and the fairytale that she continues in her own reverie, dancing and imagining herself alongside Princess Odette as the story of Swan Lake plays out: when the prince is deceived by Odile, Ella Bella tries to warn him and when Odette flees the palace Ella Bella helps the prince to fine Odette.

Creating an illustration for Ella Bella Ballerina and Swan Lake. Image: James Mayhew

Ella Bella’s daydream ends just as the prince and his princess find each other and live happily ever after; Ella Bella’s mother is waiting for her and, having been utterly transported, this budding ballerina splashes “in the puddles all the way home, just like a baby swan.”

This story worked so well for us: it showed the girls how Swan Lake is not just a tale, but a ballet; it appealed to so many little girls’ idea of heaven – dressing up and being a ballerina, it put Ella Bella (and by extension my own girls listening to the story) at the heart of the action making is seem alive, and it showed how listening to music can sweep you up and take you to new and wonderful worlds. All these facets added up to making this book a great stimulus for imaginative play and really listening to the music.

2 Comments on Stories in Tune – Swan Lake – Part 1, last added: 11/5/2010

Yesterday, as part of my series Stories in tune, I rounded up the various picture book versions of The Magic Flute we’ve recently been enjoying. Today I’ll describe the play all these books and music inspired in us…

In between reading the different versions of The Magic Flute lots of playing involving dressing up ensued where we were either serpents or princesses (if you are unfamiliar with the story of The Magic Flute there is a detailed synopsis here from Glyndebourne Opera ). We also considered trying to make our own flutes – the ones on Vegetableinstruments.com looked like a lot of fun! But eventually, inspired by this post from Silly Eagle Books and this project at enchantedlearning.com, we then set about playing “Papageno” and catching our own birds.

1. I cut out some small bird templates which M and J decorated and added eyes to.

2. M folded coloured paper concertina style, cut it to about 10cm long and then inserted it into a slot I had cut in the birds’ tummies to create wings.

3. M and I made cages for the birds. Each cage required 9 long pipecleaners. First we took 5 pipecleaners and laid them like a star, just over lapping in the centre by a centimetre or two.

4. We folded over the ends of the pipecleaners to attach them to each other, creating a “knot”. We bent up the pipecleaners about 5 cm away from the “knot”.

5. We twisted the loose ends of all 5 pipecleaners together tightly and then gently pulled the pipecleaners to create a bit of a bell shape.

6. We used the remaining pipecleaners to weave around the bell creating a cage.

7. We hung up the birds i

Welcome to the second post in a new mini-series here on Playing by the book – Stories in tune – all about picture books inspired by classical music.

In the first Stories in tune post I talked about picture book versions of Peter and the Wolf. This time round we are looking at, reading and listening to The Magic Flute by Mozart – a story I thought would lend itself naturally to the format of children’s picture books given its fairy tale-like quest to rescue an imprisoned princess with plenty of magic and mayhem along the way.

What I found with introducing Peter and the Wolf was that in the beginning, before they became familiar with the music, both my girls most enjoyed listening to the music when it was the sound track to the wonderful animation by Susie Templeton. Listening to the music just happened naturally, almost without them noticing that they were listening. Once they were familiar with the music, they then enjoyed listening to it on its own.

This listening-by-stealth was much more successful than trying to sit them down to listen to a piece of music without any “warming up” or preparation and so I did something similar with The Magic Flute – before sitting down with a book or turning on our CD player we watched a BBC animated (and abridged) version of this opera by Mozart on YouTube. Here’s the first part:

Here’s part 2 and part 3. I think this is the same animation as is available on this DVD, which for some reason you can get in the States but not in the UK.

Now this video may not please all of you, especially if you know The Magic Flute well, as the version in the animation is only 30 minutes long and consequently a great deal of music from the original opera is left out, the story is adapted to fit the time frame, and it is sung in English. None of these things will sell the animation to an opera buff, but all of these things combined to make the animation compulsive viewing for both my kids – even J was transfixed for the full 30 minutes.

Having viewed the video several times I then started playing the music in the house whilst we were getting on with other stuff and both girls clearly recognised the arias and were excited to hear them again (you can’t imagine how pleased I was at this!). It was at this stage I introduced the picture book versions I had found of The Magic Flute, and here’s what we thought of them: