![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nebroadweNote: Spoilers ho for the entire anime! Read with caution!
A couple of weeks ago, in a discussion of classical music in Princess Tutu, I mentioned that the animators seemed to be cribbing some of their dance passages from the real-world choreography of (for instance) Swan Lake. These "quotations," along with the soundtrack's appropriation of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Beethoven and so on, add depth to the story by creating subtext for the viewer in the know: if you're familiar with the piece being quoted, you can compare its original form to the use being made of it in Princess Tutu and sometimes see additional meanings in what's going on. My first "aha!" moment in that vein was to see Rue, in her "Dying Swan" dance, perform moves previously associated with Princess Tutu to the major motifs from Swan Lake. This happens just as Rue is beginning to move into the Odette role with respect to Mytho/Siegfried -- a role which Duck/Tutu is simultaneously in the process of abandoning for something else. Ding! It's all symbolic!
That led me to wonder whether Fakir and Duck's pas de deux in episode 25 was borrowing any choreography from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, which provides the music for it. So I went off to watch the ballet and find out. Short answer: yes, the animators are cribbing again, and in ways that make that scene even more interesting than it already is (to me, anyway). Longer answer follows behind the cut.
A few disclaimers to start: what I know about classical music wouldn't fill a teacup; what I know about ballet wouldn't even fill a thimble. I'm striking out into new intellectual territory here, so corrections from the learned are more than welcome.
Background: Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, originally premiering in Czechoslovakia in 1938, has two well-known major stagings. The earlier (1940) is by Leonid Lavrovsky, a Soviet choreographer, for the Kirov Ballet; the later (1965) is by Sir Kenneth MacMillan for England's Royal Ballet. Princess Tutu draws its inspiration from the Lavrovsky version. This isn't surprising: Japanese ballet has strong links to the Russian tradition and the formality of Lavrovsky's choreography better suits the moment. (MacMillan's work in this ballet has a strong naturalistic streak, which makes Romeo and Juliet's moves far too physically passionate for Fakir and Duck.) I watched a performance (available on DVD from ArtHaus Musik) recorded at the Bolshoi Theater in 1989 with Natalya Bessmertnova as Juliet and Irek Mukhamedov as Romeo, featuring a slightly revised version of Lavrovsky's work by Yuri Grigorovich. (According to the DVD's liner notes, the revisions mostly affect the second act, which doesn't concern us. And if you ever want to prove to anyone that ballet is not for the weak and wussy, show them this tape. Grigorovich has everyone dancing on a big, open stage with minimal props, leaving room for enormous displays of athleticism. The men's jetés in particular are jaw-droppingly huge. Mime is kept to a minimum; the story exists for the performers to dance to -- as opposed to MacMillan's choreography, which asks the performers to dance us a story.)
So, on to Princess Tutu and Duck and Fakir's pas de deux in the Lake of Despair. The first thing to notice here is that the music is not taken from the ballet proper, but from the fifth movement ("Romeo and Juliet Before Parting") of Prokofiev's second Romeo and Juliet Suite, a summary version of the ballet score for orchestral concert performance. That gives us the lovely flute cue while Duck is sinking, which in the ballet is actually part of the act three entr'acte. The dancing, however, is all set to that part of the movement which corresponds to Romeo and Juliet's parting pas de deux in the ballet -- the morning after their wedding night, the last time they dance with each other in life.
The second thing to notice is that while the music comes from act three, the choreography is taken from the balcony scene in act one. This is a fascinating juxtaposition, about which I'll have more to say once I've laid out what I see going on. (Unfortunately I have no way to take screen shots from the anime, so I'll try my best to describe the dancing with words alone. UPDATE: The ever-helpful![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fmanalyst provides a link to the relevant scene on YouTube in the comments below.) I'll begin where I take the pas de deux proper to begin, when Fakir pulls Duck into an arabesque; this is not quoted from the ballet. The spinning shoulder lift that follows is a quotation, however: it occurs about two-thirds of the way through Romeo and Juliet's dance and is complete in two revolutions, as shown in the anime. Shoulder lifts are prominent throughout the Lavrovsky choreography, by the way -- just as Fakir and Duck's next move, in which she pirouettes while he supports her back-to-back, is characteristic of the anime's original choreography. (Cf. Charon and Princess Tutu in episode 10.) Then we're back to Lavrovsky as Fakir turns Duck into another arabesque, hand-to-hand and facing her; this is among the last poses in the ballet's balcony scene. Another original move follows, with Duck extending her right leg upward while Fakir braces her from behind. The anime's pas de deux then ends where the ballet's begins -- with the danseuse's gorgeous drop into a front split as the danseur supports her upper body. [Aside: wow. Just ... wow.]
At this point, I sit up and applaud the director/choreographic consultant/animation team, because this is very clever work. The music of a relationship's end is paired with the choreography of its first private moments, which exactly suits the story of Duck and Fakir here. In this scene we have both an ending and a beginning: the moment at which Duck and Fakir finally resolve to bring their previous roles to an end along with Drosselmeyer's story; the moment at which they decide to accept their real selves and the partings which that acceptance involves; and the moment at which their previous prickly alliance finally gives way to a united front and the promise of a true and lasting friendship, regardless of what comes with the end of the story. That's a stellar example of allusion at work to create subtext, one of my favorite forms of intertextuality. I really enjoyed having my expectations turned upside-down here: I was expecting, with this music, its corresponding choreography and nearly missed all the fun by trying to cheat and just watch act three. Never skim through great art. It doesn't cooperate. :-)
I'm sure there are other interesting cross-connections between Princess Tutu and its source material, but the discovery thereof I leave to other inquirers. I have to get back to my day job now ...
A couple of weeks ago, in a discussion of classical music in Princess Tutu, I mentioned that the animators seemed to be cribbing some of their dance passages from the real-world choreography of (for instance) Swan Lake. These "quotations," along with the soundtrack's appropriation of Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Beethoven and so on, add depth to the story by creating subtext for the viewer in the know: if you're familiar with the piece being quoted, you can compare its original form to the use being made of it in Princess Tutu and sometimes see additional meanings in what's going on. My first "aha!" moment in that vein was to see Rue, in her "Dying Swan" dance, perform moves previously associated with Princess Tutu to the major motifs from Swan Lake. This happens just as Rue is beginning to move into the Odette role with respect to Mytho/Siegfried -- a role which Duck/Tutu is simultaneously in the process of abandoning for something else. Ding! It's all symbolic!
That led me to wonder whether Fakir and Duck's pas de deux in episode 25 was borrowing any choreography from Prokofiev's ballet Romeo and Juliet, which provides the music for it. So I went off to watch the ballet and find out. Short answer: yes, the animators are cribbing again, and in ways that make that scene even more interesting than it already is (to me, anyway). Longer answer follows behind the cut.
A few disclaimers to start: what I know about classical music wouldn't fill a teacup; what I know about ballet wouldn't even fill a thimble. I'm striking out into new intellectual territory here, so corrections from the learned are more than welcome.
Background: Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, originally premiering in Czechoslovakia in 1938, has two well-known major stagings. The earlier (1940) is by Leonid Lavrovsky, a Soviet choreographer, for the Kirov Ballet; the later (1965) is by Sir Kenneth MacMillan for England's Royal Ballet. Princess Tutu draws its inspiration from the Lavrovsky version. This isn't surprising: Japanese ballet has strong links to the Russian tradition and the formality of Lavrovsky's choreography better suits the moment. (MacMillan's work in this ballet has a strong naturalistic streak, which makes Romeo and Juliet's moves far too physically passionate for Fakir and Duck.) I watched a performance (available on DVD from ArtHaus Musik) recorded at the Bolshoi Theater in 1989 with Natalya Bessmertnova as Juliet and Irek Mukhamedov as Romeo, featuring a slightly revised version of Lavrovsky's work by Yuri Grigorovich. (According to the DVD's liner notes, the revisions mostly affect the second act, which doesn't concern us. And if you ever want to prove to anyone that ballet is not for the weak and wussy, show them this tape. Grigorovich has everyone dancing on a big, open stage with minimal props, leaving room for enormous displays of athleticism. The men's jetés in particular are jaw-droppingly huge. Mime is kept to a minimum; the story exists for the performers to dance to -- as opposed to MacMillan's choreography, which asks the performers to dance us a story.)
So, on to Princess Tutu and Duck and Fakir's pas de deux in the Lake of Despair. The first thing to notice here is that the music is not taken from the ballet proper, but from the fifth movement ("Romeo and Juliet Before Parting") of Prokofiev's second Romeo and Juliet Suite, a summary version of the ballet score for orchestral concert performance. That gives us the lovely flute cue while Duck is sinking, which in the ballet is actually part of the act three entr'acte. The dancing, however, is all set to that part of the movement which corresponds to Romeo and Juliet's parting pas de deux in the ballet -- the morning after their wedding night, the last time they dance with each other in life.
The second thing to notice is that while the music comes from act three, the choreography is taken from the balcony scene in act one. This is a fascinating juxtaposition, about which I'll have more to say once I've laid out what I see going on. (Unfortunately I have no way to take screen shots from the anime, so I'll try my best to describe the dancing with words alone. UPDATE: The ever-helpful
fmanalyst provides a link to the relevant scene on YouTube in the comments below.) I'll begin where I take the pas de deux proper to begin, when Fakir pulls Duck into an arabesque; this is not quoted from the ballet. The spinning shoulder lift that follows is a quotation, however: it occurs about two-thirds of the way through Romeo and Juliet's dance and is complete in two revolutions, as shown in the anime. Shoulder lifts are prominent throughout the Lavrovsky choreography, by the way -- just as Fakir and Duck's next move, in which she pirouettes while he supports her back-to-back, is characteristic of the anime's original choreography. (Cf. Charon and Princess Tutu in episode 10.) Then we're back to Lavrovsky as Fakir turns Duck into another arabesque, hand-to-hand and facing her; this is among the last poses in the ballet's balcony scene. Another original move follows, with Duck extending her right leg upward while Fakir braces her from behind. The anime's pas de deux then ends where the ballet's begins -- with the danseuse's gorgeous drop into a front split as the danseur supports her upper body. [Aside: wow. Just ... wow.]At this point, I sit up and applaud the director/choreographic consultant/animation team, because this is very clever work. The music of a relationship's end is paired with the choreography of its first private moments, which exactly suits the story of Duck and Fakir here. In this scene we have both an ending and a beginning: the moment at which Duck and Fakir finally resolve to bring their previous roles to an end along with Drosselmeyer's story; the moment at which they decide to accept their real selves and the partings which that acceptance involves; and the moment at which their previous prickly alliance finally gives way to a united front and the promise of a true and lasting friendship, regardless of what comes with the end of the story. That's a stellar example of allusion at work to create subtext, one of my favorite forms of intertextuality. I really enjoyed having my expectations turned upside-down here: I was expecting, with this music, its corresponding choreography and nearly missed all the fun by trying to cheat and just watch act three. Never skim through great art. It doesn't cooperate. :-)
I'm sure there are other interesting cross-connections between Princess Tutu and its source material, but the discovery thereof I leave to other inquirers. I have to get back to my day job now ...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-09 07:24 pm (UTC)