If you ever doubt about the suggestive power of Alice in Wonderland, just wait for a minute and consider that we’re still in chapter 1 and we have already been drowned in pictures and interpretations of the striking visual images Carroll concocts in those pages. Drink me We were left with the glass table and […]
Last week we followed Alice down the rabbit hole and I brought you quite an extensive selection of illustrations depicting her fall, at the end of which I’m sure some of you felt like Loki. I certainly did. At the end of the first chapter, a couple of things happen: the rabbit disappears, and Alice […]
When I talked about Arthur Rackham, quite some weeks ago it seems, I mentioned that two themes might have been worthy of a separate discussion: his love for twisty trees and his portrayal of water-nymphs, mermaids, water-maidens such as Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Floßhilde and my personal favourite: Undine. So this Sunday I step out of […]
During the 1960s, around twenty years after building concepts and characters for what had become the Toad segment in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr._Toad, at Walt Disney Studios they started working on two stories that are weirdly connected to The Wind in the Willows: the play Chantecler by Edmond Rostand, which was supposed to […]
I have had the occasion of bringing you some stories, recently, that came from my love for legends and myths, sure, but mostly from my love for the Danish artist and illustrator Kay Nielsen. He was an absolute genius and I started talking about him here. Kay Nielsen isn’t the only artist I love to […]
The second tale in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows takes up from where we left our two favourite characters: Rat, in his river-house, and Mole who ended up living with him. Illustration by Robert Ingpen Specifically, the story opens with Rat doing one of the things he does best: sitting by the river and […]
Before Christmas, I wrote something about Kay Nielsen and in that piece I mentioned an old Disney Project that never was: the famed Musicana, a sort of new version of Fantasia that would have had music from around the world. It was a beautiful project and you can read all about it here. Some of […]
Well, it’s around three o’clock on my blog’s clock, which for some reason is set on London time, and we’re approaching the moment when the oldest ladies would fall asleep. I am one of the oldest ladies. But I kept you company so far, and we’re missing just one pieces in our exploration of the […]
On this long, long night of stories, I would feel bad for leaving out the Russian dance, so here we are. It’s not one of my favourite pieces, so I’ll most likely be brief. 3. The Nutcracker Piece by Piece (5) 3.5. Russian Dance: the music The Russian dance featuring in the Nutcracker is technically […]
Between the Chinese and the Arab Dance, both the Nutcracker Suite and Fantasia place another dance, the Dance of the Flutes or Dance of the Reed Flutes. Let us go back to them, though, and then all we’re missing is the Russian Dance and the Waltz of the Flowers. 3. The Nutcracker Piece by Piece […]