"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."
This is my absolute favourite piece and it often gets skipped in antologies and renditions because there’s no Toad in it (which is fine with me, as I’m not overly fond of the character): it’s where we venture with Mole into the perilous Wild Woods...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
I hope you guys are not expecting to have a story each hour for the whole night, because that's not going to happen. Still, the Arab Dance dance was one of my favourite pieces when I was a child, I was a bit of an orientalist,...
Edit: for some reason, this article became quite popular. The comment section is closed, but you should read this: it's a comment from a Chinese-American reader, drawing the attention to the cultural controversy surrounding this particular piece, which is still staged in a very harmful way. An...
In few days time, for our Sunday story, I will publish something about Disney's Fantasia and, in particular, something around The Pastoral Symphony, originally intended to be a more obscure mash-up between a French ballet and a Russian opera. It is only fair, however, that...
Thursday evenings, my significant otter is engaged in on-line training with his football team, which means that I get to spend an evening of drinking and compulsive on-line shopping in the background of his camera. I wanted this book for ages and this Thanksgiving I finally...
