Serge Prokofiev, Maurice Ravel – Peter and the Wolf, L’enfant et les Sortileges

Children are graceful by nature, even when they move clumsily. So you can imagine how graceful they get when they're well-trained ballet dancers. The main characters in Peter and the Wolf, students from the British Royal Ballet School, cannot be very much older than ten or eleven - well, that's my guess. Only the wolf and grandfather are adults, the rest is kids who are evidently having a lot of fun. That's what makes this video so nice; their pleasure is there for all to see and hasn't been manacled yet by the professional demands of the discipline.
I would recommend this movie for all of you who have children, and particularly if you're the parents of children who seriously aspire to be dancers somewhere in the future.

The characters in L'enfant et les Sortileges are likewise quite young. Older than Peter's, but most of them still belonging to the junior group of the National Dance Theatre. Some of you may know the long-time director of the NDT, Jiri Kylian, created a structure of three age groups within the organisation - the not-yet professional youngsters, the professionals at the peak of their career, and the dancers who're past their prime. As far as the latter group is concerned, I have a ballet written by Hans van Manen - on Stravinsky's Circus Polka - which shows a couple of dancers in their mid-fifties, or even older…quite amazing.

Performers Peter and the Wolf:

Students of The Royal Ballet School
Orchestra of The Royal Ballet School - Paul Murphy
Story teller - Anthony Dowell
Choreographer - Matthew Hart
music by Serge Prokofiev

Performers L'enfant et les Sortileges

Orchestre National Paris - Lorin Maazel
Choeur et la Maitrise de la RTF
music by Maurice Ravel
libretto by Colette


Note: Peter and the Wolf has two language streams, English and German. Modern pc media players can easily switch between them, as can recent standalones. As it happens, my own version of WMP could not. If you experience the same problem and want to avoid hearing two streams at the same time, install the free Morgan mmswitch. You can switch languages under menu "play/language"