About a year ago my daughter was gifted with Beautiful DVD, – full copy of Swan Lake Ballet by Teatro alla Scala, incredible rendition and filming. We started watching it a few months ago, after she went for a real Ballet performance in the National Opera House – she loved it!
She has been watching her Swan Lake DVD almost every day since, and able to copy (!) whole dance sequences and hum long musical pieces.
Well I was doing a search a few days ago on youtube, looking for sample of this DVD to share with a friend, as they wanted to get it as well, after seeing my daughter enjoying it that much, and guess what? I found full version of it available for free on youtube!!
Another awesome thing about this particular DVD – it shows conductor and orchestra quite a bit in excellent editing sequences – which is great for my kids as they love watching and learning about orchestra and conducting.
We have several versions of Swan Lake performed by the different ballet companies, as Ella is very much in love with everything about the ballet and the opera, but I must say, I think this is the best of them! Ella has requested to watch it almost daily ever since I downloaded it. She also loves reading about all the other ballet and opera stories (we must have collected more than a dozen books already) as well as listening to audiobooks and music CDs of the recordings, but Swan Lake is definitely her all-time favorite!
Skylark-
Serious Karma to you!
My daughter has fallen heavily in love. We have taken her every year for her birthday (Dec) to the ballet, but showing her this has utterly lol CAPTIVATED her!
Although she has several glorious new bruises about her body from attempting to pirouette about her bedroom
And I may well blame you for the fact that she insists upon sporting an oversized Tutu that Grandma sent with EVERY outfit…even pajamas lol
Ballet is a great exercise ( I’ve done classical ballet as a child and loved it!!). Plus they get to listen to real masterpieces of classical music, while dancing along!!
We took both Evangeline and Arthur to Ukrainian National Opera for Chipollino ballet a few months ago, when visiting grandparents – they did not want to leave after it finished
We were so sad, because famous Mariinsky Ballet Company was coming for a week, exactly on the day we were leaving, and they had some nice children repertoire…
What a great idea Keri for taking her to ballet on her Birthday! Do you have one locally?
Here is the other one that my kiddos like - Nutcracker by Mariinsky Ballet Company, the recording is quite old, so it is not as great of a quality, but Evangeline loves it nevertheless.
Here is the audio book, re-telling the story of Swan Lake Ballet – http://www.artsreformation.com/records/ ( I could not figure out how to give direct link :nowink: , so you would need to just scroll down and look for Child’s Introduction to Ballet
It was real fun for my kiddos, as we listened to it while driving, and they are VERY FAMILIAR with ballet and whole music sequence, so for them to hear the story, while they recognize the parts turned to be tons of fun.
There is also A Child’s Introduction to the Nutcracker Suite on the same page, but we did not listen to it yet.
I recently purchased a children’s ballet video and have been quite impresses…not silly dress-up-lik-a-ballerina and spin until you are dizzy, but this actually teaches children moves and proper names…I wanted to make sure Alex really wanted to DO it and not just watch a ballet on stage!
We have been VERY pleasantly suprised:
Here is the DVD: http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Ballet-Rosemary-Boross/dp/B0002HODC2
We also have the Baby Ballet video and I just realized that Ella has been dancing to it for almost a year now. However, instead of the Baby Ballet DVD, I got this compilation DVD instead (also by Rosemary Boross) since it includes not only the full ballet program in the Baby Ballet DVD, but also has the complete Tot Tap and Junior Jazz programs by the same teacher, so I find it gives better value for the money. Ella loves to dance tap and jazz almost as much as ballet.
BTW, Skylark, we also love A Child’s Introduction to Ballet in our house! Actually, we like the entire "A Child’s Introduction to… " collection. They’re all great stuff!
Thank you for an idea about Baby Ballet DVD, I am looking for anything that has to do with ballet, but dont like gimmicky stuff like many kiddos ballet dvds are, thank you for a great suggestion.
We also watch the Classical Art of Ballet here, and Evangeline likes it a lot! We only have part one, but it goes through most basic positions, names them in French and so on :yes:
And we like A Child Introduction… series a lot as well!
I just imagine getting our girls together for a ballet party :yes: that would be too much fun!
Evangeline makes her little brother “support” her, when she is practicing her ballet moves. He does not mind for most part and dances with her quite a bit! But when he gets bored, she tells him, wait, when the new baby will arrive, he will be my partner lol lol
Ella loves all of the books by James Mayhew! There are currently 4 in the Ella Bella ballet series - Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Nutcracker - and she has read them over and over while listening to the ballet music on Ipad. I also highly recommend his Katie art series as well as his geography storybook, Miranda the Explorer; we have all of them and they are just as much loved! Ella’s newest favorite is The Book of Tales from Russia, also by James Mayhew.
We also have another series of art storybooks called Anholt’s Artists Books for Children that were also big hits with Ella.
Aangeles - Completely forgot to respond to say I ordered a number of the books after reading your post, we just love them. I’m trying to keep them for Christmas but I know I’ll have to give them before then as i can’t wait to read them!
Thanks for the wonderful resources. Aangeles, can you recommend some other books that you and Ella enjoy. Also can you recommend some resources in Chinese children classics/poetry/etc translated in English.
