Hunchback of Notre Dame, Snow White

[bart]

Currently there's a very scholarly Ballet Talk thread on reconstructions of the 19th century ballet, Esmeralda.

There's also an interesting thread on possible ballet versions of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

These two threads have several things in common:

-- both stories have been cartoonized by the Disney studies

-- and both have been transformed into pop ballets fairly recently.

An entirely different search took me today to the website of Milwaukee Ballet, where Artistic Director Michael Pink's version of Hunchback is in the repertory. Pink originally choreographed this for Northern Ballet Theater (UK), and it been performed here by Boston Ballet as well as Milwaukee.

Has anyone seen this ballet? Or other contemporary ballets based on stories which also appealed to Disney? And what did you think?

I've not seen this version. But Google led me to a reviewer who opined: "It's choreographically impoverished, sentimental baloney. Can high art survive by aiming low? Perhaps. But aim to low and you shoot yourself in the foot."

[Paul Parish]

Well, I liked Sleeping Beauty.

[Hans]

I think if one is going to do a fairy tale as a ballet, it ought to be in the grand Petipa manner (having a choreographer with talent helps) as if the Disney version had never existed rather than a watered-down pop style.

[Paquita]

There have been a few ballet versions of "Beauty and the Beast". Les Grands Ballets Canadiens is presenting Kader Belarbi's version this year. Link

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet performs David Nixon's version.

[Petra]

Isn't the plot of Ashton's Ondine rather similar to The Little Mermaid? That would be a decidedly non-pop treatment of the story.