Peter and the Wolf

This last week my fellow dancers and I have been rehearsing Peter and the Wolf.  Peter and the Wolf is an unusual ballet for a few reasons.  For one thing it fits a full story into just 22 minutes.  It also includes narration to help guide the choreography and give the audience member a better idea of what is going on.  What I find makes Peter and the Wolf interesting is Sergei Prokofiev’s music.  He wrote the music to tell a story.  A different instrument of the orchestra represents each character and the music is used to tell the story.  Many ballets use different themes in the music to reflect what is going on, but Peter and the Wolf is very specific in terms of what is happening.  I believe that Prokofiev did a wonderful job encompassing each animal’s personality through the instrumentation and score.  I can’t imagine any other way that a duck or bird would sound. 

Just as the instruments represent different characters the dancers must as well.  Our Peter and the Wolf isn’t technically hard but requires a much different kind of discipline.  Each dancer has to encompass the animal or character that they are supposed to be.  The bird and the duck might be both from the same animal family, but they must both be represented very differently.  It has been an interesting process to try and determine how a bird would act, how a duck would act, and how a wolf and cat would act.  It’s more than just trying to act different emotions, there is an art to taking on the mannerisms of a specific animal.

We have already performed this once with The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and will be performing it a couple times this spring.  It is a whimsical fun show with a happy ending.