Reading Children’s Books and Watching Ballet: Miss Potter’s World of Peter Rabbit

# Read­ing Chil­dren’s Books
Watch­ing bal­let # I watched the Roy­al Bal­let’s per­for­mance of Fred­er­ic Ash­ton’s Tales of Beat­rix on Tudou with my daugh­ter.
Pot­ter, 2007. http://t.cn/zOhTBEq It was a tru­ly enjoy­able expe­ri­ence, and my daugh­ter exclaimed sev­er­al times, “How cool!” The stage design of the entire show was tru­ly breath­tak­ing, like a real water­col­or paint­ing. This show is actu­al­ly “The Sto­ries of Beat­rix Pot­ter,” telling each sto­ry one by one…

(1) The bal­let does not begin with Peter Rab­bit. The begin­ning is sim­i­lar to “The Sto­ry of John­ny City Mouse”, espe­cial­ly the big bas­ket in the cor­ner seems to be the cul­prit who brought the coun­try mouse Tim­my to the city. How­ev­er, there are many mouse images in Miss Porter’s sto­ry, and the exquis­ite clothes of the mice also remind peo­ple of “The Tai­lor of Glouces­ter”, but the most typ­i­cal fea­ture is the long tail:)

(2) The sec­ond sto­ry is about Mrs. the Hedge­hog Wash­er­woman, a par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing one.
Tig­gy-Win­kle (trans­lat­ed by me as Mrs. Tig­gy Win­kle), her image and cos­tume are real­ly won­der­ful. She occu­pies a rel­a­tive­ly large pro­por­tion in the play, prob­a­bly because she wash­es clothes for oth­er char­ac­ters cre­at­ed by Miss Pot­ter. She is a par­tic­u­lar­ly good con­nect­ing char­ac­ter.

(3) The set­ting for the third sto­ry is tru­ly stun­ning – a vast expanse of fox­gloves and flow­ers – what else could this be but The Tale of Jemi­ma Pud­dle-Duck? This sto­ry is very con­flict­ing, with the char­ac­ter traits of the sil­ly duck and the fox being most appar­ent, mak­ing it par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing to watch. The pot on the stage (for cook­ing the duck) cre­ates a cer­tain sense of ten­sion.

(4) The fourth sto­ry is “Brand the Pig,” pub­lished in 1913. It was in that year that 47-year-old Miss Pot­ter mar­ried and became Mrs. Hillis. The cou­ple lived hap­pi­ly togeth­er for 30 years. This is the only fairy tale in the Pot­ter sto­ries that involves love, and it has a per­fect end­ing, which makes peo­ple think of her own expe­ri­ence, but Miss Pot­ter always denied it.

The bal­let also fea­tures a lot of details about the piglet Brand. First, the pig moth­er, Aunt Zhu Mei, and her three pairs of chil­dren (four pairs in the book), appear. Then Brand and his broth­er Alexan­der set off on their jour­ney and part ways. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Brand runs into the home of a pig thief, but luck­i­ly meets the piglet Hei Niu. They hit it off and flee hand in hand, cross­ing moun­tains and rivers to the dis­tance — over
the hills and far away

(5) The fifth sto­ry, “The Sto­ry of Mr. Jere­my the Fish­er­man,” must have been a thrilling per­for­mance. The smug frog was pulled into the water (lit­er­al­ly) by the big fish he was try­ing to catch, then des­per­ate­ly tried to escape, only to leap back into the water with a final swift move­ment. This kind of bal­let is not only beau­ti­ful and pleas­ant to lis­ten to, but also very enter­tain­ing!

(6) How­ev­er, the most amaz­ing part was the sixth one, “The Tale of Two Bad Mice”. The two mice, Tom and Sam, and Hun­ca and Munca, were per­fect­ly por­trayed, and the doll’s house set was sur­pris­ing­ly real­is­tic. See­ing the two pro­tag­o­nists danc­ing wild­ly and mak­ing mis­chief inside, smash­ing the cups and plates to pieces, the excite­ment was sim­ply amaz­ing! – Doesn’t every­one have a desire to destroy things some­times?

(7) Then the two bad mice, the city mice who pro­voke the cats every­where, come back to the stage (“The Sto­ry of John­ny the City Mouse”), and then Mrs. Mouse? (“The Sto­ry of Mrs. Mouse”) — now “The Sto­ry of Peter Rab­bit” final­ly appears! Per­haps because read­ers are too famil­iar with this sto­ry, Peter Rab­bit only occu­pies a very small space in the bal­let, just a solo dance and then dis­ap­pears. And he is chased away by Squir­rel Leng­guo, whose tail is about to be cut off! (“The Sto­ry of Squir­rel Leng­guo”)

(8) Nutkin the Squir­rel is a par­tic­u­lar­ly play­ful sto­ry. The most mem­o­rable scene is when the squir­rels pad­dle their rafts towards the island in the mid­dle of the lake, their large tails erect­ed to serve as sails! The squir­rels bring gifts and respect­ful­ly ask Old Brown, the owl on the island, to allow them to pick the fruit. Only Nutkin refus­es to lis­ten and teas­es Old Brown wan­ton­ly, result­ing in… well, his tail is bro­ken!

(9) Then the city mice came again, and there were more mice, and they want­ed to have a pic­nic and dance in the sub­urbs. Then the squir­rels came. Then the pigs and the pigs came. Aunt Zhu and her fam­i­ly came. Aunt Pig gave bless­ings to Lit­tle Pig Brand and Lit­tle Pig Hei Niu. Jemi­ma Duck came, the fox came, and Mrs. Hedge­hog came too. They danced in a cir­cle and lived hap­pi­ly togeth­er from then on.