Fantasia SAL – Week 6

Trepak
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Disney had the idea to re-release Fantasia every year with a few new songs. In 1941, Walt and his team created eight new additional sequences for the film. Some of the sequences were put to Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries” and Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebees”. Sadly, this never came to fruition. But, these scenes along with a few others were used to create a sequel, Fantasia 2000.


Fantasia SAL – Week 5

Coffee
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Disney wanted Fantasia to be an extraordinary film with extraordinary effects. He suggested 3-D effects, filming the entire movie in widescreen, and even using olfactory effects, such as wafting perfume through the theatre as the wildflowers danced during the “Nutcracker Suite” segment. While none of these concepts came to be, the ever innovative Disney was years ahead of his time and all of those effects were later used in many films.


Fantasia SAL – Week 3

Tea
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: Many of the characters featured in Fantasia are named. This includes Mademoiselle Upanova (the main ostrich ballerina from Dance of the Hours), Hyacinth Hippo and Ben Ali Gator (also from Dance of the Hours), Peter Pegasus (the little black Pegasus from The Pastoral Symphony), Jacchus (the donkey from The Pastoral Symphony), and Hop Low (the tiny mushroom from the movement Tea from The Nutcracker Suite).


Fantasia SAL – Week 2

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
from The Nutcracker Suite
by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Fantasia fun fact: In 1942 Fantasia won two Academy Awards. One was presented to Disney and the developers for “outstanding contribution to the advancement for the use of sound in motion pictures through the production of Fantasia.” The second was presented to Stokowski “and his associates for their unique achievement in the creation of a new form of visualized music in Walt Disney’s production of Fantasia, thereby widening the scope of the motion picture as an art form.”