Customer Reviews

Hippo in a Tutu: Dancing in Disney Animation

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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This book, is simply beautiful, the graphics as always from Disney are works of art. Purchased it for my daughter, who has a B.A. in Fine Arts in Illustration, and she just wept.

This is one excellent book, not only for the dance fan but for the animation fanatic (me). There are things about the Disney production process that I never knew, and illustrations and source material that are priceless. Mindy, if you are reading this, I have two reservations for the next edition (I have to carp about something!): My favorite terpsichorean Disney gem gets no mention; "Woodland Cafe" highlights a brilliant spider-and-fly apache dance as well as a Cab Calloway "Truckin" grasshopper and some original jitterbugs. And Gene Kelly danced with Jerry the Mouse (after Walt turned down his request to use Mickey) in "Anchors Aweigh", not "Cover Girl" (where he dances with his reflection.) Nit-piks, admittedly to a first rate accomplishment.

Disney and dancing go hand in hand. The animation empire was quite literally founded on characters like Mickey Mouse bouncing along to catchy rhythms. It's only natural someone write a book about such an essential part of Disney history.

However, Hippo in a Tutu isn't from the point of view for a Disney fan to learn more about dancing as you might expect, but rather for those well versed in dance to learn more about Disney.

This book is written by a dance critic, and while she's very knowledgeable, a layperson might have trouble picking out detailed dancing terms and descriptions in just text. Apart from some storyboards the pictures don't add as much to feel of dancing as you'd hope, which is admittedly hard since you're trying to depict a dynamic art in a static medium.

The films looked at in the book are almost exclusively from Disney's early shorts and features. A huge amount of the book focuses on Fantasia, which is understandable, but there's little mention of any films after the mid 40's; just brief bits on both Sleeping Beauty and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Toward the end, the book looks mostly at the people who performed in the live-action reference footage for dances in Snow White, Dumbo and the like, as well as the climate of racial discrimination/insensitivity of the period in Hollywood. Not quite what you might've expected from this book.

If you're a dance aficionado you may want to give this a try. If you're more interested in Disney and the actual films and animation, this might not be as enjoyable as you'd think.

The book was fascinating and shows how a writer invades the Disney vaults and researches the facts about some particular part of animation. More animation photos would have been better but interesting word work here expanding Disney's popularity to others over the years.