| Author |
Comment
|
Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(4/25/01 10:16:29 am)
|
12 Dancing Princesses
I keep returning to this tale of late and have been reading several versions of it. Does anyone have a favorite they would like to recommend and explain as a favorite?
I have also been thinking about the lack of sympathy on the parts of the sisters, especially in the versions in which the failed suitors are executed. The lack of remorse is a common thread in many of the stories. Any thoughts about this?
Also, are there any similar stories in non-European cultures? I haven't really seen any myself, but my experience is very limited.
Thanks!
Heidi
|
janeyolen
Unregistered User
(4/25/01 10:26:27 am)
|
danced out shoes
Accordng to Stith Thompson in THE FOLKTALE "The Danced Out
Shoes" is Tale Type #306 and is found in Central Europe, and
from Serbia and north to Finland.
What I find fascinating is the trip into the Underworld. Some versions have the princesses dancing with enchanted princes. Some with ogres. Some with monsters.
Jane
|
Laura
McCaffrey
Registered User
(4/26/01 11:49:12 am)
|
Re: danced out shoes
Jane,
I find this tale in my head a lot for the same reason. That underground cavern always entranced me. What did it look like? Where did the music and food come from? What did the princes (I haven't read the ogre or monster varients) do when they weren't with the princesses?
Of course I love tales with heroines descending into worlds under the ground or sea or far away, like East of the Sun, West of the Moon and selkie tales.
Laura Mc
|
Terri
Unregistered User
(4/27/01 6:42:49 am)
|
12 Dancing Princesses
Heidi, Patricia A. McKillip published a lovely version of this tale in the anthology A Wolf at the Door. Nini Kiriki Hoffman also wrote a terrific version which we weren't able to use in Wolf (we'd already bought Pat's), but which appeared in the August 2000 issue of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I sure wish *we'd* published it....
|
Laura
Registered User
(5/14/01 7:25:43 pm)
|
Nickelodeon
Being younger than many other posters here, perhaps no one else will remember, but I'll ask anyway .... My first introduction to this tale was by way of an animated anthology series on Nickelodeon -- called something like
|
Laura
Registered User
(5/14/01 7:26:46 pm)
|
sorry -- got cut off
Being younger than many other posters here, perhaps no one else will remember, but I'll ask anyway .... My first introduction to this tale was by way of an animated anthology series on Nickelodeon -- called something like "Fairy Tale Theater." Does anyone know the show? It was hugely influential on me -- early taste for Japanese-style art, not always "traditional" versions of stories, and non-Grimm tales. This was my first exposure to the 12 Princesses, Jorinda & Joringel, the Brother & Sister, and several others. I now realize that the quality wasn't exactly the highest, but hey. :-) Thoughts?
Laura
|
Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(5/17/01 6:40:06 pm)
|
Re: sorry -- got cut off
Although I am young enough to have watched Nickelodeon, I was always deprived of cable so I never saw all of these series everyone always talks about from Jim Henson's Storyteller to Shelley Duvall to just about anything. They have even disappeared for the most part out of video stores, so renting them is close to impossible.
Terri, I loved McKillip's version of "12 Dancing" in "Wolf at the Door." It is one of my favorite treatments of the tale.
Has anyone seen "The Twelve Princesses" illustrated by Gordon Fitchett? It is entertaining on a parody level with geese making up the characters. I will have to try it out on some young'uns and see if they like it better than I do. It is definitely not the romanticized version I have grown to expect with Ruth Sanderson and Kinuko Craft's versions.
I still love this tale. I think it reminds me so much of my dancing days and even the dances I attended in my teens. Those were never as romantic as this tale.
I always find it intriguing that the princesses show no remorse and that this lack is never explained away as part of the curse. They seem rather disappointed when it is broken. In fact, Fitchett's version says the princesses get to continue dancing as much as they want as part of the conclusion, if I remember that correctly.
Heidi
|
janeyolen
Unregistered User
(5/18/01 2:06:45 am)
|
Old Woman
Please note that my husband posed for the king in Sanderson's 12 Dancing Princesses (though he is skinny--much artistic license here.) And I posed for the old woman in the woods who speaks to the soldier.
So (from another topic altogether) I AM the old woman in the woods at least in the 12 dancing princesses story.
Jane
|
spideri
Registered User
(5/25/01 6:48:36 am)
|
12 dancing princesses
there's an interesting thematic link between the 12 and Turandot, the opera princess whose seemingly icy heart and hard riddles cost so many princes their heads?
why so heartless, princesses?
in dancing with (presumably) handsome Hadeans, are the 12 expressing unconscious resistance to mating with to "real world" men? or do they want the pleasures of sex without the bother of love?
Turandot melts at last under the onslaught of a prince with a hot mind and heart, not so different from the awake prince (instructed by the old lady) of the 12 dancers.
is fear of contact with the "real" with all its bloody pricks the key to the locked hearts?
|
