Prima Princessa presents Swan Lake

Duration: 39 minutes
RRP: $15.98

Pop it!

Duration: 63 minutes
RRP: $19.99

Target audience:
Pop It! 6-12 years
Prima Princessa presents Swan Lake 2-6 years

Themes/values: Both DVDs offer great inspiration for children to have fun while exercising and to experiment with movement. Swan Lake also explores themes of the power of love, romance and good conquering evil.

Review:
The world’s obsession with all things dance-related looks set to continue as we shimmy into a new decade. Not only are we contending with the return of TV programs such as So You Think You Can Dance Australia and Dancing with the Stars, in 2010 we also have the arrival of even more 'spectacular spectacular' performances including reality TV series Fame: The Ultimate School Musical. Given that the craze appears here to stay, here are some alternatives to spawning the next Miley Cyrus or Zac Efron.

Pop It! is an interactive dance DVD for 6-12 year olds featuring original pop music and step-by-step instructions for some very cool choreography. It’s not exactly krumping, nor is it sexualised in the vein of Video Hits, that last bastion of body slamming and gyrating, but it might just hit the right note for a tween mover and shaker.

Led by predictably precocious but thoroughly likeable young instructors – Shemar, Brianna and Lamar – viewers are walked through a ‘how to’ of dancing that wouldn’t be out of place in a Beyoncé video. OK, it would, because it’s being performed by pre-teens and there’s a welcome lack of bump and grind, but the moves are slick and full of infectious energy and enthusiasm that will certainly motivate budding hip-hoppers. Parents might also appreciate that this trio are normal looking kids in jeans and t-shirts, no heels, gloss or bling to inspire the impressionable.

The DVD begins with ‘Number One’, the feature video clip featuring Shemar, Brianna and Lamar (complete with their own back-up dancers, thanks very much) as they perform a full dance routine to music. This clip is subsequently broken down into seven-minute dance-along lessons, each presenting a short segment of the routine, move by move. The steps are explained slowly and repeated numerous times allowing even the newest twinkle toes to join in. After nine lessons (recommended daily dose of one per day) children should be able to perform alongside our hosts and dance to the full film clip. But as the very patient Lamar says: ‘It’s OK if you can’t get it the first time. Just have fun and make up your own moves.’ No judgement here, Kyle Sandilands.

For younger viewers with more classical taste or just inexplicably unaware of Hannah Montana, Prima Princessa presents Swan Lake offers a sample of traditional ballet for the very youngest artistes. This DVD includes the magnificent Paris Opera Ballet performing the ultimate fairy princess delight, Swan Lake. Breathe... not in its entirety! A heavily truncated presentation of the full ballet is shown in four very short acts, each interrupted by the animated Prima Princessa herself who introduces basic ballet steps to six gorgeous and delightfully inept budding ballerinas.

With little care for the formal steps as they are explained – pirouette, jeté, pas de chat and grand battement – the girls show ballet just as it should be for the under-sixes: clumsy and fun with a strong focus on the pink tutus and tiaras. They topple and tumble with plenty of squealing and laughter, encapsulating exactly how much fun ballet is when taught in a spring garden by a cartoon. In binary opposition, the moves are then impeccably performed by sombre, kind of hungry-looking girls and boys from the School of American Ballet. Beautiful and perfectly executed, but frankly not nearly as much fun.

The animated Prima Princessa narrates both the ballet lessons and the story of Swan Lake which is great for young viewers and quite honestly darn helpful for parents as well. Personally, I’ve seen Swan Lake performed numerous times and have never understood so much! For anyone else in the same philistine boat, here’s what you’ve been missing: the story begins with Prince Siegfried’s birthday and a ball where he must choose a wife from dozens of eager princesses (how modern). The prince falls for the beautiful Odette, a swan maiden under the spell of an evil sorcerer. Only if a noble prince declares his undying love for Odette and no-one else, the spell will be broken and she and her swan BFFs can become human once more and return to their families. I won’t spoil the ending...

The costumes are lavishly beautiful and by contrast the traditional ballet sets are simple and sparse. For example, the eponymous Swan Lake – created by the tears of mothers of the swan maidens (who knew?) – is a completely bare stage, allowing the truly spectacular dancing, and familiar tunes of that 100 year-old Russian composer Tchaikovsky, to take centre stage.

There is little to criticise in this lovely introduction to dancing for young ones, other than the DVD’s brevity. ‘Encore, encore, let’s see it again’ cries Prima Princessa. At our narrator’s request, quite strangely each segment is repeated, that’s verbatim, with the exact same footage re-played frame by frame. Without this unnecessary padding, the original content of the DVD would in fact be half the length of the running time. Some additional material or creative attempts to repeat and reinforce the ballet steps would be preferable, however on the whole, 39 minutes of dancing, romance, sorcery and adventure present all the ingredients of a high drama fit for little ones and their adult companions; a great one to watch together. Bravo!

Language: English

Violence/distressing scenes: None

Nudity: None

Drugs/alcohol: None