celebrate

Celebrate!: An Anti-Bias Guide to Enjoying Holidays in Early Childhood Programs
$19.95
This book is a wonderful resource for childcare centers and schools. We used it as a guide to develop a new holiday policy in our program. The author discusses the importance in recognizing and celebrating culture and tradition in all families, as well as outline why. She also discusses how children respond to holidays developmentally.

I highly recommend it to any center or school that is looking to revise or develop a holiday policy.

Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1965-1975
$31.98
Great item at a super price - has most everything 3DN did!! Excellent liner notes, too!

Celebrate!
$19.95
I love this book. Even if you're not going to cook, but just to read for ideas it is wonderful. It gives you good ideas for meals when you want to add something just a little different.

The Kirov Celebrates Nijinsky / Sheherazade, La Spectre de la Rose, The Polovtsian Dances, The Firebird
$19.99
If you only ordered this DVD to get "Firebird", you would get your money's worth. However, the other three ballets are bonuses worthy of your time and money also. The ballets on this disc, in the order they appear in the program are: Sheherazade,w/music of Rimsky-Korsakov, Le Spectre de La Rose w/music of Carl Maria Von Weber, Polovtsian Dances, w/music of Alexander Borodin, and Firebird, w/music of Igor Stravinsky. All of the music is spectacular, but Firebird is a cut above.

Diana Vishneva is a fabulous Firebird, with great jumping and turning ability, typical of the Russian ballerinas, and her partner Andrei Yakovlev, is very good also, but his dancing is limited to supporting his partner. Besides, he would have had trouble dancing in the costume they had him in. I think that if he had grasped a real bird by the tail-feathers as he did his Firebird, she would have just pulled out her tail-feathers as she struggled to get away. I caught a little bird once on my enclosed porch, (I was afraid it would break it's neck flying into the windows), so I held it by it's tail-feathers as I was trying to release it, and it pulled ALL it's tail-feathers out as it struggled to get away. It was able to fly w/o It's tail-feathers, however. Our Firebird did not pull out her tail-feathers until she was ready to give one to her captor in exchange for her release. A very magical feather it is too, for when our hero is about to be turned into stone by the magic of the evil sorcerer Kotchei (sometimes spelled Kashchey), he uses it to call the Firebird to his rescue. Some of you have never seen this ballet, (I had not when I first bought it) so, take the plunge and get it to view over and over. If you really love FIREBIRD, for heavens sake, get the Royal Ballet version also, w/Leanne Benjamin....Stravinsky - The Firebird & Les Noces / Royal Ballet....It's even better than this one (IMO). Read my review on it.

The best thing about Sheherazade is it's music. The story concerns an orgy, plain and simple. Of course, this is an orgy your children can watch. An Arabian Sultan, Shakhriar, has a harem, and I suppose his favorite concubine is Zabeida, whom he suspects is unfaithful to him. So, he fakes a hunting trip and goes off leaving his harem to the safe keeping of a comical eunuch, who is tricked into giving up the keys of the harem to the concubines, who in turn unlock the doors to allow their lovers inside to.....well you know what. The Sultan returns to find the orgy, and kills everyone. But, to hear the beautiful music you have to put up with a 20 to 30 murders, and one suicide. Not too much to ask, is it?

Le Spectre de La Rose is the story of a girl who dreams. She falls asleep with a rose in her hand, and dreams of a ghost who enters through a window looking all rose colored, and dances with her until she awakens, then he jumps through the window through which he entered. The music is Von Weber's, "Invitation to the Dance", which is his claim to fame. The story is believable, because remember, the only entertainment in years past was dancing and other musical galas, so she could have gone to a dance and dreamed about it later. It's a very nice short ballet.

Polovtsian Dances includes a vocal by a Russian speaking chorus of very good voices. Of course a ballet is the main feature, with music by Borodin. The beautiful music inspired the once popular song "Stranger in Paradise", back when songs used to make sense. This is also a short ballet worth having. For pure listening pleasure, this is as good as music gets. It's right up there with Tchaikovsky for me.

Hey, would you be interested in hearing another fabulous Russian chorus? Buy the opera SADKO by Rimsky-Korsakov. It has an aria by a tenor that is so utterly beautiful you might cry when you hear it. It's called THE SONG OF INDIA sung by "the indian guest". The dancing girls he brings with him aren't hard to look at either.....Rimsky-Korsakov - Sadko / Vladimir Galouzine, Gegam Grigorian, Sergei Alexashkin, Larissa Diadkova, Nikolai Putilin, Valery Gergiev, Kirov Opera