#bethena

Segment 1: Les Toreadors by Georges Bizet – In keeping with tradition, the opening will be a surreal & beautiful visualization of music. It will involve a square shaped mass with triangular arms conducting an unseen orchestra, all the while the environment shows off various colors, shapes, lights, & other surreal imagery that matches the music & intensity as it plays.

Segment 2: Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens – This segment, more or less, is an adaptation of the original French poem. On a Halloween midnight, the Angel of Death arrives to a graveyard on the back of a grey horse & begins to play a violin. Immediately, ghosts descend down from Heaven & skeletons rise from their graves, & they all perform their dance while the Angel of Death plays. When dawn approaches, all of the dead return to their afterlives & the Angel of Death rides off.

Segment 3: The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II – This segment is one centered on love & romance. In a very dull & colorless enchanted forest, we see a group of fairies hanging out by a pond, & a troop of brownies marching off into the forest. One of the fairies & one of the brownies stumble into each other, & right away there’s an immediate infatuation. As the two of them dance & act playfully with one another, the magic from the fairy’s wand begins bringing color back to the enchanted forest. It ends with the whole forest in bright colors, the other fairies & brownies cheering, & our two leads kissing.

Segment 4: Symphony No. 40 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Instead of bringing the original Sorcerer’s Apprentice segment from the first Fantasia back, I decided to instead tell a new story with Mickey Mouse in the lead. It will star Mickey as the keeper of messenger pigeons in a Medieval castle, & one day he finds a message from an evil wizard threatening to destroy the castle. Mickey goes to warn the king, & after showing the king the message, the queen takes Mickey to a secret room where an enchanted sword is kept, & she gives the sword to Mickey. Right on cue, the evil wizard & his giant stone warriors march through the kingdom (spotted by Donald Duck as a guard with a spyglass), & though the king sends soldiers to fight, they are easily defeated. Soon, the wizard storms into the throne room, but Mickey jumps in to save the day, as the enchanted sword deflects the wizard’s magic & destroys the stone warriors. After an intense showdown, the wizard’s staff is destroyed, he is turned to ashes, & shortly afterwards Mickey is knighted by the king & queen.

Segment 5: Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson – This is a shorter segment that illustrates a tradition that takes place in Europe every Christmas. It shows Saint Nicholas riding a sleigh pulled by a reindeer through a winter forest decorated with Christmas lights & candles, until he eventually arrives in a European village where he is greeted by the townsfolk, makes his way to the town square where a big Christmas tree is waiting for him, & he delivers toys to the children.

Segment 6: Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 by George Enescu – This is a segment that’s essentially a condensed retelling of my future book The White Elephant. It tells the story of a big elephant in the jungle of India who, despite his friendly nature, is ostracized by the other snootier jungle animals. But then he comes across a clumsy crane who fell from the sky, & after reviving it, the two of them become friends & do all sorts of fun activities together like eating fruit, playing in flower petals, splashing around in a waterhole, & so on. Eventually, a small fire breaks out in the jungle, & it’s up to the elephant & crane to save the day, which they thankfully do & are hailed as heroes.

Segment 7: Bolero by Maurice Ravel – This segment, inspired by the robot artwork of Matt Dixon, tells the story of a robot who is dropped onto an alien planet, & goes around exploring all the different alien biomes & coming across various alien species along the way, until the robot eventually finds an abandoned shelter on a mountainside & makes it a new home.

Segment 8: The Scott Joplin Medley (Bethena, The Entertainer, & Maple Leaf Rag) – In this segment set during the 1920’s, we see an African American man & a beautiful Irish immigrant woman going about their morning & their jobs, until they both come across a flyer on a fence asking for vaudeville performers. The night of the show, at first they’re billed as solo performances, but soon the two of them decide to do an act together, & they succeed in winning over the crowd.

Segment 9: The New World Symphony by Antonín Dvořák – This segment, which will probably be the longest, tells the story of a little girl with a sad school life who suffers from social rejection & bullying. But then one day, she arrives home to see a present from her godmother waiting for her, & it ends up being a plush leopard. Immediately, she loves it! The next day, she imagines the leopard is alive & real, & it of course shows great love & affection for her. Then, they go outside & imagine themselves playing all sorts of grand adventures together that include time traveling to see dinosaurs, being sheriffs in the old west, being superheroes who fight bad guys, & even doing other fun things like taking pictures of each other & eating cookies together. At the very end, we see the little girl’s mother watching from the window, as she sees her daughter playing with the stuffed leopard, & she smiles. As you can see, this is based very heavily on the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson, & if I could, I would’ve made this an adaptation of the comic. But because Watterson is extremely protective of his work, the only thing I can do is make up a new story using heavy inspiration.

Segment 10: Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – For the final segment, the story starts with some mighty dragons flying above the mountains. Then it goes to a baby dragon witnessing all of this, & with its mothers help, it learns to fly in the sky, until eventually seeing a great big valley & all sorts of different dragons doing various different things.