Mermaids with Legs

With the growing craze of making books and musicals into movies and then putting movies back into books and musicals, it is natural that Disney’s The Little Mermaid became a ballet. However, this particular story proves a little more challenging to adapt to the ballet medium than Lion King did because, let’s face it, dancers have legs and mermaids don’t. 

It is hard to find the first ballet company that not only gave the Little Mermaid legs but also put her on pointe, but several companies have taken on the challenge of presenting The Little Mermaid as a chance to expand their creativity in costuming and props, and developing their artistry to portray mermaids, sea creatures, and humans.

The Inland Pacific Ballet Company based their production on the Disney version of Hans Christian Andersen’s story, complete with fishy props and a spectacular shipwreck. Inland Pacific Ballet kept Disney’s happy ending, but changed the Little Mermaid back into a mermaid and her prince join her under the sea as a merman.  

Another ballet company approaches The Little Mermaid quite differently. The San Francisco Ballet was more concerned about sticking to Andersen’s original story, highlighting the details Disney did not include in order to emphasize the Little Mermaid’s loss of love. German choreographer for the San Francisco Ballet, Neumeier, is fascinated with pain, choreographing dances where the Little Mermaid can barely walk on land and shedding tears over her prince, so his Little Mermaid winces across the stage. 

A male “sea witch” dominates the stage with imposing moves and demonic costuming. The Mermaid also loses her tail, not her voice, for the price of gaining legs. This makes the story more relevant to the ballet world because the dancers do not talk during ballets anyway.  

Neumeier wanted to show Andersen’s original ending, and he did this by twisting an unusual frame story around the popularly known Little Mermaid: A poet creates our heroine from a tear of longing he sheds in the sea over losing his best male friend to marriage. In the end, it is because the poet created the mermaid and identifies with her intense grief that gives the Little Mermaid an immortal soul. 

This version was aired on PBS in 2011 and became immensely popular for its portrayal of grief and the questions it presents of male-male relationships. These adult themes change the story from Andersen’s intention of teaching children to be good (so that by being good, children help give good mermaids souls so that they may gain access to heaven) to focusing on love and addressing current political concerns and societal issues--just as we see demonstrated by this YouTube clip:

Through the ballets, we see that Andersen’s story continues to change and evolve beyond Disney, making the themes of the story more relevant to the concerns of their audiences.

Another recommended ballet to watch was produced by the California Arts Academy: