Part 1 discussed how students can fight monsters of anxiety about grades & GPA by laughing and learning with the Wisdom Stone Game.
But, some carry around other fears. Since childhood, we’ve become familiar with the idea or cliché of corpses and skeletons coming to life. Others may fear living creatures like spiders or snakes. We get “spooked out” by such things, except when they are silly or pretty.
There’s a long tradition of dealing with these fears by confronting or even celebrating them. Here’s an example: Danse Macabre, composed by Camille Saint-Saëns, performed by Lydia Ayers, Andrew Horner, and Stella So.
Danse Macabre, also called the Dance of Death, is an allegorical concept said to encapsulate the unconscious fear of death.1 The popularity of the Danse Macabre art such as poetry, music and drama, can be traced back to the 13th century, when Europeans became obsessed with death inspired by the Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War.2
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This video of a puppet show, available on DataSpace@HKUST, is part of a collection of the music, and puppet productions of the late Dr. Lydia Ayers, a former professor at HKUST, given by her widower, Dr. Andrew Horner, a professor of Computer Science here.
We hope that you may appreciate the combination of the music of Saint-Saëns’ with the simplicity of shadow puppets, bringing medieval artistry and storytelling to life.
Want more? This Danse Macabre – Visual Listening Guide can help you “see” how.
Here’s also a link to a 1929 animation: “Silly Symphonies – The Skeleton Dance” (Walt Disney Animation Studios)
Learn more about DataSpace@HKUST:
DataSpace@HKUST is a free data repository for HKUST researchers, allowing faculty and postgraduate students to store, share, organize, preserve, and publish research data. Each user can upload unlimited datasets, with a default maximum of 50 GB per dataset. Published datasets are openly accessible, assigned a DOI for easy discovery, and include a shareable citation to enhance recognition.
Reference
1. Kiss, Andrea, and Kathleen Pribyl. The dance of death in Late medieval and Renaissance Europe: Environmental Stress, mortality and social response. London: Routledge, 2021
2. “Dance of Death,” Encyclopædia Britannica, October 1, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/art/dance-of-death-art-motif.
Victoria Caplan
Head (Research & Learning Support)
lbcaplan@ust.hk
Dorian Chow
Assistant Manager (Research and Learning Support)
lbdorian@ust.hk
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