I was watching ice dancing at the Olympics (I know, more Olympics! Still miss it, still reminiscing) and one of the couples did their routine to this song. It immediately started driving me crazy because I knew the piece was deeply rooted in my childhood somehow, but I couldn't remember why.
I was thinking Fantasia, but I felt that was wrong. My mom offered that it sounded a lot like the scene from Beauty and the Beast when Belle is wandering through the castle unmonitored, and I decided at the time that she was right. It did seem like the kind of piece they would use for that part of the movie, but even so neither of us remembered what it was called or who it was by.
A week or so later, my mom remembered that it was from the Sant-Saens suite, "Carnival of the Animals." Taking that lead, I took to the internet - specifically, Amazon - to seek out the particular movement and discovered that it was "Aquarium." Then, because Amazon has its auto-playlists, it continued after "Aquarium" into the next several movements ("Personages with Long Ears," "The Cuckoo," and "Aviary") and I realized that I knew all of these, grouped together - and I remembered how I knew all of them.
They were all used in a particular show that the studio I danced with actually put on several times: Hansel & Gretel. The movements were all part of the performance when Hansel and Gretel get lost in the woods, meet a big scary crane and his flock, and then the flock kills the big scary crane and turn into happy chirpy birds. Twisted I know, but a lot of ballet is if you look at what the actual story is (see: Giselle, La Sylphide.)
Anyway, that's the story. I just love those epiphanies where something from your childhood comes back to you and you can suddenly remember it all very clearly.
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