10 Fascinating Facts You Never Knew About Fantasia
6. A 200lb Woman Was Studied For The Dancing Hippo
Fantasia wasn’t all dinosaur death and casual racism. There had to be something in there for the children who would inevitably watch it, therefore the Dance of the Hours was included. This segment featured dancing ostriches and crocodiles and a hippo called Hyacinth, each of these characters representing the different times of day.
This was a pure ballet feature with some comedy thrown in, something which was studied to the smallest detail. To make the piece as authentic as possible, ballet dancers were brought in to create choreography, including acclaimed prima ballerina Irina Baranova. Also brought in as a reference model was a woman weighing 200 pounds (91 kg) to portray Hyacinth the Hippo.
As Hyacinth, this woman was studied meticulously to see how a person of her size and shape would react to the strains of ballet, as well as being lifted by smaller people (of similar size to the crocodiles).
Everything down to every “quiver of her flesh” was photographed and filmed so as to create most accurate representation of a hippopotamus performing the most demanding dancing ever conceived.
Cruel? Possibly. Effective? Definitely.