The other day Natan told me about an upcoming NYC Ballet production. A one act adaptation of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" along with a ballet set to Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." He thought it would speak to me. Swan Lake for reasons we'll get to and the Mussorgsky because he already knows I really like the piece but also because this production highlights not the works of Viktor Hartmann as the piano suite is about but rather of Wassily Kandinsky. He thought I'd like it both for the irony and because I like Kandinsky's stuff. Right on all counts.

Now, let's talk about Swan Lake and what about those data tricks.

TL;DR - there's all sorts of data out there and all sort of things will scratch student itches. Not everything has to be earth shaking or even serious in the slightest - read on to see what I'm getting at.

My mom really liked Swan Lake and always lamented over the fact that it never got the love it deserved. The Nutcracker suite is an annual holiday season darling and even Sleeping Beauty gets more love. My mom would always point out that Swan Lake was musically as beautiful and wished it was produced more.

Now, in my family we don't refer to Swan Lake as Swan Lake. For us, it's Dracula, the Ballet. Why? See below:

It also turns out that the same theme was used in the original "The Mummy" with Boris Karloff:

And Murders in the Rue Morgue:

So Natan jokingly referred to the NYC Ballet card as "Drucula the Musical and Pictures at an Exhibition but with Kandinsky."

Now Natan, who is know to go down some serious rabbit holes like this one on Typhoid Mary or common causes of death in operas, not to mention thoughts on Cinderella and a regular expresison to identify Disney Princesses. He dove in.

This is where the data come in. It turns out you, or your students can dive into practically anything these days. Natan decided to see the history of performances of Swan Lake vs Tchaikovsky's more popular Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty. There wasn't much historical information from Ballet companies - most big ones that currently exist seem to have been formed in the late 1930s or beyond but he found that while excerpts from Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty were regularly performed by orchestras at the turn of the 20th century, Swan Lake wasn't. Swan Lake did, however get a bump in the early 1940s while the others held fast and then Swan Lake waned.

Hmm. What was up with that.

Well, it turns out that Dracula came out in 1931 and the other two movies a year later. All three featured Swan Lake. Could Dracula have revived interest in Swan Lake? It's certainly possible. One would have to explain the gap between the movie's release and Swan Lakes surge but it is possible. Of course there's no evidence for causation but it's fun to think about.

Well, that's it, a silly deep dive into a little data. Nothing serious and nothing conclusive but silly and fun. Nothing wrong with your students learning how to find and explore on similarly silly data sets.