L'enfant et les Sortileges

Today

Last night I spent a most enjoyable evening in the company of The Rambert Dance Company. One of their pieces was a delightful interpretation of Ravel's "L'Enfant et les Sortileges" in which the dancers portrayed children at play. Sometimes it was light-hearted, sometime sinister; children were fighting one minute, best friends the next. They joined in a range of apparently spontaneous dancing against an enchanted forest backdrop that, too, changed from beautiful to terrifying.

On the way home I talked to Paul about the games we played as children. "Are they quite lost now?" I asked.

In My Day

I don't go to many small children's parties these days but when I do, it seems that the adults have provided a bouncy castle, a MacDonald's tea or children's entertainer to take charge while they sit around, drinking wine and chatting. The kinds of games we used to play seem little in evidence.

I went to a fair number of children's parties when I was small and certainly Beatrice and I gave parties on our birthdays. (I don't remember any given by the boys - I wonder if that's accurate?) There was a standard set of games to be played. You didn't need to have the rules explained; they got into your brain sort of osmotically.

Nearly all of them involved some sort of skill and prizes and forfeits were the order of the day. We played blind man's buff, pinning the tail on the donkey, held races and skipping contests. "Simon Says" was guaranteed to produce much laughter as Simon thought of more and more absurd things for you to do. I suppose that game could be seen as the start of the ten steps to tyranny, but we enjoyed it; all the more when it was your turn to be Simon.

Some games were quite scary "What's the Time, Mr Wolf?" could produce a real thrill of fear as you waited for the moment when he shouted "Dinner Time!" and rushed at you.

One game I dredged up from my memory was "Oranges & Lemons". This was a dance in which two children (usually the tallest) stood facing each other with their hands forming an arch. The rest of the children would form a sort of a crocodile and weave under the arch as we all sang the song. As we came to the bit "Here comes the candle to light you to bed" the singing became a chant and went faster and faster and the arch would move up and down in a sawing motion. The trick was to dodge through when the arch was at its highest so that you weren't caught. Some luckless child would eventually become pinioned as the chopper came down faster and faster and you were "dead". This child probably had to pay a forfeit, too.

All in all, parties could be competitive affairs and it's no wonder that the occasional child would hide under the table and refuse to come out! But maybe they are just another preparation for the unpredictability of life itself and I'm not at all convinced that a tiny bit of fear, especially in a safe context, isn't healthy for the development of children.