A while back I wrote a series on the divertissement in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. The character dances — “fillters”, have some of the most under-appreciated writing in the repertoire, top-tier in color, melody, and orchestration, with almost nothing to set beside it.
The complete ballet would never be staged in the United States until 1944, in San Francisco, and it didn’t harden into a Christmas fixture until Balanchine’s New York production in 1954.
Which is what makes Fantasia strange. Four years before you could see the Nutcracker staged in the states, Disney animated its dances — and discarded the ballet with pixie dusted mushrooms, goldfish, and flowers.
It works because the animation listens to the orchestration, not the tune.