Jonathan's slightly less boring-but-useful site

Some pianists have a misguided view about what is “suitable” for ballet class (e.g. that you have to improvise in a pastiche classical style with no dynamics and no rubato, or that dancers don’t listen so there’s no point in playing your best). This often happens as a result of teachers giving (or appearing to give) too much guidance as to what kind of music they want. Give your pianist an opportunity to play what they like playing, the way they like playing it, and you might find that it’s nearer to what you actually wanted in the first place.

As an example of this, a teacher once told me of a summer school class she was teaching, where the pianist never seemed to play quite what she would have liked (I think it was pirouettes that were the issue). It didn’t matter what she said, the music was never more than OK-but-dull.

On the last day of this summer school, all the teachers went to the local hostelry for a bit of a knees-up, and there, as chance would have it, was the pianist from the class in his other job, entertaining the drinking public from the piano. And there, at last, was the music this teacher had been trying to get out of him all week.

The moral of the story is, if you’re teaching on a summer school, go to the pub on the first night.

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Although it’s great to have music for class, be sure in your own mind what role it plays, so that you know when not to use it. Some examples:

• With no music, students can practise jumping as high as they can, not just as high as the music allows.
• A wonderful teacher that I’ve worked with called Charles Mudry, uses no music for his stretching and limbering exercises before pliés. It makes sense – if the purpose is to stretch, then individual dancers are going to want a bit more or less ‘stretch’ in the music, and there’s no tempo that will accommodate everyone.
• Movements which are rhythmically or technically complex are probably better practised in silence or at least with a purely rhythmic accompaniment such as finger clicks or vocalisations before trying to set them to music
• The absence of music can make the heart fonder and more responsive towards music when it’s there. By contrast, too much music may lead to a case of familiarity breeding indifference.
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Occasionally – once a term, perhaps – set aside time with your pianist when you will simply experiment with different ideas for using music in class. An hour spent talking, reflecting and experimenting will bring generous rewards in the classroom.

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Teach by example and show your response to the music that is played. Think of class as a kind of ‘guided discovery’ of music for your students. Staying unmoved and unmoving while the pianist plays sends a signal to the students – and the pianist – that there is nothing in the music worth responding to. And even if it’s old hat to you – remember that it isn’t to them.

I was awestruck by the late great Raissa Struchkova teaching one of the girls’ Pas de Trois solos from Act I of Swan Lake. It’s not the greatest music Tchaikovsky wrote, but Struchkova taught the dancer how to be moved (literally!) by every semiquaver of the music. She treated the melody of the music exactly as a violinist would – paying enormous effort and attention to every nuance of articulation, and dancing as if her feet were playing the floor like a violin string.

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