Playing for ballet class tips #14: Make your intros clear
One of the ironies of playing for class is that you often feel unsure of what you’re doing until the exercise has started, because until that moment, all you’ve seen…
Playing for ballet class tips #13: Make space for dancing
You’ll sometimes hear dancers and choreographers talk about music having ‘space’ for dance, or being ‘spacious’, and although it’s difficult to define, it’s something to do with allowing the dance…
Playing for ballet class tips #12: have a repertoire of weird stuff
Repertoire for ballet class: the problem of threes A ballet teacher friend asked me a question at a party about an exercise that he’d set in a class that day…
Playing for ballet class tips #11: Play from memory
Playing for class without music on the stand is a totally different experience to working from a score. Only when you put the music away do you realise how much…
Playing for ballet class tips #10: Phrase clearly
I always used to think how amazing it is the way that dancers pick up exercises so quickly: a teacher rattles through a list of steps in ballet shorthand, says…
Playing for ballet class tips #9: for ‘waltz’ read ‘mazurka’ for pirouettes
Even though teachers often ask for a ‘waltz’ for pirouettes on a 3, sometimes (in fact, most times) what works much better is a mazurka. Not the character-type mazurka that…