Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #7: The dreaded 2/4 sissonne
A short but apposite entry today, because I’m off to record a whole bunch of examples of exactly what this post is about: music for that kind of sissonne exercise…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #6: Playing the Black Swan variation music
The music that is harder to find than a black swan Let’s start with a few facts. Although this solo, and the Black Swan pas de deux that it comes…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #5: Playing for the White Swan variation
I’ve already written an entire recent post about one problem with accompanying this variation (The perils of musicality when you’re accompanying a ballet solo) but that’s not the end of…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #4: Classical music
The other side of my anxiety about not playing pop tunes for class (see yesterday’s post) is anxiety about playing stuff that’s too classical. When I say “classical,” I mean…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #3: Pop songs
I’ve got to be very careful how I put this, for fear of being taken the wrong way (see, I’m even anxious about that). So let’s get one thing out…
Confessions of an anxious ballet pianist day #2: Fear of repetition
I’m relatively relaxed about repetition, because over the years a few dancers have told me that sometimes it’s nice to hear something familiar, either because they like it, or because…