Playing for ballet class tips #25: respect the ritual
Class has a ritual, liturgical quality to it, particularly in a company. It is daily, it happens at a particular time, with such religious regard for punctuality that a teacher…
Playing for ballet class tips #23: Watch the teacher
The advice to ‘watch the teacher’ is so obvious, it should have been one of the very first tips. But if there’s a reason I’ve hesitated so long, I think…
Playing for ballet class tips #22: With harmony too, less is more
If you’re improvising or harmonising a melody, there’s a lot to be said for just sticking to simple harmonies, and avoiding chromaticism or excessive modulation for the sake of it.…
Playing for ballet class tip #21: Make friends with a notator
If there’s one kind of person in the ballet universe who can really understand where you’re coming from as a musician, and where you need to go, it’s a notator,…
Playing for ballet class tips #20: Let dancers make the beat
In the last tip, I said that it was a good rule of thumb to divide by half (in your melody line) whatever pulse rate you can detect in a…
Playing for ballet class tips day 19: read the feet, divide the beat
In petit allegro, it’s a useful rule of thumb to listen to the rhythm of the exercise as the teacher sets it, and look very carefully at the feet as…