Playing for ballet class tips #15: Talk to dancers
I owe pretty much everything I know about playing for class to dancers, something I’ve already blogged about in my 2005 ‘Dance Inspirations’ Advent calendar. Even with teachers, it’s when…
Jonathan Still, ballet pianist
Music, dance, IT, trivia. Not necessarily in that order.
I owe pretty much everything I know about playing for class to dancers, something I’ve already blogged about in my 2005 ‘Dance Inspirations’ Advent calendar. Even with teachers, it’s when…
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…
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…
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 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…
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…