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…
Playing for ballet class tips #8: mix humour with lyricism
If I had one golden rule for playing for class, this would be it: you can get people to listen to anything if you set them up the right way.…
Playing for ballet class tips #7: Listen to orchestral recordings
These blog posts make me sound like I know what I’m talking about. But they’re actually a catalogue of the mistakes I’ve made, and what I learned from them. One…
Playing for ballet class tips #6: Focus on your outside fingers
One of the occupational hazards of playing for class too much is that you can end up playing in a way that only uses three fingers in each hand. After…
Playing for ballet class tips #4: Forget about time signatures in ballet class
Time signatures in ballet class: don’t get precious about them There’s no polite way to say this—pianists, don’t get pissy about time signatures in ballet class. In other words, if…
Playing for ballet class tips #3: Get yourself a fiddle book
Searching for petit allegro music “There are two parts of the class where you need more music,” the late Anatoli Grigoriev said to me after I’d played for him a…