Playing for ballet class tips #18: take a lesson in 18th century composition
A lot of pianists are frightened of ‘improvisation’ because the term is widely (mis)understood to mean that you play a chord with your left hand and wait for God to…
Playing for ballet class tips #17: Composing and improvising
Today I’m delighted to have a guest blog by Andy Higgs, friend, composer and musician who’s currently company pianist at Ballett am Rhein in Düsseldorf. This all came about because…
Playing for ballet class tips #16: Talk to teachers
Playing for class has a game-like quality: teacher, dancers and musician come together and enact a ritual according to dozens of complex rules and expectations. If you had to keep…
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…
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…