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“. . . And she done the fandango all over the place”

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The Body and Everyday Life by Helen Thomas, the source of the fandango story in this post

The Body and Everyday Life: excellent guide to the field by Helen Thomas.

I’ve just found another beautiful piece of dance research. Beauty might be an odd adjective to use, but there is something deeply attractive about the careful observation, and attention to  social and musical details in this particular study. It resonates strongly with the kind of thing I and my ballet pianist colleagues often see in classes and rehearsals, and the analysis and conclusions throw interesting light on our world too. 

I found it in Helen Thomas’s excellent book, The Body and Everyday Life (Routledge, 2013), on pages 32-33. Thomas refers to Anya Peterson Royce’s description of arguments between members of a Zapotec dance group from Juchitán, Mexico (Royce, The Anthropology of Dance, 1980, pp. 27-31).  The detail is what makes the story, so there’s a lot you can’t skip, but I’ll try to summarize it briefly.

The fandango rehearsal

In Royce’s account, six couples are rehearsing the Fandango, a dance which has alternating fast and slow sections. Four of the couples change place two bars before the new tempo begins, whereas the other two change place right on it. An older dancer from one of the “two-bars-before” couples , considered an expert on dance and a regular performer at the annual dance festival, corrects one of the women from the “right on the tempo change” couples, saying that two bars before is the correct way. She also happens to be the right-on-it woman’s older cousin, as well as being from a distinguished old Zapotec family.

You’d think that the younger cousin, being younger, and being outnumbered and outclassed in terms of dance experience, would have just said “OK, thank you” and taken the correction from her older cousin, especially as there were other relatives from the same family in the rehearsal who sided with the two-bars-before view. But she didn’t. She insisted that her way was right, and what’s more, she’d even learned it  from her older cousin’s grandmother—considered one of the best dancers in Juchitán. She refused to budge, and said that the grandmother should be called on to arbitrate. 

Having seen both versions, the grandmother declared the two-bars-before version to be the correct one. I rather like the sound of the younger cousin, who now says that she’d seen the grandmother moving on the tempo change, not two bars before it, on a recent occasion. When grandmother asked her daughter (i.e. the older cousin) whether that was true, the cousin said, no it wasn’t, she’d moved two bars before, as they’d been saying all along. The younger cousin had finally to bow to pressure and give way in the face of all the odds stacked against her. 

But Royce later performed the fandango with another member of the two-bar-before family, and in keeping with what she had observed in the family drama, made to move two bars before the upcoming tempo change. At this point—and if you work in the dance world, you’ll have guessed this bit already—she was told that she should only move when the music changed! After a lot of questions and further observation, she realized that it was acceptable to do the dance both ways, changing before or on the tempo change—but under the circumstances, family values won the day, not choreographic truth. It reminds me of those rehearsals where everyone does what they’re told if the visiting choreographer or ballet mistress wants a change made, but as soon as they’re on a plane, things get changed back to how they were, at least for those who have sufficient status to get away with it. 

Commentary on the fandango rehearsal

I love the story, but also Thomas’s commentary on it: 

The dancers’ body movement in time and space in the context of the rehearsal became a site of resistance to and an affirmation of the cultural codes of behaviour which almost go unnoticed in everyday life. This case also raises the question as to when a performance event (in the case of a rehearsal) can be said to begin and end, which, in turn, leads to a questioning of the closed-off notion of the ‘performance event’ from everyday life” (Thomas 2013, p. 34). 

As class and rehearsal pianists for ballet you get to see, or hear of, similar altercations about music that are about so much more than just music because they are thoroughly embedded in social structures (for some reason, dance seems to be particularly prone to such things, perhaps precisely because it involves bodies moving together socially). And yet, you absolutely have to have the musical detail for the story to make any sense at all. That’s why I think this is such a beautiful bit of research. It’s about so little and so much at the same time, and music is not accompaniment or background, but part of the cloth from which the whole story is woven. 

She done the fandango

I couldn’t resist calling this She done the fandango all over the place. Years ago I was at a party at house of the wonderful poet, Kit Wright. He’d found a Victorian music hall song with that title in a compendium of such things, and as after-lunch entertainment, sang it, accompanying himself on the guitar, in the style of a Country and Western ballad. Every time I hear fandango I remember that song, and that party. I am certain that Kit’s book had it as She done the fandango, rather than she “did” or “does,” because that was why it sounded so funny, but I’ll have to wait til my copy arrives to find out. Meanwhile, here’s the chorus from Henri Clarke’s 1883 song, “She does the fandango all over the place.” 

She sang like a nightingale, twanged her guitar
Danced the Cachuca, and smoked a cigar
Oh what a form, Oh what a face
And she does the Fandango all over the place.

Playing for ballet class tips #24: Speak up – don’t act the pianist

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I can’t remember when exactly I discovered this, but it was life-changing. If you’ve got a question in class or rehearsal, speak up, don’t act the pianist. If you’re going to ask a question at all, ask it loud and clear. If you act like a victim in a rehearsal or class, you run the risk of being treated like one. Conversely, if you act like you’re the professional equal of the person you’re working with, you’ll be treated as that. You may not feel like that at all, and in many ways, you plainly aren’t, but you can “fake it til you make it.”

All I’m talking about  is the volume of your voice when you ask a question, not about how to stop being a victim. You may not feel confident doing it, and you may not feel that you have enough experience to be able to do so, but feel the fear and do it anyway – just speak up.

Start as you mean to carry on

It starts from the moment you walk into a room with a new teacher. If you go and sit behind the piano sheepishly and wait for the teacher to find out your name, a) they may never ask and b) they may assume that you prefer to be left alone.  If you walk right up to them and say ‘Hello, my name is….’ and get the introductions over, you’ve established a relationship which is going to make it much easier when you have questions later. I say the same to teachers, so don’t be surprised if you meet in the middle of the studio. Much later, I discovered a great TED talk by Amy Cuddy on body language (link to transcript) that explains the problem and the solution in detail.

Only you know what your problem is: get it out there

I used to try and guess what teachers wanted if I didn’t know, or look questioningly at them, hoping they’d second guess what my problem was. It doesn’t work. And I’ve often found that even when some teachers seem overbearing or intimidating, they’ll be fine with being asked questions like the following, as long as you ask them directly, loudly and clearly:

  • “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite get that. What was the tempo again?”
  • “What kind of a 3 do you want – something butch, or more fluid?”
  • “Does it matter to you whether this is on 3 or 4?”
  • ” I’m afraid I don’t know this ballet, you’re going to have to guide me a bit. Where are we going from?”
  • “Would you mind if we just talked through the tempos of this before we rehearse, as I don’t want us to have to stop in the middle”

My theory about why this works is that teachers’ have so much stuff to deal with that they blot out whatever isn’t critical,  like someone landing a plane. If the music’s working, they won’t meddle with it. If you seem to be OK, they’ll leave you alone. The temptation for the pianist is to try not to be too much trouble, to not interrupt; to mumble the question or look needy and hope the teacher will guess what you want. This just registers as an irritation, not a call on their attention.  But if you speak up, they’ll recognize that you have an important question to ask, and they’ll deal with it.

Don’t act the pianist: the canonical example from “Stepping Out”


The clip from Stepping Out with Glenda the pianist is a classic example of how communication goes wrong in a dance studio. It’s hilarious precisely because it satirizes the wrong footing that so many classes and rehearsals begin on. What ought to be a very simple question about tempo becomes an emotional battleground and power struggle. The issue is resolved when Liza Minelli deals with the emotions. But it could have been avoided altogether if Glenda had said right from the start – ‘I’m sorry, I can’t remember what last week’s tempo was. Just mark it for me again, and I’ll try and get it back’.

That wouldn’t have been funny or heartwarming at all, and I’m glad she didn’t. But unless you’re happy for your life to be like an endless loop of this scene, and unless your teacher is Liza Minelli, go for the second option and ask the question before the rehearsal starts.

It doesn’t have to be this way: update on 25/5/2016

After thirty years of playing rehearsals, something happened recently which was almost unique in my experience, and is a model of what I’d say was best practice: maybe it’s the future. A few weeks ago, a dancer began a rehearsal of a very difficult solo by saying to the coach and me “Do you mind if we go through tempos before we do it? I won’t have the stamina to keep repeating this solo, and if try and sort out the tempos first, there’s more chance I can run it from beginning to end without having to stop because the tempo’s wrong.”

For musicians, that’s pretty normal: that’s how you’d approach a rehearsal involving people who hadn’t worked together on the same piece before. But it’s rare in the ballet world. The kindest interpretation is that everyone overestimates the skills and experience of the pianist, and so doesn’t think they need help. How it comes across, though,  is that everyone’s too impatient to “waste time” on a bit of preparation before the rehearsal starts, and thinks that getting the right tempo is a kind of magical sixth sense that you get from just looking at someone. Sometimes—but very rarely—it is. For the other 95% of cases, a conversation about tempo would be so helpful.

It’s interesting that it was a dancer who initiated the sensible approach here, not a coach. It was an extraordinary case of someone changing the world for the better from the inside. It might be that “Don’t act the pianist” will be irrelevant advice in a few year’s time. I rather hope so.

 

Playing for ballet class tips #4: Forget about time signatures in ballet class

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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 a teacher says they want a 4 and then mark something that sounds like 6/8, don’t get on your high horse, play something in 4 and say ‘But that’s what you asked for’.  You might feel pleased with yourself for a second or two, but you run the risk of being known as that rather irritating pianist who pulled the teacher up on a technicality, while she had a dozen other things to think about.

Instead, look at the exercise, listen to all the clues you can, make a judgement about what you think the teacher is looking for based on all the information available (not just what they said when they started), and if it’s ambiguous, ask. In fact, rather than asking, it’s probably better to take a punt and play something  on the first side and see what happens. If the rhythm seemed ambiguous in the marking, it might be that it doesn’t matter that much, or that the teacher is not sure what would work best – in which case, there’s no point in asking, just let everyone have a go with some music and see whether it works.

Justin London's great book on metre

Hearing in Time by Justin London – a masterpiece of a book on metre and rhythm

If it goes wrong, there’s your answer. This empirical approach to music for class is a much better way to find out what works  than trying to pin down and theorize everything in advance, or trying to find fail-safe names for everything. The  obstacle to working this way is fear of getting it wrong, of losing face, and once that fear sets in on both sides (teacher and pianist), you’re on a terrible journey. But if you don’t  look to the teacher to know everything in advance, and instead create an atmosphere where it’s OK for both of you to get it wrong now and again, you’ll live long and be happy.

Life without time signatures

The other reason to forget about time signatures is that if you categorize music by time signature, you’ll miss a lot of cases where the metre of the music as it sounds is ‘hidden’ behind the time signature. Here’s a few examples:

  • Music for grand allegro which is in 6/8 rather than 3/4 – think of all the wilis music in Act II Giselle, or the male variation of Tchaikovsky pas de deux. If you think ‘waltz’ or ‘3/4’, you’ll mentally rule out some of the best repertoire.
  • Slow music in 4 that has accompaniment in triplets can be reclassified as 3/4, 6/8, 12/8.
  • By the same token, a lot of ballady type music in 12/8 is of course effectively in 4
  • Hornpipes, if you swing them, turn from 2/4 into a kind 6/8, but you feel them as four. There’s not really a term for this – it’s just ‘bouncy’ music, and time signature is less relevant than what you do with the notes.
  • A baroque gigue-y type of music in 12/8 could be construed as four bars of 3/4. Teachers use the term ‘waltz’ or ‘3/4’ generically to mean something in triple metre, but don’t let the terms distract you from other forms and repertoire
  • The opposite applies to the ‘waltz song’ which can be, metrically, much more like a ballad in 4 with a triplet accompaniment. Disaster for allegro – not all that has ‘waltz’ written on it actually waltzes.
  • Hypermetrical organization is important – Morning has broken might be written in 3/4 (it isn’t always) but hypermetrically it’s 9/8 or 9/4, and you can hear it as a slow six. The one thing it isn’t, particularly, is ‘3’.

A lot of those bullet points came out of everyday experiences with music, but Justin London’s Hearing in Time , a wonderful book on the perception of time and metre in music, gave me a whole set of theoretical tools with which to look at music in different ways that became very useful when looking for new repertoire.  His online lecture How to talk about musical metre introduces some of the concepts from the book.