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So I've been toying with the idea of learning how to do some basic ballet accompaniment. My teacher is a professional ballet accompanist herself and is excited about the idea.

A great added advantage for me is that she's also a ballet teacher. About 20 years ago, after about ten years of accompanying, she trained to be a ballet teacher and currently splits her time accompanying and teaching classical ballet. This gives me a unique opportunity to learn to do this while actually having my own piano teacher in the front of the class.

She's willing to work on repertoire with me, and I'd be in a great position because I'll know ahead of time exactly what the exercises will be and have worked on the music ahead of time with the teacher. Once I have a good library of repertoire under my belt, she'll start working on helping me pick music on the fly, and adapt as I go, two things she's supremely good at after all these years. The idea being that ultimately I could be a regular accompanist for her classes, or fill in for classes that don't currently have live accompaniment, either at her studio or elsewhere.

She's confident that it would only take me about six months to get comfortable enough with it to be useful, and if that's the case I'm all for it!

I would love to do it, and the task of it would certainly help me to overcome some major issues I still need to address: fear of playing for others, staying calm and relaxed and keeping an eye on the overall goal while playing, and general consistency. It's not that I can't do these things, but I simply haven't had enough habitual exposure to situations in which I have to sit down and simply play rather than practice, whether it be accompaniment, chamber, or simply solo.

Anyway, the whole idea makes me quake in my boots a bit, though getting to work out the entire class ahead of time is really a terrific advantage. Not to mention having the teacher be, herself, a pianist, and my own teacher no less.

It feels to me that I need to be a much better pianist to consider accompaniment, but my teacher thinks I'm already good enough to be a fine accompanist once I've got my sea legs. She gently suggested that I not look at her and her choice of repertoire as the example of the chops I need to have before I put myself out there. She's right--after 35 years of professional accompaniment (and she began to do this straight out of school), she's rather intimidatingly good at it. When I still looked somewhat skeptical, she claimed that the only thing that separated me from the other staff accompanist at our studio was comfort level. And that in six months' time I'd see what she meant by that.

Ok, well, I'm game!

A few days ago, a very famous ballerina was promoted to soloist at American Ballet Theater. The Wall Street Journal covered the story extensively and interviewed her as well as securing an exclusive performance by her, which they produced and turned into a video on their website.

The only thing I can say is that if this is what I need in order to accompany none other than the great Misty Copeland, well, I may be overthinking things a tad. Listen all the way through to the end, it's spectacular.

I bet you could do as well as that or even much better!

Ouch, I had a stomach ache listening to that and thinking about dancing to it. You KNOW you will do so much better! It should be fun and interesting to see what it's like on the other side of the piano during class. Post a video!

I played for a ballet school this year, a few classes a week, and it was the first thing I decided to stop doing in favor of other activities. Part of it was the pay (it pays half the hourly rate I get for teaching or accompanying others), but the other part of it was I didn't really feel I was that effective unless I was playing a class with set syllabus music. Will you be learning to improvise?

What the heck were they thinking with that accompaniment!?

Somebody badly needs to be fired.

Sounds like fun TwoSnowflakes! Not everyone loves ballet accompanying, but I really do. It's a great way to collaborate on the piano without having to worry about being too loud
Although the old hands like to be fancy when and where they can, a new accompanist really can get by playing incredibly simple stuff. As long as you can match the tempo, meter and energy level of the exercise, without taking too long to think about it first. And you dance, so you won't feel lost in all the terminology. And as you say, you have the ideal training situation.
enjoy!!

No, I'm not going to be improvising, per se. Unless you count squaring off to eight count phrases. I don't.

I had a class last week and the accompanist matched a simple little waltz melody to the exercise. I hadn't heard it before so when I fluttered past her on the exit, I side-whispered, "what was that???"

"Oh, what I just played? Nothing, I made it up!"

"Well, bravo."

I would like to be able to do that some day, but at the moment I'm perfectly happy starting from the framework of an existing piece. To that end, I'm starting to get some repertoire together. This is going to be so much fun! I played some Strauss today, a bit of Fauré, some classic ballet melodies from Tchaikovsky and Minkus, some more Strauss, some Schubert, and even a couple of Joplin rags. I think I can do this!

My older daughter takes ballet, and she materialized by the piano upon hearing what was clearly ballet accompaniment music, so I guess I pulled it off! Then the younger one showed up, who also takes ballet. And then they danced and made me keep up, and I told them to hold me to a full cadence at the end, no hesitation. Which means I've spent the last bit of my evening having my daughters yell at me "FIVE ONE! C'MON, MOM! FASTER!"

LOL!

I didn't improvise either, so for the longer classes I quickly found myself running out of certain kinds of pieces, like 3/4s. My improvisation skills were quite limited, to squaring off the phrases or turning 6/8s into 2/4s and vice versa.

For the smaller kids I found having a few marches like Sousa marches worked well. I also thought of getting some nursery rhymes like Pop Goes the Weasel, but never got around to it.

There's also a Russian website of ballet music organized alphabetically by composer. The website is in Russian, but if you hover over the links they show up in English.

Ballet music

I don't understand why the music for Copeland was played soooooo slowwwwwww. Unless she specifically wanted that, some of the ballet moves could be very difficult at that slow speed. That was a mess!

Isabelle,

I've taken many ballet classes, and never like adagio's they are beautiful to watch when done well and adagios take so much control.

It's great that Misty has been promoted to Principle and I look forward to seeing her perform. Can't imagine why Copeland would have wanted very slow music - maybe she was rehearsing for a new ballet choreographed for her?

I'm happy that all is going well for you, it's not easy playing for ballet classes. You go to the head of the class.

That was painfully slow, even for Sugar Plum. There was nothing Misty could do about it and eventually she kind of went off-music but even then....

In any event, I am pretty sure that was picked because of familiarity and appeal--Wall Street Journal staff probably went through the following thought process:

"Hey, what should she ask her to dance?"

"Um, how about Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy?"

"Great. Now we just need a pianist. Hey, Carl, I seem to remember you play piano, right?"

Carl: "Wait, no, you've got me conf...."

"That's great. Carl, put down the coffee, take this music and cue the curtain!"

Here's how that was supposed to look, complete with some kind of rhythmically cogent acceleration at the end, featuring Actual Correct Notes and a keyboardist who can play a keyboard, even when it's a celeste:



Now, to be fair, this is not exactly my favorite version of the choreography, though I very much like Misty. The version she danced was reworked by a current choreographer for some reason. I prefer the original (Ivanov or Petipa, with Tchaikovsky).

What that looks like, more or less:



Or:



Though, if you REALLY ask me, I much prefer pretty much any ballet to the Nutcracker. Still, you can't beat that music. Tchaikovsky was a genius. I read somewhere that the premiere of the Nutcracker was pushed up because Tchaikovsky was nervous he would be scooped on orchestrating a ballet with a celeste, which had recently been invented. He was sure it was the Next Big Thing.

I suppose we can all discuss whether or not that happened.

TwoSnowFlakes

I bet that's exactly what happened

The Nutcracker Suite isn't a favorite of mine either, I agree with you when it comes to the music.

I watched the three versions of the Sugar Plum Fairy and each had it's good points and ok points. Guess it's a matter of taste as to the best version.

Thanks for posting them, I enjoyed watching each of them.

This.

Good luck with dance accompaniment. Listening to live accompaniment was always one of the best parts of being a dance parent.

Thanks! I'll have a look. If it's Russian music, so much the better as the school is Russian syllabus ballet instruction anyway.

I'll try to read it in Russian. My piano teacher will be proud of me.

I gotta respectfully disagree that "anybody" can play for ballet classes. It requires enormous repertoire, a strong back, willingness to put up with less than tier one pianos, and you must understand it is the pianist's job to get his/her head together with the balletmaster, not the other way around. I have long been considered the best in town and I can confirm the previous poster's assertion that it's not easy. The repertoire has to include just about everything from Gregorian Chant to Ligeti or Sorabji. You need to know ALL the big scores and I mean all of them (I'm still looking for Laurencia). I have everything else and use it. I play all over town. A couple of weeks ago, in a ten-day period, I had eight job offers. There are a lot of wanna-be's out there giving the business a bad name. I have been very very lucky. I have worked with all the big names and they all loved me. I have been offered jobs at Paris Opera and ABT - among others. Putting together repertoire - and keeping it up - is an unending exercise...more later...

You are so right. I've taken many ballet classes over the years. Teachers can be demanding without understanding music, some bow to their accompianist. I always thanked the "music maker" at the end of class.

It's not easy playing for ballet class and I am taking this opportunity to thank all pianist past and present who do.