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Guest Review: Dancing Keys 2

July 4, 2012 by Ashley David

by Laura Donnelly

I recently received a copy of Gill Civil’s Dancing Keys 2 CD and highly recommend it to dance teachers looking for good recorded music for dance class. While the music is written primarily for the ballet class, I feel a number of the selections would also work well for modern dance classes.

The CD contains 37 tracks of original music composed for ballet class. The melodies are beautiful. I found them inspiring and could easily think up several good combinations for each track. The music is clear so that subdivisions in the beat are easy to hear. This gives me more flexibility in how to use the music for different combinations and class levels.

There is good variation from track to track. The pieces sound different from each other in both melody and texture. Civil uses a variety of different tempi which I find very helpful when planning classes.

In the album notes Civil lists a suggested dance exercise, the title of the piece, number of bars, tempo, and length of the track. For me, when working with CDs tempo, number of bars, and length of piece are crucial. I like to select longer tracks for continuous across the floor combinations or adagios and I like to choreograph my exercises so that they fit the musical phrasing of the selected track. This information provided allows me to do this easily.

I am delighted with Civil’s Dancing Keys 2 and will use it often in my classes. She has a good feel for the type and variety of music that makes an interesting and inspiring dance class. I’ll purchase her original Dancing Keys CD and eagerly await the release of Dancing Keys 3. For more information about Gill Civil and to purchase her CDs visit http://www.pianomusicforballet.com

Laura Donnelly, MFA, BA is a choreographer, teacher, and dancer who also writes and creates community based public art projects involving visual and word art. Beginning August 2012, Laura will be Assistant Professor of Dance at Kansas State University. Her research interests include pedagogy, oral tradition in dance, collaborative process, music for dance, and the Alexander Technique. Her research has been presented at the Congress on Research in Dance, the International Association of Dance Science and Medicine, the National Dance Education Association, the Hawaii International Conference on Arts & Humanities, the 5th Annual International Conference on Civic Education, and the 2011 University of New Mexico Mentoring Conference. Laura’s essay Meditation in the Dance Studio is published in Teaching with Joy: Educational Practices for the Twenty-First Century, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Filed Under: 4teachers, Music Reviews Tagged With: ballet class music, dancing keys 2, gill civil, music for ballet class

Review: Dancing Keys 2 by Gill Civil

December 2, 2011 by 4dancers

I recently reviewed Gill Civil’s “Dancing Keys” CD for this site, and I was fortunate enough to be able to listen to the next album she compiled–“Dancing Keys 2”.

Civil’s work is truly unique in that the tracks don’t sound familiar–they sound fresh. Some ballet class music can have a “typical” feel to it that just doesn’t add anything to the barre or centre exercises. This is not in that category.

The music here taps into emotion and feeling–something I think the good ballet music composers understand as necessary for it to be something dancers will want to move to. Teachers too find this type of music inspiring, and it can add a measure of creativity to the class environment overall to have such beautiful music.

The CD has a simple barre (10 tracks) and centre music (port de bras, adage, pirouettes, allegro, etc.) and a number of bonus tracks as well. You can listen to samples on her website.

As always, I appreciate the amount of effort that goes into creating original music for ballet class. Civil does it well, and this CD is a great one to own if you teach ballet.

If you’d like to own it, or listen to her other CD, visit her website.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ballet class music, barre, centre, dancing keys 2, gill civil, music for ballet class

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