music and dance

Ballet Music: Backstage With Conductor Scott Speck

December 16, 2015 by 4dancers

Today we’re thrilled to take a look behind the scenes, as conductor Scott Speck walks us through what it’s like to work with the score at the Joffrey Ballet. Learn more about how often the orchestra rehearses with the dancers, what Mr. Speck’s routine is like as a conductor the night of a performance, and more…

by Scott Speck

When you conduct for Joffrey, is there a routine when it comes to your approach to the score?

It’s a joy to make music for the Joffrey Ballet. This is a company that truly appreciates and even cherishes the value of live music. I attribute this largely to Artistic Director Ashley Wheater, who had extensive musical training as a child and (it turns out) seems to have perfect pitch, as he always sings the music to me in the right key! A true rarity in the ballet world.

Since I am a symphonic conductor by training, I always approach the score first as pure music. Over several months leading up to the production, I learn the form and structure of the music. I prepare to conduct as if for an onstage symphonic performance. Then I spend weeks in the studio, learning what the dancers need. It’s very helpful to have the score internalized or even memorized, since I often have my eyes fixed on the stage. The best way to achieve that is repetition! (I’ve conducted The Nutcracker some 300 times already, and it’s fair to say that conducting that score is like breathing!)

Fabrice Calmels and Robert Everson — The world’s tallest professional ballet dancer, Fabrice Calmels, with (possibly) the world’s tallest timpanist, Robert Everson of the Chicago Philharmonic. Photo courtesy of Scott Speck.

How often do you rehearse with the musicians, and where?

The Chicago Philharmonic, which always plays for the Joffrey, is a superb ensemble. The orchestra and I work together frequently throughout the year, both onstage and in the orchestra pit. As a result, the musicians and I have learned to communicate with each other very efficiently — we can almost read each other’s minds at times. So the time that we actually spend together rehearsing is quite short. For a new ballet, the musicians first learn their music on their own, and then we get together four times — twice in a rehearsal hall, and then twice in the orchestra pit, with the dancers onstage.

Nutcracker backstage — Trombonist B.J. Hardesty and Trumpeter Chris Hasselbring of the Chicago Philharmonic, pianist Paul James Lewis, and a flock of angels. Photo courtesy of Scott Speck.

How often do you rehearse with the dancers? [Read more…]

Music Within The Dance Class

July 29, 2013 by 4dancers

by Janet Neidhardt

students dancing — Photo by Catherine L. Tully

It’s amazing how influential music can be on the dancing body. Some sounds get the heart pumping and feet moving quickly while others lend the body to slow and meditative motions–and then there is everything in-between. As a dance educator, it is important to me that I educate my students about the relationship between music and dance.

Students can sometimes be resistant to music that is different than what they hear on the radio, so I have developed a system of creating openness to new music. I start the year off with music they might recognize for a warm up and then slowly start to bring in more ethnic music with strong beats. Then I introduce music that doesn’t have clear down beats and might be counted in 5’s or 7’s etc. This is a good challenge for students to count to and can also work well for phrases that might not have counts, where timing is more free form.

I like to play with music when teaching movement. I often have students perform movement phrases to various styles of music to compare and contrast how the music changes the feeling and emphasis within the movement. This kind of activity pushes students to think more deeply about movement and how it feels from the inside to dance as opposed to what they look like on the outside. For teenagers who tend to focus on what they look like a lot this can be an especially challenging and needed task.

When students are given a choreography assignment I often push them out of their comfort zone by only allowing music without words. They are able to explore the various interpretations of music and movement without the meanings that words can give within a song. Using music without words can provoke more creativity, wider range of movement possibilities, and open up ideas for relating movement to the music.

I spend a lot of time during the summer months searching for new and different music to use for the upcoming school year. (Songza is a great app to use with various playlists.) It is important to recognize how influential music is to the movement of our bodies and to our choreography. Since I have to choreograph about 4 pieces a year it is important that I find music that inspires my own creativity.

Whether it’s choosing music for teaching or choreography, thoughtful and intuitive choices are needed. Sometimes we need to wake up to Destiny’s Child and sometimes we need to improvise with Philip Glass–and sometimes it’s vise versa!

When I know the goal of a class I’m teaching, I find the music I need to play to help my students achieve that goal.

Do you have any tips for choosing/using music for students? Feel free to share!

dancer posing upside down — Janet Neidhardt

Contributor Janet Neidhardt has been a dance educator for 10 years. She has taught modern, ballet, and jazz at various studios and schools on Chicago’s North Shore. She received her MA in Dance with an emphasis in Choreography from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and her BA in Communications with a Dance Minor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Throughout her time in graduate school, Janet performed with Sidelong Dance Company based in Winston-Salem, NC.

Currently, Janet teaches dance at Loyola Academy High School in Wilmette, IL. She is the Director of Loyola Academy Dance Company B and the Brother Small Arts Guild, and choreographs for the Spring Dance Concert and school musical each year. Janet is very active within the Loyola Academy community leading student retreats and summer service trips. She regularly seeks out professional development opportunities to continue her own artistic growth. Recently, Janet performed with Keigwin and Company in the Chicago Dancing Festival 2012 and attended the Bates Dance Festival.

When she isn’t dancing, Janet enjoys teaching Pilates, practicing yoga, and running races around the city of Chicago.

Why Othello Is The Best Ballet Of The Last 30 Years

April 23, 2013 by 4dancers

Joffrey Ballet Othello 2009 — Fabrice Calmels and April Daly in Othello, Photo by Herbert Migdoll

by Scott Speck

This week the Joffrey Ballet embarks on its encore production of Othello: A Dance in Three Acts, with choreograhy by Lar Lubovitch and music by Elliot Goldenthal. This is my favorite ballet to conduct, and for good reason: It’s the greatest full-length ballet of the past 30 years.

The Joffrey’s visionary Artistic Director Ashley Wheater really stuck his neck out when, very early in his tenure, he brought Othello to the Joffrey. As far as anyone in Chicago knew, this was a huge financial risk. This ballet was originally so expensive that it took two companies — American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet — to co-produce it in 1998. Yet Ashley had no doubts. He knew what an incredible success this would be.

As a conductor at the San Francisco Ballet during the premiere, I had the unforgettable experience of conducting for the original SFB production, together with Emil de Cou (who is now Music Director for Pacific Northwest Ballet). Ashley was Associate Artistic Director at SFB at that time, and we saw how this ballet absolutely electrified audiences, both in San Francisco and on tour at the Opéra Garnier in Paris. Having practically memorized the score at that time, I mourned the end of the San Francisco production, and hoped for a chance to conduct it again someday.

It was Othello that brought me to Chicago. When Ashley boldly programmed the work for the Joffrey Ballet’s 2009-10 season, he invited me to conduct it, and thus began my association with the Joffrey. As Ashley predicted, the production was enormously successful in Chicago — so much so that it is now coming back, three seasons later.

I have conducted hundreds of ballets, and seen hundreds more. Yet if I had to choose one full-length ballet from the past generation, Othello would be the one. Here’s why.

All of the elements are original from the ground up. When Tchaikovsky wrote his score for Sleeping Beauty, he had particular choreography in mind. The music was inextricable from one choreographer’s vision, one costume design, one set design, and one lighting design. And the same goes for Elliot Goldenthal’s music for Othello. It’s a completely new score written for a completely new ballet. How many full-length ballets in the last generation can claim that distinction? I can count them on one hand. And none of them are as ingenious as Othello.

It sustains a mood for two hours. Since I’m a musician, I’ll start with the music. Elliot Goldenthal is the master of mood-setting. From his Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio to his scores to Frida, Interview with a Vampire and Batman Forever, he has continuously discovered compelling techniques to keep us on the edge of our seats with anticipation. In Othello, the moods range from deep love and ecstatic frenzy to dread, rage and horror. He pulls us along through the drama, from beginning to end. And the great Lar Lubovitch accomplishes similar wonders, because…

The choreography is unmistakable. If you have ever seen a Lar Lubovitch dance, you know that his style is unique. The shapes that he creates with human bodies are impossible to mistake for the work of anyone else. More importantly, Lar has found a way to tell the story of Othello entirely through gesture. Yes, the dancers portray their roles with intensity and passion, but those are secondary to the moves they make. Lar has discovered a unique shape or momentary pose to communicate each hyper-specific emotion and plot point of the story. It’s not just love or anger — those would be simple enough to portray. It’s the much more complicated sentiments like “I derive erotic pleasure from the thought of ascending to the throne,” or “I submit to your brutality out of a sense of duty,” or “I am devastated by the fact that I now have to murder you.” One gesture is all it takes. And not a hint of ballet mime.

Interestingly, Lar doesn’t really consider himself a ballet choreographer. Though Othello clearly incorporates advanced ballet techniques and could never be performed by anything other than a world-class ballet company, Lar modestly calls it “A Dance in Three Acts.”

(For much more insight into the ingenuity of Lar’s vision, in his own words, please read this terrific recent interview.)

It’s a uniquely integrated work of art. Not only are the costumes, sets, projections and lighting totally in service to the story — as you would expect in any great ballet — but here, the dance is completely in service to the music, and the music in service to the dance.

There’s a reason for this: They were composed at the same time. Once Lar identified Elliot Goldenthal as the perfect composer for this project, he gave Elliot an elaborate “storyboard” to work from. From that point on, the two of them worked simultaneously. Each night Elliot composed a section of the music; and the next morning, he brought it into the studio for Lar to choreograph. If Lar needed more time for a particular dance, he asked Elliot to expand it by a few measures. If he wanted to omit a scene, cuts were made in the music. This is exactly how Peter Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa collaborated on Sleeping Beauty.

I want to point out one chillingly beautiful example of how well-integrated the elements of this ballet are. At the beginning of Act II, we see a ship come in: it’s Othello, Iago and his men returning from battle. When the ship docks, sailors quickly stretch three thick and heavy ropes all the way across the stage, securing them on the other side. At the same time, another group of three ropes appears onscreen, higher than the original group. Now picture this: While the two groups of ropes are clearly separated, the ropes within each group are tangled and twisted.

Now, if you were to express the concept of three ropes in music, you might use three long notes. And since the ropes are tangled, the notes don’t form a straight line up or down, but instead they create a twisted pattern. You might choose one long note — say F, followed by the closest possible higher note, G-flat, followed by the note that’s lower than the first, yet as close as possible, E. There you have it: three twisted ropes.

Now to describe the second, higher set of ropes in music, you might do the same thing, but higher up. Those three notes would be C, D-flat, and B.

Elliot Goldenthal’s music to Act II of Othello is completely based on these two groups of three twisted notes each: F, G-flat, E, followed by C, D-flat, B. Not only do they appear as long tones, describing the ropes themselves — but these notes are also the basis of an enormous, breathless, thousand-measure-long tarantella which makes up the entire second act.

Why would Elliot Goldenthal choose the ropes, of all things, to depict in music? As Act II progresses, this becomes clear: the ropes are a visual depiction of the story. As Othello becomes increasingly deceived by Iago, more and more tangled ropes gradually appear in the background, until they form a literal web of lies. And simultaneously, the music becomes increasingly complex, dissonant, and twisted.

It’s compelling to all audiences. When Othello first played in Chicago three and a half years ago, word spread fast. This was not your typical girls-in-tutus type of ballet. It was searing, electrifying, and sometimes brutal. People who never saw a ballet in their lives flocked to watch Othello, and I’m sure that will happen again.

Othello appeals to our modern sensibilities more than any other ballet I know. It’s an ancient story that pre-dates Shakespeare, but it’s told in a way that we can immediately identify with. Without sacrificing quality, line or technique, it takes ballet off the pedestal and brings it to the people.

If you are anywhere near Chicago, don’t miss this production. And if you get a chance, please steal a glance at the orchestra pit, where the Chicago Philharmonic and I will be having the time of our lives with a modern masterpiece. Did I mention that this is the greatest ballet of the last 30 years?

—
Scott Speck is Music Director of the Joffrey Ballet, Mobile (AL) Symphony, West Michigan Symphony and Washington Ballet, and the newly designated Artistic Director of the Chicago Philharmonic. His books Classical Music for Dummies, Opera for Dummies and Ballet for Dummies have been translated into dozens of languages and reached a worldwide audience.

The Joffrey: Live Music For American Legends

February 6, 2013 by 4dancers

Scott Speck conducting — Scott Speck, Photo Courtesy of The Joffrey Ballet

The Joffrey Ballet’s American Legends series is coming up at The Auditorium Theatre in Chicago, and this mixed repertory program will feature live music with the Chicago Philharmonic. We wanted to learn more about the process of what goes on behind the scenes to bring this partnership between dance and music to life, so we reached out to Scott Speck, Music Director for the Joffrey. He shares some insights here about how the program has taken shape, as well as what life is like for him during the process…

How far in advance will you arrive prior to conducting for the Joffrey’s American Legends performance series at the Auditorium Theatre—and where will you stay while you are in town?

Well, although I regularly conduct symphony orchestras around the country (including the Mobile Symphony and West Michigan Symphony, where I’m Music Director), I should tell you that I am a part-time Chicagoan. Chicago is one of my home bases, and I have a beautiful apartment overlooking Millennium Park. It’s a four block walk in one direction to the Joffrey Studios, and a four block walk in the other direction to the Auditorium Theatre, where the Joffrey Ballet performs. Couldn’t be more convenient!

The Joffrey Ballet usually begins rehearsal for all the season’s programs during the previous summer, so I spend several weeks during the summer in the studios, learning to understand the dancers’ needs and the choreographers’ vision. For the upcoming American Legends, some of the ballets were also rehearsed throughout the fall. One of the ballets, Stanton Welch’s Son of Chamber Symphony (set to the music of John Adams), was performed several times during the company’s most recent national tour — and most recently, I conducted it for them with the LA Opera Orchestra at the Los Angeles Music Center. So I am very familiar with all of these works by the time I show up to conduct for them in Chicago.

What type of advance preparation do you do before your arrival?

First and foremost, I learn the music as music, rather than as accompaniment. Since the vast majority of my experience is as a symphonic conductor, I have developed ways of analyzing and internalizing a score that work for me. Of course, some pieces are much more complicated than others. In some cases, preparation means starting to learn a score a year in advance. And in other cases — for example, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring — I’ve been studying the music on and off for 20 years!

Once I know the musical score inside and out, it’s time to learn what the choreographer has been inspired to do with it. It’s fun to see how a certain melody or sonority gets translated into movements of the bodies onstage.

Tempo is a very important consideration. The choreographer usually has a particular tempo range in mind when he or she sets a work. Sometimes, as in John Adams Son of Chamber Symphony, the music has a steady motor rhythm with very little leeway for tempo changes — so that no matter what the dancers are doing, the music has to go a certain way. But in other pieces, such as Gerald Arpino’s Sea Shadow (set to Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G), there is room for plenty of ebb and flow, give and take, going faster and slower. Especially in pieces like this, I try to understand exactly what the dancers need to do on each beat, and where they need time to breathe. My goal is to be true to the intent of the music while simultaneously supporting the dancers and allowing them to do their best.

joffrey ballet — Son of Chamber Symphony, Victoria Jaiani & Miguel Angle Blanco, Photo by Christopher Duggan

Once you are in town, what is does your schedule look like in terms of rehearsing/meeting with Joffrey, etc.?

At the Joffrey studio, almost all rehearsals take place between 11:30 am and 5:30 pm. So when I’m in town, I plan to be in the studio for most of that time. That gives me the morning for exercise, Bikram yoga (my biggest hobby), writing emails, and taking care of other orchestra business, and the evening for studying scores and then unwinding, alone or with friends. We performers tend to be late-to-bed, late-to-rise types. Breakfast? What breakfast? But I’ve had some great dinners at 1 am.

Performance days are different — especially Saturdays, when we usually do two shows. Then the performance dominates the day, and I plan everything around it. I’ll usually get plenty of sleep, maybe exercise in the morning, do mindless stuff for a few hours, eat a big high-energy meal a few hours before the show, take a short power nap, and then spend a couple of hours getting into the right head space for performance. I once asked a Broadway performer, who had been in Les Miserables on Broadway for several years, what time each day he started thinking about the show and getting into character. His answer was, “When the curtain goes up.” I couldn’t be more different — not at this point, anyway! I’m living the music for a couple of hours before I get on the podium to conduct. But after the show, the rest of the night is mine. That’s one reason I like to stay up late!

What is it like to work with Ashley Wheater and the dancers?

Ashley Wheater is a truly great Artistic Director, with a very clear creative vision for the company. He knows what he’s aiming for, and he knows how to make it happen. He has already brought the company to a new level, recognized throughout the world. My primary role at the Joffrey is to support this vision and give it a brilliant soundtrack.

Ashley is extremely musical, more so than just about any other Artistic Director I have ever met in the field of ballet. I am gratified to be working with a leader who values the great musical tradition so highly. And having concentrated my conducting career on the great symphonic masterworks, I truly have a foot in each world — I feel that I can offer our company an enhanced perspective on the music that accompanies ballet. Ideally, the music is a full partner to the dance. In so many companies the music falls by the wayside. Here, I am doing everything I can to ensure that we eventually have live music for every performance. What a pleasure it is to know that this is Ashley’s vision as well. Despite the extraordinary expense, Ashley has gone to the mat for live music, because it’s the right thing to do. (More on working with the dancers below!)

How do you prepare the Chicago Philharmonic to work with Joffrey?

We concentrate on the music first, just as I do when I’m studying the scores. The Chicago Philharmonic is a finely-tuned instrument, truly a stunningly good orchestra. The musicians are already very well-versed in listening to each other and reacting in real time. So first we prepare the music as if we were going to perform it in an orchestral concert. This is extraordinarily gratifying to us, even when we perform underground in the orchestra pit.

What makes this work unique is that we know that while we’re playing, there are 42 virtuoso athletes dancing above our heads. It’s a fine balance, and it works best when the musicians and I truly appreciate the intricacies of the dance, and the dancers appreciate the intricacies of the music. In orchestra rehearsals I often tell the musicians exactly what is happening onstage so that they can imagine the movement as they are accompanying it. And in the studio, I often help individual dancers to understand how they are embodying a musical phrase. In performance, of course, my job is to act as a conduit between the two. I’m the only person in the theater who can see all the musicians and all the dancers at once. When a dancer makes a leap, my baton follows the same arc as the dancer’s body, landing at the same instant so that the music can connect exactly.

But there’s something more. In an ideal performance, there is a marvelous creative spirit that infuses the dancers, the musicians and me simultaneously. We are not so much reacting to each other as sharing equally in this communal spirit. This is something I feel in the best symphonic performances as well. We’re not making music — the music is making us.

Do you have any places you especially enjoy going in Chicago when you are in town?

Since I live right by Millennium Park, I love hanging out there. I don’t know of a better park in the world. During the summer there are free concerts nearly every night, and fireworks all year long. I also love getting to know the incredibly diverse neighborhoods in Chicago, and especially their restaurants. I’m currently in love with the Vietnamese food near the Argyle stop on the Red Line.

Not all your work with Joffrey is in Chicago. What is it like to work with them on tour?

Intense! We just came back from a fantastic set of performances at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles. The highlight of the program was Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, with a brilliant reconstruction of Nijinsky’s original choreography by Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer. We had three highly-charged, sold-out performances, and I’ve almost never seen such a rapturous response to ballet. The Joffrey Ballet is one of the world’s great companies, and it’s on tour that they find out how much they are appreciated around the world. What a pleasure to be a part of that.

American Legends runs from February 13th through February 24th at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre

With recent performances in London, Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, Contributor Scott Speck has inspired international acclaim as a conductor of passion, intelligence and winning personality.

Scott Speck’s recent concerts with the Moscow RTV Symphony Orchestra in Tchaikovsky Hall garnered unanimous praise. His gala performances with Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, Midori, Evelyn Glennie and Olga Kern have highlighted his recent and current seasons as Music Director of the Mobile Symphony. This season he also collaborates intensively with Carnegie Hall for the seventh time as Music Director of the West Michigan Symphony. He was recently named Music Director of the Joffrey Ballet; and he was invited to the White House as Music Director of the Washington Ballet.

In recent seasons Scott Speck has conducted at London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, the Paris Opera, Washington’s Kennedy Center, San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, and the Los Angeles Music Center. He has led numerous performances with the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Houston, Chicago (Sinfonietta), Paris, Moscow, Shanghai, Beijing, Vancouver, Romania, Slovakia, Buffalo, Columbus (OH), Honolulu, Louisville, New Orleans, Oregon, Rochester, Florida, and Virginia, among many others.

Previously he held positions as Conductor of the San Francisco Ballet; Music Advisor and Conductor of the Honolulu Symphony; and Associate Conductor of the Los Angeles Opera. During a recent tour of Asia he was named Principal Guest Conductor of the China Film Philharmonic in Beijing.

In addition, Scott Speck is the co-author of two of the world’s best-selling books on classical music for a popular audience, Classical Music for Dummies and Opera for Dummies. These books have received stellar reviews in both the national and international press and have garnered enthusiastic endorsements from major American orchestras. They have been translated into twenty languages and are available around the world. His third book in the series, Ballet for Dummies, was released to great acclaim as well.

Scott Speck has been a regular commentator on National Public Radio, the BBC, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Voice of Russia, broadcast throughout the world. His writing has been featured in numerous magazines and journals.

Born in Boston, Scott Speck graduated summa cum laude from Yale University. There he founded and directed the Berkeley Chamber Orchestra, which continues to perform to this day. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Berlin, where he founded Concerto Grosso Berlin, an orchestra dedicated to the performances of Baroque and Classical music in a historically informed style. He received his Master’s Degree with highest honors from the University of Southern California, served as a Conducting Fellow at the Aspen School of Music, and studied at the Tanglewood Music Center. He is fluent in English, German and French, has a diploma in Italian, speaks Spanish and has a reading knowledge of Russian.

Scott Speck can be reached at www.scottspeck.org

Collaboration: Making Music For Dance

November 6, 2012 by 4dancers

4Dancers.org readers can download free music by Cory Gabel. Click here.

By now readers know that I am very much a fan of talking about music for dance. To that end, today we have Cory Gabel with us to talk about how an original piece is created for dance from his point of view…the music side!

1. Can you tell readers how you got involved with making music for dance?

Around 2002, I was transitioning out of my alternative rock band Limestone Rome. I moved into instrumental music and writing scores for film. Around that time I caught a great Pilobolus performance where they integrated all kind of modern rock, alternative, techno, electronica – all the styles I like to work in. Seeing the power of that music with dance a light bulb kind of went off – why don’t I write original music for THAT?!

2. What is your music like?

It’s such a cliche to say that’s it’s hard to categorize, but it truly must be – iTunes seems to put every release I come out in a different category! As far as musical styles, I combine elements of modern orchestral, industrial rock, electronic dance music, usually aiming for a fairly large, theatrical or epic sound. I always like to contrast those thick sonic textures with very minimal, simple sounding melodies of solo strings, piano or vocals. When my music gets reviewed or commented on, I often hear comparisons to Trent Reznor, Philip Glass, Moby, Danny Elfman and others.

3. What is the process of making music for dance like?

It really varies depending on the project and the nature of the collaboration. For more theatrical pieces, I may actually get involved with the development of the story, working with the artistic director to sketch out the acts and pieces and determining what styles and tempos of music will work for each. For pieces that are more thematic, the choreographer usually has an idea of what they’re looking for, and may even already have some music they’re working with. We talk about what is and is not working with what they have, really aiming to uncover the emotional core of what they’re trying to convey.

I almost always work remotely – so it’s lots of correspondence via phone and email – I send music as it develops, they send me back videos from rehearsals. It actually works very well!

4. What special considerations are there when working on projects such as these?

It’s recognizing that for the music to work at its best, it needs to be completely married to the dance that will be happening with it. Film music is meant to be felt emotionally, but not necessarily heard. Pop and rock music are their own sole attraction. But music for dance works when you really can’t imagine one without the other. I think that’s why many of the people I’ve worked with want to continue our collaborations – it’s hard to go back to picking out CDs and other music that weren’t written to perfectly compliment their choreography once they’ve seen how cool that can be!

5. What are the greatest challenges?

It seems increasingly hard for ballet and dance companies to commit to completely original works, I’m sure much of which is financial. Additionally, the idea of creating all new music, choreography, costumes, lighting, can seem a bit ambitious for many companies (and their boards!). So – navigating through all the conversations to get to the point where everyone says “let’s do it!” – that’s actually the challenge. In my experience, however, I’ve yet to have a project where everyone involved didn’t feel it was both creatively and financially successful at the end.

6. What about the rewards?

I absolutely love tech and dress rehearsals. It’s at that point that I finally get to see how the music that I’ve written and produced has also been the foundation for dozens of other creative people – dancers, choreographers, musicians, designers- to work their craft. Plus, I’m a junkie for the buzz before any kind of live performance – the nerves, the glitches, the last minute changes – that’s very much part of the thrill!

7. What’s next for you?

I’m collaborating again with Gregory Hancock Dance Theatre in Indianapolis, we’re going to re-stage and expand The Casket Girls (originally premiered in 2009) for Halloween 2013. I just completed Water Wars with Sonia Plumb Dance, and we’re also talking about a new production for 2013. I’m always having conversations with potential collaborators, which I can’t announce just yet, but I encourage dance companies of any size to reach out – I’d love to hear about your ideas for new works!

4Dancers.org readers can download free music by Cory Gabel. Click here.

The following clip is an excerpt-mix of nearly 20 original pieces written for dance by Cory Gabel.

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Do you have any tips for choosing/using music for students? Feel free to share!

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