music for ballet

CD Review: The Snow Queen Ballet Suite

April 21, 2014 by 4dancers

For dancers and dance audiences across the US and Europe, Nutcracker is an inextricable part of the Christmas season. In 2012, the Finnish National Ballet premiered Kenneth Greve’s new full-length The Snow Queen, which replaced Nutcracker as the company’s Christmas ballet for the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons. Tuomas Kantelinen’s cinematic, magical score wraps up all the same tenderness, warmth, drama, and characterization that are so appealing in Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker. This disc contains a seventy-minute selection of music from the two-act ballet

Based on Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the same name, the ballet takes us from young Kerttu and Kai’s bedroom in Helsinki through the bustling market square. There are wild, glittering, blustery dances for the Snow Flakes, threateningly punctuated with percussion. Once Kai is carried off in the snowstorm, Kerttu’s search takes her through Sweden, Spain, Persia, and the Orient in an energetic series of pastiche “national” dances.

Kantelinen’s score is festive, illustrative, and emotional. The use of a particularly tender leitmotif that seems to represent the love between friends Kai and Kerttu winds its way through the music, showing up every now and then as if to comfort the listener that good will always triumph over evil. The whole CD is a real pleasure to listen to.

An interesting production note about the ballet is that though this score was designed specifically for Greve’s choreography, the ballet itself was not performed with live orchestral accompaniment. Instead, the stage was extended out over the pit and the cast danced to a recording.

CD Review – Divas for Ballet: Inspirational Ballet Class Music

August 29, 2013 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

If there’s one word that describes David Plumpton’s Divas for Ballet, it’s “epic.” Few ballet accompanists could pull off playing Mariah Carey, Katy Perry, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Cher on one album without the whole thing sounding campy or silly. In Plumpton’s supremely capable hands, the effect is glorious. Who wouldn’t want to waltz to Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” or begin plies with Adele? Plumpton’s skill is in capturing the energy both of the song itself and the exercise it’s designated for. The result is satisfyingly broad in texture, encouraging a full range of expression and energy in the dancer.

There are seventeen tracks of solo piano music for barre and fifteen for center, with no repeats. All tracks are either eight or sixteen measures of eight. If I could change one thing about this album, it would be to include a track in 6/8 time for jetes at barre and for allegro in center. Here it’s all 2/4 and 2/4 time. What Divas for Ballet lacks in timing variation for the faster tracks, it makes up for with plenty of music suitable for adagio, fondus, and port de bras, both at barre and in center. The across the floor tracks are long enough for several groups of dancers to move without running out of music. This is a big plus for larger classes or to enable the teacher to look at smaller groups of dancers.

Because this disc contains only pop music, it’s not one that I would prefer use with great regularity. However, Plumpton’s skill and the fun melodies contained on Divas for Ballet make it a special treat for those days when the class routine needs a shake-up.

CD Review: “I’ll Be Seeing You” — David Howard And Steven Mitchell

November 12, 2012 by 4dancers

by Emily Kate Long

l’ll Be Seeing You – David Howard And Steven Mitchell

I was so excited to try this CD out! I regularly use three other of Steven Mitchell’s CDs (“Solo” and both of the David Howard Covent Garden classes) and love them. I was not disappointed this time. David Howard and Steven Mitchell have come together for a third collection of great music.

The CD includes length, time signature, and counts for each track. There are thirty tracks total, sixteen for barre and fourteen for center. The variety in speed and time signatures for all the degage and allegro tracks makes this a great CD to use for both lower and upper-level classes. The songs themselves range from pop tunes and standards to classical music, some of which is playfully jazzed up as only Mitchell can. The tempi are consistent, the beats are strong, and the preparations are easy to hear—especially great for my junior high-aged class. With all that, none of this music sounds plodding or academic.

This CD is one I’ll turn to again and again.

dancer doing arabesque — Emily Kate Long, Photo by Avory Pierce

Assistant Editor Emily Kate Long began her dance education in South Bend, Indiana, with Kimmary Williams and Jacob Rice, and graduated in 2007 from Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School’s Schenley Program. She has spent summers studying at Ballet Chicago, Pittsburgh Youth Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre School, Miami City Ballet, and Saratoga Summer Dance Intensive/Vail Valley Dance Intensive, where she served as Program Assistant. Ms Long attended Milwaukee Ballet School’s Summer Intensive on scholarship before being invited to join Milwaukee Ballet II in 2007.

Ms Long has been a member of Ballet Quad Cities since 2009. She has danced featured roles in Deanna Carter’s Ash to Glass and Dracula, participated in the company’s 2010 tour to New York City, and most recently performed principal roles in Courtney Lyon’s Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, and Cinderella. She is also on the faculty of Ballet Quad Cities School of Dance, where she teaches ballet, pointe, and repertoire classes.

Music Notes: Opus 1

June 22, 2012 by 4dancers

by Allan Greene

The first thing is, something always has to be moved. The piano, the seat, where to put the tea to keep from knocking it over, do I need to see this teacher’s feet or can I rely on her cadence… A quick look around the studio to see if there are any interesting visitors, if any regulars are missing. Once I know who my audience is, I can think about how to break the aural dryness. Often the choice is like a steakhouse menu, steak or non-steak, or, in this case, Chopin or non-Chopin. This presupposes, of course, that the teacher doesn’t decide to lead off with foot warm-ups or something. I almost always react to avant-pliés non-Classically. If a teacher wants to start a class Pawn-to-Queen’s-Knight-4, I feel it’s my duty to let the students know they’re no longer in Kansas. But it’s just going to be pliés, and pliés music must be a satin blanket that can never crease. Can the students handle drama, or will it have to be Bel Canto? Let’s try drama. Can they handle humor, or surprise? If they’re disciplined enough, I can really have fun with them. Let’s save that for the second side, after I’ve relaxed them. Okay, it’ll be a Chopin nocturne, no, a Liszt Consolation, no the Goldberg Variations aria, no, we’re about to begin, CHOOSE! “Préparation…” Hands on keys, oh, I’m playing D-flat arpeggios, Opus 9 No.1, D-flat Consolation, Berceuse, need a melody: an E-flat! It’s a V9 chord in G-flat major, and yes! the Schubert G-flat Impromptu, and we’re off! Second side, can we integrate the Well-Tempered Clavier into this? It should work.

I can’t speak for any other dance accompanist, so don’t draw any conclusions. But the above is precisely the way I think from the moment I walk into the dance studio through to the end of the class. It’s a 90-minute interior monologue interrupted by commands to start and stop, repeat, change the tempo, change the music, play more, play less. I have to make the whole thing sound improvised, yet intentional. It’s my job to reinforce whatever the teacher is teaching that day, never step on his message. Ninety-nine percent of the time I don’t want to draw attention to myself, even if the effect I choose is a Lisztian ocean of sound. Sometimes my choice doesn’t come off, sometimes I switch in mid-combination, or even in mid-phrase. But almost always, the result, after ninety minutes, is an artistic workout, the satisfaction of structural completeness, and the heightened sensitivity that serves as the emotional foundation for dance artistry. Or so I like to think.

Consider this column as my préparation for my future commentary on the relationship between dance and music. Some of my pieces will unlock the magic of great ballet choreography, looking at the symbiosis between the steps and the music. (Shall we tackle Swan Lake?) Some will cover my experiences working with the famous and the not-so-famous. (Interested in what it was like working with Agnes de Mille after her stroke?) We will undoubtedly get into the gnarly but indispensable subject of synesthesia, the study of how some peoples’ brains vividly cross-process sensory information. (I have arrived at the conviction that the truly great artists were all wired this way to varying degrees.) We might mix in a music lesson here and there. (Ever wonder what the significance is of the difference between 4/4 and 2/4?)

I can’t wait to share with you a few of those thoughts that rattle around in my mind, like dancers awaiting the curtain’s opening, for that Pavlovian word, “And…”

BIO: Allan Greene has been a dancers’ musician for nearly forty years. He is a composer, pianist, teacher, conductor, music director, father to Oliver, 9, and Ravi, 6, and husband to Juliana Boehm. He has also been an architect, an editor, a writer and a boiler mechanic. He lives and works in New York City. His ballet class music can be found on www.BalletClassTunes.com.

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