Musicality (continued)
From an accompanying pianist's point of view:
'One of the worst, if not the worst misconceptions about playing for dance is that the pianist should play like a metronome
...the end result is dancers that are so used to the way the piece of music will be played that they stop listening.'
(Graham Dickson-Place) Dame Ninette de Valois tells of the classes she took with Cecchetti in London, where the musical input was Cecchetti's whistling and the tap of his cane. 'He had a fixed tune for each particular step or exercise and this tune was whistled week in and week out.
To execute battements frappés every day for three years to the overture from William Tell tried my loyalities rather severely towards the end.' Joan Lawson (1984) also asserts that students 'do not listen properly if they dance continually to the same set pieces that are recommended with a syllabus.'
Adolphe Adam's score for Giselle provides leitmotifs which aid the ballerina’s interpretation of the changing character of Giselle as the story unfolds. In ballets like Les Sylphides (Chopin), Symphonic Variations (Franck) and Serenade (Tchaikovsky) there is no plot to guide the dancer. These pieces are often quoted as tests of a dancer's musicality, for in them the music alone constitutes the libretto, and the atmosphere must be conveyed by the dancer.
Margot Fonteyn’s comment, 'If I count, I can't hear the music, and if I get nervous, I forget the count! Then I'm really lost', underscores the message that it is necessary to 'feel' the music in order to react to it.
Corps de ballet work exposes any individual variations in the timing and execution of movements. The unity of response to the music by the Kirov Ballet's corps de ballet is traceable to their common schooling at the Vaganova Academy, where every student also had eight years of piano lessons.
Western ballet companies tend to recruit internationally and all too frequently the variances in corps musicality are apparent.
I have noticed that the musicality of students' teachers can often be surmised in the work that groups of candidates present when auditioning for vocational schools. When Barbara Newman interviewed Mark Morris he said – 'I insist that people begin on time and end when the music does, most people don’t listen to the music in class'.
He added, that exercises that do not begin on the beat but start with 'and', are more difficult to time correctly because they have not anticipated and prepared for action, and dancers 'come in' late.
'Processing information takes time. If the dancer can predict the time of occurrence of the next beat, then the cognitive operations involved in response selection and execution can be initiated before the sound occurs...
Without anticipation, the motor planning is late, causing the movement to be late' (P. Côté-Lawrence, 2000). In the same vein, Eric Franklin also maintains that by focusing on a movement a split second before initiating it, the movement will be clearer.
I end with a cri de coeur from Graham Dickson-Place, an RAD pianist who begs dance teachers on behalf of all accompanists:
1. Do not ignore your musician.
3. Do not talk over the music.
4. Do not expect your musician to play without suitable breaks.
5. Try to break up long/repeated exercises with corrections to give pianists time to recover.
6. Give clear marking, indicating light and shade, to enable the musician to select music to suit the teacher's purpose and students will appreciate better the nuances of the exercise.
Mr Dickson-Place concludes, 'I am not convinced that playing louder has ever helped a dancer dance 'in time'; but playing musically and inspiringly will certainly help the responsive student to become 'musical''. For teachers using CDs, mini discs and MP3 players the range of music to offer students grows with technical advances. Perhaps dance organisations and societies could give more guidance and run courses to inform dance teachers about what is available and affordable.
In the words of Carlo Blasis to students from the 17th Century 'their ear will give them mastery of movement and time and their cadenced steps will be in perfect rhythm with the tune.'
Mary Goodhew
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First published in
Dancing Times, February 2007, reproduced with the kind permission of all involved.
