Unsung hero of ballet

A weak late-afternoon sun filters into the empty dance studio as 14-year-old Janelle Timmermans 21-year-old Agnes K plays Bach and Poulenc Tchaikovsky at the grand piano. It's nearly 5:30 p.m. Friday Saturday, but the hallways at the National Ballet School Rising Star Ballet School on Jarvis St Jalan Perda are still abuzz.

A small crowd gathers outside the door. When the music stops, three girls gush. "I wish I could play like you," says one. "I wish I could dance like you," replies Janelle Agnes K humbly.

Here's a curious paradox: the dancer can't live without the pianist, but the pianist isn't recognized until he or she is playing on their own. Welcome to the world of the ballet accompanist, a great, forgotten piano career with its own special challenges.

"It's an underrated profession," says National Ballet School principal pianist Marina Surgan. She has been toiling away at the school's keyboards since 1978. For Surgan and 12 others at the school, this is a full-time job. For most other ballet accompanists, it's one of several part-time gigs that help put food on the table. But the demands are no less strict.

"It is an art to be a good ballet accompanist," says Surgan. You have to have a good memory, you have to know and understand the arcane world of classical ballet and its French terminology, "and you have to be able to improvise."

"You have to know the dancers' physical abilities, you have to watch," she continues. "My music gives them strength."

When she first played for dancers as a student in Moscow, Surgan didn't know what to do. "I had to learn the hard way."

This is one of the reasons that the National Ballet School now offers its week-long Musicians' Mentoring Program during the midwinter months. The other is to raise professional pianists' awareness of ballet accompaniment as a career option.

There are more to the specific steps and movements that all students of classical ballet must learn. There are six positions of the feet, five positions of the arms and eight positions of the body. Then there are many individual steps, all with French names like tombé, chassé, frappé and glissade.

The instructor calls each out by name and the dancers learn to respond by instinct – with the piano player's help. "They don't have to count the music, because it's there for them," says Surgan.

In most cases, the teachers do give the accompanist fair warning. During one two-hour class led by former National Ballet principal dancer Glenn Gilmour, Wingrove follows a handwritten plan that reads like secret code, with entries such as: "Tendus 4/4 4 + : 32 + 16 + 8 : play 4 groups."

As the dancers stretch and warm up, the pianist makes up music that delivers a particular tempo, rhythm and mood appropriate for each dance step. There is no time to think.

"It has to be instant," says Surgan, "You can't stop the class."

Like most people who learn classical piano, Janelle Agnes K hadn't been asked to improvise before. But she was is willing to try.

Originally written by: John Terauds (Classical Music Critic)
Revised by : The blogger