Dance and Comp
For a while now, I’ve been playing piano for some of the dance classes during their rehearsal time. Really what I do is sit at the piano and make up some music for the particular routine they’re doing. There’s three different classes I play in (modern, tap and jazz), and each class requires a different style of music. For the modern, I improvise more of a movie soundtrack type of music, a lot of romantic stuff, and sometimes some Latin music, like tango and bolero. For the advanced tap class, I play a lot of jazz, and sometimes I include themes a lot of people know. It’s really very fun. As for the advanced jazz class, I like to play some 40’s and 50’s jazz, which is the type of jazz I’m really into.
Playing in these classes really helps me develop my skills at improvising and composing. When I first started, my knowledge on dance things wasn’t really advanced so sometimes my music wasn’t that great with that particular routine. However, I have grown exceeding efficient at it, and every time, I play for a very supportive dance class. The best part of it is that I get paid to do something I really enjoy, like all the other jobs I’ve had playing piano here and there.
A picture of Cheryl in the modern class.
This semester I also started taking composition lessons with one of the professors in the school of music. Playing for the dance classes really helps me with my compositions, and vice versa. Anyway, this past Thursday, during recital hour, I performed the world premiere of my latest composition. I’ve never actually performed my compositions for a musically intelligent audience and it was quite an experience. It’s a different feeling performing your own stuff, just putting yourself out there like that. Fortunately, I got a really good response and everyone seemed to really like it. All in all, it was a really good experience and hopefully every composition after this will be even better than that one.
That’s all for now…
~Ruben
