Props if you made it through the inaugural post below; it was all just a lengthy rationalization for the fact that I feel a sudden burning need to blab about my life. And my life has actually been verging on interesting lately! There's the upcoming transition to studying Schmoozicology in the Big Exciting City, as I mentioned before, but in the meantime, I've undertaken a short-term job as a Schmoozician in a Medium-Sized Pretty Exciting City. It baffles me that I found legitimate employment as a pianist in these hard-knock times, in this cultural environment where the prevailing mentality is to torch anything resembling artistic frivolity, at this juncture in my life when I meant to graciously bow out of the "practicum" side of things and shack up in the Ivory Tower forever. And yet here I am, playing for a highly reputable institution that sounds a lot like "Schlockston Chalet."
This is how it happened: around late February of this year, it suddenly occurred to me that the PhD thing might not pan out, that the rather small net I had cast into the Gulf of Graduate School Admissions might not return any fish at all, let alone fat dripping fellowshippy fish. I had no other plans, and staying at my university was no longer an option (financially, practically, psychologically). One insomniac night as I lay curled in bed with my laptop, willing it to illuminate my life's purpose or at least its immediate future, I summoned up Google and typed "ballet pianist jobs."
Hi, I'm Alana and I'm a recovering bunhead. Really. Most of my extracurricular time between the ages of four and sixteen was spent in the ballet studio, with only a few pianistic interpolations here and there. When most kids my age were probably discovering the joys of smoking pot, I was learning how to tape my toes for pointe work and debating the merits of Freed versus Grishko shoes. I did math homework backstage during rehearsals for The Nutcracker, dressed as a harlequin or a snowflake or a Russian peasant stereotype. And let's not even talk about the balletic adaptations of The Pied Piper of Hamelin and The Red Pony in which I participated, shall we? Then there were the serious summer intensives-- boot-camp technique all morning, masterclasses with so-and-so from Big Company X, classical variations, character dance, choreography, workshop performances.
I had a love/ hate relationship with the whole thing, the blistered feet and throbbing muscles, the endorphin rush of flying across the room at the end of class, the cattiness of the other girls, the ritualistic Zen of barre every day, the body-image issues that inevitably came up. Eventually I backed off. I started to identify as a music kid (zany / brainy rather than girl jock) and changed my long-term aspirations. A career as a pianist, I thought, would have greater longevity than dance (very true) and would exact less of a psychological toll (HAHAHA). And so off I went to Schmoozic School, but the language of ballet had made its way into my permanent physical memory. I could never forget turnout, arm positions, the exact amount of force necessary to pull off a triple pirouette. Barefoot, sprawled on my dorm room floor with a music theory assignment, I'd subconsciously flex and stretch my arches. An empty hallway would beckon me to tour-jete down its length. It's not that I wanted to DO ballet again in any serious way-- I was busy, I was lazy, I didn't want to scrutinize my not-really-so-buff-and-petite-anymore physique in the studio mirror every day and start to flirt with bullshit thoughts like "if I restricted myself to 1,200 calories a day..." -- but deep down, I never fell out of love with the art form.
It made sense, then, to start playing for ballet department classes in college. The faculty there were always on the lookout for pianists, and my background in dance was appealing to them-- I already knew the vocabulary of ballet and the structure of technique class, so that would eliminate a lot of explanation on their part. Still, at first I struggled. This job required a different skill set from what I was being trained for in school. Instead of memorizing and obsessively polishing a small prescribed repertoire, I had to spontaneously produce music that would be appropriate for a given exercise. The instructor would demonstrate a combination, (hopefully) implying the rhythmic gesture of the step, and I would need to find a musical match in a matter of seconds. It didn't take me long to realize that improvisation was much more efficient in this setting than reading from sheet music.
In a few weeks, I hit my stride, and then the job got fun. I plundered the entire Western canon for dance-appropriate music, shamelessly paraphrasing anything from Bach violin partita movements to Beethoven symphonies to Joplin rags. It was hack-work at its finest, but also an excellent learning tool. I was refining my ear, harmonizing melodies and transitioning between various keys on the spot. I was learning about phrase lengths because ballet class was square square square, everything in symmetrical eight-count groupings, so I really had to lop off those two extra measures of that Mozart aria and fumble a klutzy cadence of my own making or the dancers and I would be hopelessly misaligned. I began to categorize dance types in my mind for speedy reference: gavottes worked for Tendu, sicilianos or sarabandes for Adagio, military marches for Battement, sea shanties for Petite Allegro, etc. etc. Then I started to notice that these rhythms and "topics" cropped up in my own solo repertoire. They were all over the place, embedded into big concert works that ostensibly weren't meant to be danced to but that still had roots in dancey ideas. I started to visualize the choreography that might accompany these little units-- the timing, the accentuation, the contour of the steps-- and tweaked my musical interpretations accordingly. I started to think that every musician should cultivate an intimate knowledge of dance, so intertwined were the two.
As for the in-studio playing itself, I became proficient after months of rote repetition. Guest teachers came, liked my playing, gave me their contact information, and offered me short-term jobs. I could never accept these positions due to prior commitments or logistical issues, but it was nice to know that I had found a weird little niche in the arts world, a niche that was NOT clogged with a surfeit of hugely overqualified pianists.
Anyway, that is the ultra-long FLASHBACK! version of how I came to be Googling "ballet pianist jobs" at 1 AM on a gloomy winter night.
A few things turned up. A professional company in Duesseldorf required "the services of a highly experienced ballet pianist for collaboration in contemporary works." Hmmm, interesting, but scary with the language block and the work visa and the probably-insane sight reading and the hardcore-looking artistic director. Then there was a "Miss Shelley's School of Dance" -type institution that needed a player for tap and musical theatre classes. Ummm, just back away slowly and let some Glee-hard have the job instead. And then there was a posting from the school of the famous Schlockston Chalet. They had a rare opening for a full-time pianist with public performance opportunities and health benefits. THAT COULD BE COOL. I drafted a quick resume, sent it into the internet abyss, and returned to my fretful existence.
I never expected anything to materialize, but before I knew it, I was on the phone with the music department head discussing my credentials. And then I was in Schlockston playing for the artistic director, a former principal of New York City Ballet who looked like a Pre-Raphaelite goddess. And then I was reading an email offering me a trial summer position, which was actually ideal because the grad school thing had magically sorted itself out by that point but I had no summer plans, and I had just been about to mail off a few music festival applications and be out a few hundred dollars but come to think of it, I was kind of OVER the festival thing and why not accept a real paying gig that could put my highly idiosyncratic musical skills to use? And then I was looking for sublets in Schlockston, and now I am actually IN Schlockston, two-and-a-half weeks into this fantastic, albeit slightly exhausting job. But that's a post unto itself.
Here's a teaser: "Ladies, this is BALLET! You need to express yourselves! Send me a text message with your FACE!"
