Dance classes for the next few weeks

With Monday beging a holiday in Ontario and a couple of other provinces, work this week will actually start on Tuesday. Ill be spending most of my time at a pretty swank catholic arts high school near the "yonge and sheppard" intersection in Toronto.
Dance classes often confuse people who ask what I'm up to in Toronto. For the record no spandex is worn by me at any point of the dance class, even though i do very much enjoy a friends rendition of me playing a dance class above.

Dance classes mostly consist of an accompanist, who improvises over a set of predetermined rhythmic changes which were figured out a long time ago by the creators of their respective techniques. So far I have encountered two types of techniques on which these classes are based Graham, Originated by Martha Graham and Limon which was created by Jose Limon.

Both classes run in a similar fashion, floor work, which involved the dancers sitting or lying on the floor, standing exercises, and exercises which involved traveling across the floor


Limon classes in my experence are significantly easier to play, There are rarely any excersises which involve vast memorization of time or tempo changes. there are no real complex meters involved, just sit and have fun

Graham classes require a bit more home work, many of the teachers do not take a break in between each exercise, which means you need to be on your toes and know how their particular class works, some exercises switch tempos and time signatures halfway through which for me can be a little stressful. For the dancers, everything is done in a contraction, which to me sounds painful, so i guess i don't actually have it too bad.

Graham also worked with Aaron Copeland to produce the gret Appalachian Spring, She was also a collaborator with John Cage, via his partner Merc Cunningham who was a dancer. I'm almost certain that it was through Cage that congas became the standard instrument which is used for accompanying. She also frequently used the music of Varese in her dances, which in my mind, is pretty rad.


Thankfully Iv been able to sit in regularly to watch some of the accompanists at the more professional schools and am now able to hang in with some of the more difficult classes. Last week I played for an instructor who was actually in Martha Grahams company, which was just a
fantastic experience,

This line of work is how i pay most of my bills in Toronto right now, the work is steady, it pays well, it gives you a chance to improvise every day, and the instructors have a tremendous respect for what you do. What more could you ask for. I encourage any percussionist in a university program to get their hand drum chops way up and improvise regularly. Its the key to being able to hang in with these classes not to mention just totally healthy to your musical self!!


I found a few videos on you tube of Peter Saleh, a percussionist in i believe New Jersery who does similar work, Enjoy ! He's Fantastic!