Baltering: Music for the contemporary ballet class

The ballet pianist often serves as the main source of “Classical” or art music to the modern ballet dancer, and their choice of repertoire— along with the technical exercises that the dancers are given— naturally reflect the vocabulary and aesthetics of repertory ballets that dance companies perform. With the rise of contemporary ballet pieces, there is a growing need for contemporary music in the ballet technique class to acquaint the dancer with this repertoire. Baltering is a set of pieces for solo piano, composed for use in the ballet technique class that introduce the musical languages/methods of contemporary compositions, (neo-classicism, neo-romanticism, post-tonality, modernism, minimalism, etc.), while conforming to the appropriate structure and form for ballet exercises. Similarly, these pieces incorporate metric dissonances and unequal phrase structure that break the typical “squareness” of music traditionally used in ballet class. There is a varying degree in which these methods are applied and how far they deviate from the canonical structures for Classical and Romantic music. This set of piano pieces follows the typical publication style where the pieces for each exercise loosely follow the structure and order of the traditional ballet class. While there have been several publications of new music for the ballet class, many of them mainly rely on adding elements of commercial and film music, often following Classical and Romantic idioms already present in existing music for ballet class. Baltering fills a gap in the musical repertoire that serves the technical needs of the dancers and dance instructors.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.M. (Master of Music)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Music Composition (UMKC)

Grantor

University of Missouri--Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2024

Author dc:creator

• Thomas, Jacob Ross

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Haber, Yotam, 1976-

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/100783

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/100783