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Movie Musicals and Pianists

My latest two features for the Times touched upon two different worlds: the world of the dance accompanist, and that of the movie choreographer.

The first was a musing on the secret life of dance pianists. I spoke with Cameron Grant of New York City Ballet and Michael Scales of New York Theatre Ballet, as well as countless others, to find out how they train, what the challenges are, and what keeps them inspired. Here’s that piece.

Cameron Grant, Sterling Hyltin and Tyler Angle. Credit Krista Schlueter for The New York Times
Cameron Grant, Sterling Hyltin and Tyler Angle. Credit Krista Schlueter for The New York Times

And the other was on Jack Cole, known in some corners as the “Father of Jazz Dance”. The dance writer Debra Levine recently organized a retrospective of Cole’s movies at the Museum of Modern Art. Which led me to watch  a good number of these films… That piece is here.

Here’s a favorite clip:

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Susan Jones, or, the Art of the Ballet Mistress

Susan Jones cooaching "Paquita."
Susan Jones cooaching “Paquita.”

Here’s my interview with Susan Jones, a ballet mistress at American Ballet Theatre in charge of the corps de ballet. Jones joined ABT in 1970 and stayed for nine years. In that time, she danced every corps role in the rep, plus Lizzie in Fall River Legend, Cowgirl in Rodeo, and a few other choice parts that suited her dramatic side. She quickly showed a skill for remembering steps, which became handy when working with Twyla Tharp on Push Comes to Shove. Baryshnikov made her a ballet mistress, and she never left. This fall, she is re-staging Tharp’s Bach Partita, which hasn’t been done for almost thirty years.