European VS American pianists

[Ingve]

Teaching ballet now for about 16 years. Both in professional ballet companies as well as in small ballet schools I have had the "pleasure" of dealing with all kinds of music.

Pianists that are great for class, and who enjoys their work as well as pianists who think they should (or their mother thaught) actually be giving solo concerts, and think that playing for ballet class is nothing but a humiliation to their talent.

With the last category of pianists, I have realized, "it would just have been so much better if I could have used my CD's now.

Now. I have a great collection of CD's for ballet class. Recently, I noticed that I tend to buy music from american ballet pianists. I have some from france and I have never bought any from a russian pianist. Especially when I see titels like "Music for ballet class in tempo for a russian class" (or something like this, I do not recall exactly)

What I have found as the easiest with many of the american cd's is that they leave me as a teacher a bit more freedom. Each track is often staying in one tempo and is squearly devide, usually with 32 or 64 barres in each track, and very little change of tempi.

On many french cd's i have noticed that they often have a lot of tempi changes, an not neceserraly so easy devided. In my exercises, they would often stop in the middle, or suddenly there would be a change of tempi etc. What they do have though, is often a bit more "musical approach" means, they are a bit more build up for dancing, more than just fitting easy constructed exercises.

i see the advantage in both ways. With the american CD's I can improvise much more in class. If the class I had prepared is not working so well that day, I can change the direction in the class much easier using the american cd's. With some european, I feel I have to choreograph the class.

Any experience anybody?