Piano and ballet comes to life in Snow White

NAGA CITY, CAMARINES SUR, Philippines  — Merged in one art form for the first time natiowide, ballet and piano come to life when soloist Ilene Raisa Solis performs Snow White on March 4 and 5 in Naga City.

Merging the disciplines of ballet and piano has long been a forgotten and dying craft with the invention of electronic gizmos. Ballet dancers performed with canned music, cutting off music as an art form rendered on the piano, an ensemble or with an orchestra all in live performances.

In preserving the dying craft, Agniezska Ballet Center took on the audacious pursuit of reviving classical rendition of ballet with a piano accompaniment. Said center directress Agnes Saberon, "We believe that ballet and piano are one - melody is dance and dance is melody. When we conceptualized the production of Snow White we thought about how we can make this event a humble testament in promoting Naga City as a performing arts capital. We were convinced that performing ballet to a live piano accompaniment is a wonderful way of reviving classical performances that we have taken for granted all these years." Saberon's ballet school in Naga has been dancing for more than 20 years.

"Performing ballet with live piano accompaniment entails so much discipline for the pianist and the ballet soloist," said Mrs. Teresita Hidalgo, program coordinator of the music department of the University of Santa Isabel in Naga City. "The pianist must be familiar with ballet because unlike a solo performance by a pianist, the pianist plays from the yearnings and promptings of her heart and mind. When a pianist plays with an ensemble like with a violin or another piano, she harmonizes with the yearnings and promptings of her co-performers. But when a pianist plays for and with a ballet dancer, she has to be familiar with the movement and steps of ballet itself." Hidalgo is an accomplished pianist and piano teacher who used to play for ballet dancers of Agniezska in its early years.

 While canned music makes rehearsals and performances convenient, both Hidalgo and Saberon said that dancing ballet with the piano enable the soloist and pianist to perfect their craft. Canned music can be manipulated but the dancer is dictated by digital intervention. Unlike with a pianist, the dancer can ask a pianist to play where both are expressive in movement. The two work in harmony of dance and melody in an intimate fusion of disciplines. Fingers dance on the piano keys as toes point on the floor.

 Truly, Agniezska Ballet has taken the path of the less trodden. Because of the Broadway production of Snow White in 1912 and its animated production by Walt Disney in 1937, the story has made people to believe that this is a fairy tale - something fictional and imaginative. In its original form, Snow White is a German folklore that the Brothers Grimm collected. The underlying themes of Snow White like jealousy, deception, trickery and lust and how these are defeated when good triumphs over evil go beyond fairy tale genres. Its themes are realistically happening in modern times.

 Agniezska Ballet has taken on these themes with more realism in ballet and piano. For the segment where the prince wakes Snow White from her unconscious state, this is rendered with a movement from Evard Grieg's Piano Concierto in A minor. When Snow White dances with the prince and with the dwarfs they perform to the work of Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours." The wedding segment is rendered with Joe Zicherman's "We Will Serve The Lord."

 Nagueños are serious about their penchant for the arts and in becoming a performing arts capital. In what is yet another first, joining them as pianist in this classical merged art form is a Cebuana — me. (FREEMAN)