Barnard Dances to a Familiar Tune

You’re a classically trained pianist. You went to Juilliard. But when you’ve finished performing a challenging Chopin étude, not one of your 30 listeners applauds. And, come to think of it, none of them sat still for even a second while you were playing.

Most musicians would feel a bit annoyed, but to Michael McFrederick, this is all in a good day’s work. Accompanist to the Barnard Dance Department’s ballet and tap classes for 10 years, and possibly one of the most experienced dance class piano accompanists in the country, McFrederick has made a career out of his peculiar love for making useful music.

Classical musicians generally crave a rapt but passive audience that applauds at appointed times and otherwise remains silent and intellectually receptive. Pop and folk musicians, on the contrary, tend to gauge their success by the extent of audience participation—head-bopping, singing along—at their gigs.

McFrederick is more like John Lennon than Mozart when it comes to his performance preferences. He is happiest when the dancers leave the studio having not only learned a new dance step, but also with a renewed passion for dance, music, and all that involves the “spiritual realm.” As an accompanist, “It’s your job to make that class a unique experience. At the end of the class, the students should feel inspired, like they’re walking a few feet above the ground as they go back out into the world,“ McFrederick said.

It takes more than just inspiration to accompany a dance class. For each separate exercise in each of the 18 dance classes McFrederick accompanies all over N.Y., he has to make a split-second decision as to which piece to pick from his vast memorized repertoire of mostly nineteenth-century classical piano music, but also some twentieth-century classical and even some pop music. These decisions hinge upon the tempo, mood, and form of the movement that is being studied. “If you hear the teacher say ‘pliés,’ for example,” McFrederick explained, “you know it’s supposed to be a slow three or a slow four, and the phrasing is almost always symmetrical.”

“I don’t know any school that teaches this,” McFrederick said. Although conservatories such as Juilliard or Manhattan School of Music offer degrees in accompaniment, the focus remains on musical accompaniment, and the accompanists still expect to be listened to in rapt, seated silence, not danced to.

When McFrederick was a 16-year-old sunny California lad, his tap teacher offered him his first gig accompanying a ballet class because he was known locally as a promising young pianist. From his subsequent 43 years of dance accompanying experience, McFrederick has come to understand the special relationship between sound and expressive gesture in a way that probably cannot be taught. Some may argue that McFrederick, playing for dancers who bring music and plays to life before his very eyes, is in touch with the prime motive of music—to inspire movement.

No matter which dancers he accompanies, be they Alvin Ailey, Mark Morris, or Barnard and Columbia students, the goal is the same: “Whatever that motion is that’s being worked with, they’re working with me, and I’m working with them. If that’s not happening, nothing’s happening.”

For more on Barnard Dance musicians, be on the lookout for another upcoming profile.