Meshing of music and movement is what moves pianist

By Clare Croft
SPECIAL TO THE AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Thursday, August 27, 2009

For many local ballet dancers, Marietta Drummond's chuckle and the sight of her white hair and big sunglasses peeking over a dance studio's piano provides much comfort. Being a serious artist does not require complete solemnity. One of Drummond's signature jokes is playing the "Jeopardy" theme during difficult, monotonous strengthening exercises.

With the school year and the fall arts season beginning, Drummond, 72 , soon returns to work, commuting on the city bus between the University of Texas, where she is the theater and dance department's music coordinator, and Ballet Austin, where she is the resident accompanist. In this end-of-summer ballet respite, Drummond and I spent an afternoon having coffee at Quack's and discussing the excellence of cinnamon rolls and the relationship between dance and music.

Drummond has earned her knowledge through many years behind a dance studio's piano. She began playing the piano for ballet at age 13 in Enid, Okla.

"I was taking ballet because my mother thought it would make me tall, graceful and thin—and I think she wanted to get me out of the house," says Drummond. "One day in the middle of my class, the pianist quit. She got up and slammed the keyboard. The teacher looked at me and said, 'Marietta, you play the piano.'"

Drummond sat down and started playing. That was nearly 60 years ago.

Since then Drummond has played for ballet, tap and musical theater. (She refers to her musical theater days as when she was "the 'Godspell' queen.") Drummond earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in piano performance from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, but she never liked solo performance.

"It struck me as very strange sitting onstage at a piano sideways, staring into the wings while people sit out there and look at me," says Drummond. "I didn't feel any connection with them."

She much preferred the symbiosis of music and movement, a central tenet of ballet class. Now, as she teaches young pianists to play for dance classes, Drummond imparts the importance of collaboration.

She tells her students, "I'm going to put my fingers on the keys, and everybody in this room is going to move. It's not a power thing. They're not going to start until I start, and I'm not going to start until they move. We breathe together, and you feel it."

Drummond is careful to point out this is not a relationship she wants with just any dance teacher or class. She says, "Even when I was in New York, I was adamant. No divas. I'll go work at Burger King."

Drummond takes particular pleasure in recounting her decades of piano playing in New York, where she lived before she moving to Austin in 1998. If time travel were possible, I'd love Drummond to take me back to her time at the renowned Dance Theatre Harlem, where she was a favorite accompanist for former Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo star Frederic Franklin. A small man with a big laugh, Franklin must have been a well-matched partner for Drummond.

In ballet classes, the teacher tells the students about the next exercise, then asks them to step to the barre, the long tube that runs along the studio wall. Next the teacher turns to the pianist and, with a quick nod or by saying "thank you," tells the pianist to begin. When Drummond and Franklin worked together, Franklin would turn to Drummond and exclaim, "Hit it, Marietta!"

It seems Drummond will be at it as long as teachers keep asking her to "hit it." Most people dream of early retirement. Not Drummond. "Musicians never retire," she says. "We're very fortunate that way."