Introduction to the Alternative Music

Benefits For Teachers

Benefits For Pianists

Why Provide New Music

BUY NOW! Alternative Music for Grades 1 - 5

Alternative Music for Grades 1-5 reflects the rich heritage of both the ballet repertoire and the RAD.

The Royal Academy of Dance has published Alternative Music for Grades 1 – 5. Available in sheet music and audio CD, the alternative music is also accompanied by a Guidebook which contains helpful information for teachers, pianists and students.

Musically, one of the Academy's success stories has been the Higher Grades, the music for which is taken largely from the ballet repertoire. Teachers frequently tell us how much they like working with this music, and how easily it enables them to introduce pupils to ballet repertoire and history. Similarly, many have said how much they loved the music of the previous 'Fonteyn' syllabus, and Dance Education Syllabus (DES) for the same reasons. The Studio Series: Intuition CDs have also proved popular, because they contain danceable music from the ballet repertoire.

The framework for the choice of alternative music
It seemed only natural, then, to take this into account when we conceived a set of alternative music for Grades 1 to 5. The beginning of a new century is a good time to reflect on and celebrate the achievements and traditions of the past, and so we decided to use the countries represented by the five founders of the Academy as a framework for selecting the music for each grade. Any teacher or student engaged with the Grades syllabus will thereby become familiar not only with the musical heritage of the ballet repertoire, but also with the heritage of the Academy itself.

Table 1: How each grade is now aligned with a country of one of the founder members of the RAD.

Please note that the repertoire in the last column is only a small sample.

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