It’s a challenge, for so many reasons: “The received idea of ballet pianists is that they are at the bottom of the totem pole, working, as they do, out of the public eye with people who don’t really care about music. On the surface it seems easy enough—small bits of light classics in triple and duple meter with a maybe a show tune or two thrown in for fun. Plié. Sauté. Soutenu. And again on the other side. [But] Ballet pianists at a top company will have about ten seconds to choose the music for the exercise from the library of tunes in their heads.”