Principal Flautist Libby Pring has been playing the flute for the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra (the Australian Ballet’s Sydney orchestra) for 20 years. She spoke to Jessica Thompson about how playing music for ballet keeps her on her toes.

How does playing for ballet differ from playing for opera?
With opera we can hear the singers, and so although we do rely on the conductor we also rely on our ears and listen to what the singer’s doing. With ballet we rely very much on the conductor because we can’t actually see the dancers, and we really have to play according to the tempo the dancers want or that they can cope with. You have to trust the conductor and be ready for something like a sudden change of tempo – if a dancer takes off!

So the tempo can vary depending on who’s dancing?
Yes, very much. Nicolette [Fraillon, Music Director and Chief Conductor] always warns us “this is the faster team” or “this is a slower team”. If it’s a bit slower one night then a bit faster the next you just know it’s a different set of dancers.

Do you ever get tired of playing second fiddle, so to speak, to the dancing?
No, not really. We enjoy the ballet repertoire. It’s different from the opera repertoire in that it really is its own music – we’re not accompanying a singer. It’s more similar to the symphonic repertoire in a way. 
You should play with some sense of inspiration; I think that’s very important for us and also very important for the dancers – if they hear an orchestra really enjoying what they’re doing I’m sure that helps them feel inspired.

Do you have a favourite ballet to play and/or watch?
I loved doing Firebird this year, and Petrouchka. Playing that program [Firebird and other legends] was fantastic, great for the musicians – it’s difficult music, but it really is ballet music. 
I love the Graeme Murphy ballets. The choreography he’s done with some of the old ballets, the new ideas he’s come up with; it’s very clever.

Tell us about playing Steve Reich’s Double Sextet (the music for Wayne McGregor’s Dyad 1929) for Concord.
Every piece of music has its own challenges, but the Reich is something just a little bit different with the change of time signature every single bar. It’s fun to have a challenging piece. You’ve really got to be on your toes the whole way through.

How many rehearsals do you have before opening night?
The dress rehearsal and a couple of orchestral rehearsals – so you have to be well prepared. It’s very important that everyone has their parts learnt before those rehearsals, especially for something like The Sleeping Beauty which would probably be one of the hardest things in the repertoire to play – lots and lots of notes to learn. That’s basically what I’m doing at the moment; about three hours’ practice a day. Still not as much as the dancers do, but still quite a bit!

Any funny orchestra pit antics you can divulge?
In ballet music there’s always some funny tuba part, like in the Francaix [the Scuola di ballo score], and last night Nicolette must have said something to the tuba player because he just let it rip and everyone [in the orchestra] was just rolling around laughing. Obviously it was some humorous part of the ballet – the tuba is always some sort of old man or something like that. We listen to each other and often people play some very, very funny things. If someone does something a little bit differently everyone notices – it’s like another language sometimes. You have everyone laughing and a non-musician just wouldn’t understand why.

Jessica Thomson is a performing arts writer and has written for many publications including Dance Australia.