Janeen Vestal (Photo by John Schreiber, The Daily Campus)

Well-trained bodies grand jete and pas de bouree across the floor of a dance studio here. In the corner sits a grand piano, and behind the keys sits the piano player. She wears a red fleece jacket and glasses, and her long salt and pepper hair is piled haphazardly on top of her head with a clip.

She does not use sheet music and twirls her hair during breaks. She seems as though she has been doing this her entire life.

And indeed she has.

Janeen Vestal, a part-time staff musician for SMU, is the daughter and granddaughter of accomplished pianists who taught her to play when she was as young as two. Her first memory of playing piano is being called in from playing outside to practice.

Vestal was a natural and was soon playing for radio stations.

“I remember being taken places and playing piano for people,” said Vestal, who grew up in the Dallas area. “I guess it was a big deal, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

Vestal started playing piano for SMU dance and performance classes when she was an SMU student herself. After earning her bachelor’s degree in music in 1977, Vestal played for the Dallas Ballet until it became the Texas Ballet Theatre in 1988.

Today, Vestal, a former dancer herself, plays for the SMU ballet and for modern dance classes and some jazz dance classes. She also plays for some SMU performances.

Her contribution to the classes is indispensable and her repertoire is exceptional, said Erin Mallar, a first-year graduate student studying choreography. Mallar was assigned Vestal for her Beginning Ballet class.

“A pianist adds variety. It enhances the class because a classroom CD can sometimes be too dry,” Mallar said. She said Vestal “almost never plays the same thing twice.”

A typical day for Vestal starts at 9 a.m. She’ll play for two upper level ballet classes, each lasting an hour and a half with a 30 minute break in between. At 12:30, she plays for the non-major class and then goes home to check the stock market, which she likes to play, and run other errands.

From 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. she plays for classes at Brookhaven Community College in Farmer’s Branch.

In the 49 years she’s been playing piano, Vestal says she has seen her share of diva teachers and prima donnas.

“One teacher at the Dallas Ballet came to me and said, ‘I don’t want melody, I don’t want harmony, I don’t want any rhythm. I want tinka, tinka, tinka, tinka,'” Vestal said with a laugh. “I looked at my watch and said, ‘how long is this class?'”

Vestal said she wouldn’t have stayed so long with the Dallas Ballet were it not for George Skibine, who ran the program until he died in 1981.

“He was wonderful,” Vestal said. “He wasn’t about putting you down like so many ballet teachers.”

Vestal lit up as she remembered auditioning for Skibine.

“He said ‘what would you play if I did this movement,'” Vestal said. “And I played, and he said, ‘you’re hired.'”

SMU students say Vestal has an interest in them both in and out of class.

“She’s so out there, but she’s so genuine,” senior French major and dance minor Kat Hudson said. “She stopped me in the hall to see when I was graduating and told me she missed having me in her classes.”

Hudson, a former dance major, said that Vestal’s skill behind the piano is extraordinary and at times seems almost innate.

“She’s always so into the music she plays, it comes to her naturally,” Hudson said. “A lot of the pianists have to get clues from the ballet teachers. She knows dance, more than just playing piano.”

Vestal said her affection for the students is genuine. On some days, just for fun, she’ll play only songs from Disney musicals and programs. One of the teachers asked her to play only Cher tunes one day recently.

“Everybody’s so young and full of energy and invigorating,” Vestal said. “It’s nice to see smiling faces.”

Vestal said the only thing she doesn’t like about working for SMU is that parking is hard to find.

“It’s always been the parking, for thirty years,” she said.

Vestal said she hopes to someday retire on the money she makes investing in the stock market. In the meantime she has some advice for the aspiring pianists out there:

“Practice,” she said. “Thomas Edison said ‘success is 99 percent perspiration and one percent inspiration.'”