“Ballerina – Finding Love” by Alasdair James Dodds breathes, sighs, and twirls. From the very first notes, the piano steps onto a dimly lit stage, velvet curtains parting, and the spotlight catches a lone dancer poised for her story to unfold. The track, steeped in classical elegance, moves like water, bringing grace and ache in equal measure. You can hear Dodds threading pieces of his earlier work “The Ballerina” into this one, like unfading memories, and that continuity gives the whole composition a bittersweet cohesiveness.
The piano is front and center, opening heavy and deliberate one moment, before feather-light keys come prattle the next, almost as though a ballerina has just stepped onto the floor and is nibbling with light, soft steps. And just when you think the melody has settled, it shifts, deepens, and rises in shimmering arcs that feel like emotional crescendos of hope, heartbreak, reconciliation, all without a single word spoken. That’s where Dodds flexes his gift: the ability to say everything without saying anything.
The accompanying video, directed by Zackary Denman and starring Carla Hogarth, takes the music’s emotional skeleton and gives it flesh. Hogarth emotes with every controlled step and trembling pause, embodying a character caught between her love for art and the love that unexpectedly enters her orbit. The gentleman in the story brings a touch of tension, ambition, and devotion clashing in the middle of an otherwise dreamlike performance. When their story fractures, you feel it in the music’s minor tones, and when forgiveness creeps back in, the piano swells like a heart reopening.
Dodds, who once kept his music tucked away for decades, has been slowly but surely carving a space where he can bend genres and moods at will. You catch shades of Alexis Ffrench’s emotional clarity here, a little of Hans Zimmer’s cinematic swell there, with Dodds’ fingerprints all over it. He balances variety with cohesion. In “Ballerina – Finding Love,” he proves once again that the piano is a language in itself.
So yeah, if you’re looking for something that sits heartfelt like a love letter that aches while it soars, “Ballerina – Finding Love” is one of those pieces that’ll stick with you as you breathe it in, and maybe even confront a few of your own unspoken stories.
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Review by: Naomi Joan