For Deanna Blacher, the castanets have never been simply an accompaniment to Spanish dance.
They became a musical voice.
Across a career spanning dance, choreography, teaching and concert performance, Deanna developed an approach to the castanets that took the instrument from the dance studio onto the concert platform.
She would eventually perform with major orchestras, inspire composers to write works for castanets and orchestra, and explore the different tones and characters that could be produced by different pairs of instruments.
Yet that musical journey began within Spanish dance.
Understanding that connection — between movement, rhythm and music — helps explain why the castanets became such an important part of Deanna Blacher’s artistic life.
The Castanets Began With Dance
Deanna’s relationship with the castanets developed through her study of Spanish dance.
As a young dancer in Cape Town, she encountered the instrument as part of the discipline she was learning. Castanet exercises were not always easy, and the finger control required to produce clear sequences presented their own challenges.
Those early difficulties are significant when looking back across her career.
The virtuosity that audiences would later hear in the concert hall was not something that appeared effortlessly. It developed from the same fundamentals every castanet player encounters: individual finger movement, rhythmic control, listening and practice.
But Deanna’s interest in the instrument would eventually move beyond technique.
She began to hear possibilities in the castanets as music.
A Musical Idea Begins to Form
Deanna’s understanding of the castanets began to change as her experience of Spanish dance and music expanded.
While studying in London, she encountered the music of the eighteenth-century Spanish composer Padre Antonio Soler. His keyboard sonatas opened up a different possibility in her mind.
What if the castanets could do more than accompany dance?
What if they could become part of the music itself?
At around the same period, Deanna was seeing some of the great Spanish dancers and companies performing in London. Artists including Pilar López, Carmen Amaya, José Greco and Antonio demonstrated the extraordinary breadth of Spanish dance — its rhythm, theatricality and musical sophistication.
Antonio’s use of castanets was particularly important.
Rather than hearing the instrument merely as rhythmic decoration, Deanna began to imagine how its different sounds could interact directly with composed music.
It was the beginning of an idea that would continue developing throughout her career:
The castanets could have a musical voice of their own.
From Accompaniment to Instrument
A pair of castanets may appear simple, but the sounds they can produce are remarkably varied.
Different instruments have different pitches and tonal qualities. The player’s touch can alter the character of a stroke, while rhythm, dynamics and articulation can change the way a musical phrase is perceived.
For Deanna, these possibilities became increasingly important.
Instead of treating the castanets as something added on top of the music, she explored how they could become part of its interpretation.
A phrase could be delicate or forceful. A rhythmic passage could build in intensity. Different castanets could be chosen because their particular sound suited the character of the music being performed.
The player’s role therefore became more than keeping time.
It became one of listening, responding and interpreting.
Technique made the sound possible. Musicianship gave that sound meaning.
Deanna Blacher, Castanets and the Concert Hall
As Deanna’s work developed, the castanets increasingly became part of her life as a concert performer.
She appeared with orchestras including the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Hague Philharmonic Orchestra, the West Australian Symphony Orchestra and the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, bringing an instrument closely associated with Spanish dance into an orchestral setting.
This required a different kind of relationship with the castanets.
In the theatre, castanets may form part of a larger performance involving dance, costume and movement. On the concert platform, the audience can focus much more closely on the instrument itself — its tone, rhythmic precision, dynamics and relationship with the other musicians.
The castanets had to stand musically alongside the instruments around them.
For Deanna, this was not about separating the castanets from their Spanish heritage. It was about demonstrating how much musical possibility already existed within them.
Her performances helped reveal something that can easily be overlooked when watching a skilled dancer:
Castanets are not simply something a dancer holds. They are instruments a musician plays.
When Composers Began Writing for Deanna
The possibilities expanded further when composers began creating music in which the castanets had a more prominent concert role.
Works were written for Deanna that placed the instrument within an orchestral setting, requiring the castanet player to respond not only rhythmically but musically to the composition around them.
This represented a fascinating progression.
The instrument Deanna had first encountered through Spanish dance had become part of a much broader musical conversation.
The skills remained connected to the same foundations — control, rhythm, articulation and listening — but they could now be applied in an entirely different performance environment.
For Deanna, dance and music were never completely separate worlds.
The castanets provided a bridge between them.
Eight Pairs of Castanets and Twelve Spanish Dances
One of the clearest examples of Deanna’s musical approach to the castanets came through the music of Spanish composer Enrique Granados.
In 2011, Deanna worked with pianist Cameron Roberts on Spanish Fire – Danzas Españolas, a recording of Granados’ complete set of Twelve Spanish Dances for piano, with Deanna performing on castanets.
But Deanna did not approach the twelve dances with a single pair of instruments.
She used eight different pairs of castanets.
Each pair offered a different tonal character, allowing the sound of the castanets to respond to the changing mood and musical personality of the individual dances.
That choice says a great deal about Deanna’s approach.
The question was no longer simply:
Which rhythm should the castanets play?
It was also:
Which castanets belong with this music?
Tone, pitch, colour and character became part of the interpretation.
Across the twelve dances, the castanets could therefore take on different musical personalities rather than producing one unchanging percussive sound.
It is a striking demonstration of an idea that had developed across decades of Deanna’s work:
The castanets could interpret music, not simply accompany it.
Spanish Fire: Castanets in Conversation With the Piano
Granados’ Danzas Españolas draw upon the rhythms, atmosphere and character of different Spanish traditions, making them particularly fertile ground for Deanna’s approach.
With Cameron Roberts at the piano, the castanets became another musical voice within the performance.
Sometimes rhythmic, sometimes delicate, sometimes more dramatic, their role changed according to the character of the dance.
This demanded something very different from simply maintaining a beat.
The player had to listen to the piano, understand the shape of the music and make decisions about dynamics, articulation and tone.
The result brought together two strands that had run throughout Deanna’s artistic life: her deep knowledge of Spanish dance and her belief in the musical possibilities of the castanets.
What had begun many years earlier with dance lessons and difficult finger exercises had travelled a remarkable distance.
From the dance studio to the concert platform.
From accompaniment to interpretation.
From playing rhythms to making music.
From Performer to Teacher
The musical understanding Deanna developed through decades of dancing and performing also became part of her work as a teacher.
For a student beginning to learn the castanets, the first challenges can seem very small: how to hold the instruments, how to move an individual finger, how to produce a clear sound or how to maintain a simple rhythm.
But those fundamentals lead somewhere.
The same control that allows a beginner to produce a clean stroke can eventually allow a musician to shape a phrase. The same listening required to keep a simple rhythm can later become part of interpreting more complex music.
Deanna’s own journey demonstrates that connection particularly clearly.
The castanets that challenged her as a young dancer eventually accompanied her onto concert platforms and became an important part of her musical identity.
Teaching therefore became another way of passing that knowledge forward.
A Lifetime With the Castanets
It is difficult to separate Deanna Blacher’s story as a dancer from her story as a castanet player.
The two developed together.
Spanish dance gave her the foundation. Music encouraged her to explore further. Performance gave her a place to test those possibilities, and teaching allowed what she had learned to be passed to another generation.
From early lessons in Cape Town to study in London, from Spanish dance to orchestral performance, and eventually to projects such as Spanish Fire, the castanets remained a constant thread.
What changed was what Deanna discovered they could do.
They could accompany movement.
They could articulate rhythm.
They could respond to a piano or orchestra.
They could change tone and character.
And in the hands of a musician, they could interpret music.
That idea sits at the heart of Deanna’s relationship with the instrument.
The castanets may have entered her life through dance, but they became a musical voice of their own.
Interested in learning the castanets?
Deanna’s Ria Ria Pita programme takes students through castanet technique progressively, beginning with the foundations in Level 1.