About me
I’m Robin Rhodin, a musician, composer, music producer and for the last 20 years, a ballet class pianist. I live with my wife Annie and my cat John on a farm in the very south of Sweden, not far from Copenhagen. There, I run my own recording studio, where I produce bands and artists, as well as compose and record my music for films, TV, podcasts, and live shows.
I started playing for ballet class at my grandparents’ dance school when I was 19. But the story starts quite a while before that.
Born into a ballet family
My grandfather Teddy Rhodin was a principal dancer at the Opera Ballet in Stockholm until his retirement in 1964, after which he moved with his family to my hometown of Malmö, in the south of Sweden, where he had just been employed as artistic director of the Malmö ballet. Soon thereafter, he started his own school, Rhodin’s Balettskola, together with his wife Dorrit. His youngest son, my dad, trained as an actor, and eventually got a job at the Malmö opera house, where he happened to meet a young ballerina, called mom. Well, that’s what I would call her at least.
My grandfather was not only a spectacular dancer, but also a very capable pianist, and when he was too old to teach, he started playing for the ballet classes.
How I started playing the piano
Noticing my great interest in music, we started playing together on his baby grand when I was around 5. We would play four-handed versions of the Moonlight sonata, Strauss-waltzes and other great music. He also taught me how to conduct recorded orchestras with chopsticks. A very useful skill, if you happen to come upon a lost orchestra while at a Chinese restaurant.
I remember lying on a couch in the back room of the dance school as a tiny boy, listening to the old Russian pianist Sara out in the danceroom, playing all the classics. Sara had grown up in the Soviet Union, training as a pianist in the conservatory in St: Petersburg. Not being able to afford a piano at home, she had done all her practicing on a wooden board, on which she had painted piano keys. It must have been a good strategy, because she played beautifully. She mostly played music from the ballet repertoire for the classes, and she seemed to know almost every note from every ballet by heart.
Rhodins Dansstudio today
When I finished high school, Teddy was ready to retire from playing, and started showing me the ropes. I started playing for the 4-year-olds, and gradually went on to play for the more advanced classes.
Eventually, my mom Ylva and I took over the school and have been running it together for the past 8 years, and we’re closing in on our 60-year anniversary!
