Dance

Every ballet class in a German-speaking studio begins at die Stange, the wooden rail along the wall, and the same plain word for a pole or a rod carries one of the commonest idioms in the language. Bei der Stange bleiben means to stick at something and not give up half-way: Wer drei Jahre bei der Stange bleibt, tanzt irgendwann auf der Spitze. Turned round, jemanden bei der Stange halten means keeping another person committed, which is what a rehearsal director does with a tired company in the sixth week. Neither phrase has anything to do with dance in everyday use; a manager keeps a team bei der Stange just as a teacher does. The rest of the list follows a piece from das Vortanzen to einstudieren, and on to the words for how a work survives without a score: verinnerlichen, das Körpergedächtnis, überliefern.