GEORGE BALANCHINE (1904-1983)
George Balanchine, born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg,
Russia, is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world
of ballet. At the age of nine, he was accepted into the ballet section
of St. Petersburg's rigorous Imperial Theater School, and, with other young
students,
was soon appearing on the stage of the famed Maryinsky Theater in such
spectacles as The Sleeping Beauty (his favorite). He graduated with honors
in 1921 and
joined the corps de ballet of the Maryinsky, by then renamed the State
Theater of Opera and Ballet.
The son of a composer, Balanchine gained a knowledge of music early in
life that far exceeded that of most of his fellow choreographers. He began
piano lessons at five, and at some point between 1919 and 1921, while continuing
to dance, he enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. There he
studied piano and music theory, including composition, harmony, and counterpoint,
for three years, and he began to compose music. (In the upheaval of the
Russian
Revolution, when money was worthless, he sometimes played the piano in
cabarets and silent movie houses in exchange for bread.) Such extensive musical
training
made it possible for Balanchine as a choreographer to communicate with
a composer of the stature of Stravinsky; it also gave him the ability to make
piano reductions
of orchestral scores, an invaluable aid in translating music into dance.
Balanchine began to choreograph while still in his teens, creating his
first work in 1920 or earlier. It was a pas de deux called La Nuit, for
himself and a female student, to the music of Anton Rubinstein. Another of
his early
duets, Enigma, danced in bare feet, was performed once at a benefit on
the stage of the State Theater, as well as for some years thereafter, in both
Petrograd/Leningrad and in the West. In 1923, he and some of his colleagues
formed a small troupe, the Young Ballet, for which he composed several
works
in an experimental vein, but the authorities disapproved, and the performers
were threatened with dismissal if they continued to participate. Then fatefully,
in the summer of 1924, Balanchine and three other dancers were permitted
to leave the newly formed Soviet Union for a tour of Western Europe. They
did
not return. With Balanchine were Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, and Nicholas
Efimov, all of whom later became well known in the West. Seen performing
in London, the dancers were invited by the impresario Serge Diaghilev to audition
for his renowned Ballets Russes and were taken into the company.
Diaghilev had his eye on Balanchine as a choreographer as well and, with
the departure of Bronislava Nijinska, hired him as ballet master (principal
choreographer). Balanchine's first substantive effort was Ravel's L'Enfant
et les Sortilèges (1925), the first of four treatments he would
make of this wondrous score over the years. Then came a reworking of Stravinsky's Le Chant du Rossignol, in which 14-year-old Alicia Markova made her stage
debut. From that time until 1929, when the Ballets Russes collapsed with
Diaghilev's death, Balanchine created nine more ballets (in addition to
numerous slighter pieces), including the immortal Apollon Musagète (1928) and Prodigal Son (1929). During this period, Balanchine suffered
a serious knee injury. This limited his dancing and may have bolstered
his commitment to full-time choreography.
The next years were uncertain ones. Balanchine was making a movie with
former Diaghilev ballerina Lydia Lopokova (the wife of British economist
John Maynard Keynes) when he heard of Diaghilev's death. He soon began
staging dances for Britain's popular Cochran Revues; acted as guest ballet
master for the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen; and was engaged by its
founder René Blum as ballet master for a new Ballets Russes, the
Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, for which he choreographed three ballets
around the talents of the young Tamara Toumanova-Cotillon, La Concurrence,
and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
Leaving the Ballets Russes (perhaps due to the aggressive presence of Colonel
W. de Basil, who soon took the company away from René Blum), Balanchine
formed Les Ballets 1933, with Boris Kochno, Diaghilev's last private secretary,
as artistic advisor and the backing of British socialite Edward James.
For the company's first-and only-season, he created six new ballets, in
collaboration with such leading artistic figures as Bertolt Brecht and
Kurt Weill (The Seven Deadly Sins), artist Pavel Tchelitchew (Errante),
and composers Darius Milhaud (Les Songes) and Henri Sauget (Fastes). But
the troupe disbanded in a matter of months. It was during its London engagement,
however, that a meeting occurred that would change the history of 20th-century
dance.
The young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), raised in
Boston and a graduate of Harvard University, harbored a dream: To establish
a ballet company in America, filled with American dancers and not dependent
on repertory from Europe. Through Romola Nijinsky, whom Kirstein had assisted
in writing a biography of her husband, he met Balanchine after a Les Ballets
1933 performance and outlined his vision. Balanchine was essential to it.
Deciding quicky in favor of a new start, Balanchine agreed to come to the
United States and arrived in New York in October 1933. "But first,
a school," he is famously reported to have said.
Kirstein was prepared to support the idea, and the first product of their
collaboration was indeed a school, the School of American Ballet, founded
in 1934 with the assistance of Edward M.M. Warburg, a Harvard colleague.
(The first classes were held January 2.) The School remains in operation
to this day, training dancers for the New York City Ballet and companies
worldwide. The first ballet Balanchine choreographed in America--Serenade,
to Tchaikovsky--was created for students of the School and had its world
premiere outdoors at Warburg's summer home near White Plains, New York,
in 1934. Within a year, Balanchine and Kirstein had created a professional
company, the American Ballet, which made its debut at the Adelphi Theater,
New York City, in March 1935. After a handful of summer performances, a
projected tour collapsed, but the troupe remained together as the resident
ballet company at the Metropolitan Opera. However, Balanchine had no interest
in choreographing opera dances, and the Met had little interest in furthering
the cause of ballet; in the American Ballet's three years at the Met, Balanchine
was allowed just two all-dance programs. In 1936, he mounted a dance-drama
version of Gluck's Orfeo and Eurydice, controversial in that the singers
were relegated to the pit while the dancers claimed the stage. The second
program, in 1937, was, prophetically, devoted to Stravinsky: a revival
of Apollo plus two new works, Le Baiser de la Fée and Card Game.
It was the first of three festivals Balanchine devoted to Stravinsky over
the years.
The fifty-year collaboration of these two creative giants is
unique in the 20th century. Stravinsky's description of their
work together on Balustrade in 1940 is implicitly a description of their shared vision. He wrote, "Balanchine
composed the choreography as he listened to my recording, and I could actually
observe him conceiving gestures, movement, combinations, and composition.
The result was a series of dialogues perfectly complementary to and coordinated
with the dialogues of the music." (In 1972, Balanchine choreographed
a new ballet to the same score, Stravinsky Violin Concerto.)
The American Ballet's association with the Met came to an end in 1938 and
Balanchine took several of his dancers to Hollywood. In 1941, he and Kirstein
assembled another classical company, American Ballet Caravan, for a five-month
good-will tour of South America. In the repertory were two major new Balanchine
works, Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial (later renamed Tchaikovsky
Piano Concerto No. 2). But after the tour this company, too, disbanded,
and the dancers were forced to find work elsewhere. Between 1944 and 1946
Balanchine was engaged to revitalize Sergei Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo after the departure of Massine. There he choreographed Danses Concertantes (1944), Raymonda, and Night Shadow (later called La Sonnambula, both in
1946), while reviving Concerto Barocco, Le Baiser de la Fée, Serenade, Ballet Imperial, and Card Party (renamed Jeu de Cartes). Many of Balanchine's
most important early works were introduced to America at large by the Ballet
Russe, which toured the length and breadth of the country for nine months
of the year.
George Balanchine teaching.
Courtesy NYCB Archives Ballet Society Collection
In 1946 Balanchine and Kirstein formed Ballet Society, presenting to small
New York subscription-only audiences such new Balanchine works as The Four
Temperaments (1946) and Orpheus (1948). On the strength Orpheus, praised
as one of New York's premiere cultural events of the year, Morton Baum,
Chairman of the Executive Committee of the New York City Center of Music
and Drama, invited the company to join City Center (of which the New York
City Drama Company and the New York City Opera were already a part). With
the performance of October 11, 1948, consisting of Concerto Barocco, Orpheus,
and Symphony in C (created for the Paris Opera Ballet as Le Palais de Cristal the previous year), the New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine's talents
had at last found a permanent home.
From that time until his death in 1983, Balanchine served as ballet master
for the New York City Ballet, choreographing the majority of the productions
the Company has introduced from its inception to the present day. An authoritative
catalogue of Balanchine's output lists 425 works, beginning with La Nuit and ending with Variations for Orchestra (1982), a solo for Suzanne Farrell.
In between, he created a body of work as extensive as it was diverse. Among
his notable ballets were Firebird and Bourrée Fantasque (1949; Firebird restaged with Jerome Robbins in 1970); La Valse (1951); Scotch Symphony (1952); The Nutcracker (his first full-length work for the company), Western
Symphony, and Ivesiana (1954); Allegro Brillante (1956); Agon (1957); Stars
and Stripes and The Seven Deadly Sins (1958); Episodes (1959, choreographed
with Martha Graham); Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Liebeslieder Walzer (1960); A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962); Bugaku and Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1963); Don Quixote (in three acts) and Harlequinade (in two acts, both
1965); Jewels (called the first full-length plotless ballet,1967); and Who Cares? (1970). In June, 1972, Balanchine staged an intensive week-long
celebration of Stravinsky. Of the twenty-one new works presented during
the festival, eight were by Balanchine, including four major ones, Stravinsky
Violin Concerto, Duo Concertant, Symphony in Three Movements, and Divertimento
from "Le Baiser de la Fée." Response to the Stravinsky
Festival by critics and the public was overwhelming.
In 1975, Balanchine staged a second New York City Ballet Festival, this
time a three-week homage to Ravel. This celebration produced sixteen new
works by various choreographers, including Balanchine's Tzigane, Le Tombeau
de Couperin, and Sonatine.
Over the next seven years, Balanchine added more than a dozen works to
the New York City Ballet's repertory. First came Union Jack (1976), observing
the U.S. Bicentennial by honoring Great Britain, followed by the lavish Vienna Waltzes (1977). Ballo della Regina and Kammermusik No. 2 were choreographed
in 1978, Ballade, Robert Schumann's "Davidsbündlertänze," and Walpurgisnacht Ballet in 1980. Balanchine's last important work, a new
version of Mozartiana (a ballet originally choreographed for Les Ballets
1933), was created for the Tchaikovsky Festival of 1981. In 1982 he directed
the Stravinsky Centennial Celebration, but by then he was terminally ill.
Although it is for ballet choreography that he is most noted, Balanchine
also worked in musical theater and movies. On Broadway, he created dances
for Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and On Your Toes, including the groundbreaking "Slaughter
on Tenth Avenue" ballet (1936); Babes in Arms (1937); I Married an
Angel and The Boys from Syracuse (1938); Louisiana Purchase and Cabin in
the Sky, co-choreographed with Katherine Dunham (1940); The Merry Widow (1943); and Where's Charley? (1948), among others. His movie credits include The Goldwyn Follies, with its famous "water nymph" ballet (1938); I Was an Adventuress (1940); and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). All starred
Vera Zorina.
Embracing television, Balanchine staged many of his ballets (or excerpts)
and created new work especially for the medium: in 1962, he collaborated
with Stravinsky on Noah and the Flood and in 1981 redesigned his 1975 staging
of L'Enfant et les Sortilèges to include a wide range of special
effects, including animation. Through televison, millions of people have
been able to see New York City Ballet. "Choreography by Balanchine," a
five-part "Dance in America" presentation on the PBS series "Great
Performances," began in December 1977. Programs featured The Four
Temperaments, Prodigal Son, Stravinsky Violin Concerto, Chaconne, and segments
of Jewels, among several others. Most are now available on video. Balanchine
traveled to Nashville with the Company for the tapings in 1977 and 1978
and personally supervised every shot, in some cases revising steps or angles
for greater effectiveness on screen. The series was widely applauded by
critics and audiences all over the country and was nominated for an Emmy
award. In January 1978, New York City Ballet participated in the acclaimed
PBS series "Live from Lincoln Center," when Coppelia, choreographed
by Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova in 1974, was telecast live from the
stage of the New York State Theater. Eight years later, the Company appeared
on another "Live from Lincoln Center" program, performing Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Apollo, Orpheus, Mozartiana, and Who Cares? are among other Balanchine ballets seen on national television.
In 1970, U.S.News and World Report attempted to summarize Balanchine's
achievements: "The greatest choreographer of our time, George Balanchine
is responsible for the successful fusion of modern concepts with older
ideas of classical ballet. Balanchine received his training in Russia before
coming to America in 1933. Here, the free-flowing U.S. dance forms stimulated
him to develop new techniques in dance design and presentation, which have
altered the thinking of the world of dance.
Often working with
modern music and the simplest of themes, he has created ballets that are celebrated for their imagination and originality. His company,
New York City Ballet, is the leading dance group of the United States
and one of the great companies of the world. An essential part of the success
of Balanchine's group has been the training of his dancers, which he has supervised
since the founding of his School of American Ballet in 1934. Balanchine chose
to shape talent locally, and he has said that the basic structure of the American
dancer was responsible for inspiring some of the striking lines of his compositions.
Balanchine is not only gifted in creating entirely new productions, . . .
his choreography for classical works has been equally fresh and inventive.
He has made American dance the most advanced and richest in choreographic
development in the world today."
Balanchine himself wrote, "We must first realize that dancing is an absolutely
independent art, not merely a secondary accompanying one. I believe that it
is one of the great arts. . . . The important thing in ballet is the movement
itself. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle . . . is the
essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they
reach the audience through the eye. It's the illusion created which convinces
the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician." Balanchine
always preferred to call himself a craftsman rather than a creator, comparing
himself to a cook or cabinetmaker (both hobbies of his), and he had a reputation
throughout the dance world for the calm and collected way in which he worked
with his dancers and colleagues.
As his reputation grew, he was the recipient of much official recognition.
In the spring of 1975, the Entertainment Hall of Fame in Hollywood inducted
Balanchine as a member, in a nationally televised special by Gene Kelly. The
first choreographer so honored, he joined the ranks of such show business
luminaries as Fred Astaire, Walt Disney, and Bob Hope. The same year, he received
the French Légion d'Honneur. In 1978, he was one of five recipients
(with Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, Richard Rodgers, and Artur Rubinstein)
of the first Kennedy Center Honors, presented by President Jimmy Carter. He
was also presented with a Knighthood of the Order of Dannebrog, First Class,
by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. In 1980, Balanchine was honored by the National
Society of Arts and Letters with their Gold Medal award, the Austrian government
with its Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Letters, First Class, and
by the New York Chapter of the American Heart Association with their "Heart
of New York" award. These joined such earlier commendations as the French
Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters decoration and the National Institute
of Arts and Letters award for Distinguished Service to the Arts. The last
major award Balanchine received--in absentia--was the Presidential Medal of
Freedom in 1983, the highest honor that can be conferred on a civilian in
the United States. At the time, President Ronald Reagan praised Balanchine's
genius, saying that he has "inspired millions with his stage choreography
. . . and amazed a diverse population through his talents." Soon after,
on April 30, 1983, George Balanchine died in New York at the age of 79.
Clement Crisp, one of the many writers who eulogized Balanchine, assessed
his contribution: "It is hard to think of the ballet world without the
colossal presence of George Balanchine. . . . Now he is gone and, as Lincoln
Kirstein said in his brief and infinitely apt curtain speech, 'Mr. B. is with
Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.' But we have not lost Balanchine-not
the essential Balanchine, who lives in the great catalogue of masterpieces
that have so shaped and refined our understanding of ballet and given it-and
us-thrilling life. And we are not without the other essential fact of his
work: his School and the training system that has tuned American bodies as
the ideal classical medium for his ideal classic vision. We can never be without
Balanchine. He is so central to the danse d'école in our century, so
surely its guiding force, that grief becomes mere self-indulgence. Gratitude
and joy must be our feeling for what he gave us, and determination that his
work and ideals be honored and preserved and used to illuminate the future
of ballet."
Reprinted, with emendations, courtesy of
the New York City Ballet and The George Balanchine Trust
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Trey McIntyre is an internationally renowned dance maker, is the Artistic Director and Choreographer of Trey McIntyre Project. He received his dance training at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Houston Ballet Academy, where he also began his choreographic career. He joined Houston Ballet as a company artist in 1989, later being appointed Choreographic Associate, a position he still holds today. He has created seven works for the Houston Ballet, the first of which he choreographed at only twenty years old. 
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Since graduating from college in 1963, Twyla Tharp has choreographed more than one hundred thirty-five dances, five Hollywood movies, directed and choreographed three Broadway shows, written two books and received one Tony Award, two Emmy Awards, nineteen honorary doctorates, the Vietnam Veterans of America President's Award, the 2004 National Medal of the Arts, the Jerome Robbins Prize, The Kennedy Center Honors and many grants including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.