George Balanchine

George Balanchine was born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg, Russia. At the age of nine, he was accepted into the ballet division of St. Petersburg's rigorous Imperial Theater School. With other young students, he was soon appearing on the stage of the famed Mariinsky Theater in such ballets as The Sleeping Beauty. He graduated with honors in 1921 and joined the corps de ballet of the Mariinsky, by then renamed the State Theater of Opera and Ballet.

Early in life, Balanchine, the son of a composer, had gained a knowledge of music which later far exceeded that of most of his fellow choreographers. He began piano lessons at the age of 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. He also began to compose music. Such extensive musical training made it possible for Balanchine to communicate with a composer of the stature of Stravinsky; it also gave him the ability to make piano reductions of orchestral scores.

Balanchine began to choreograph while still in his teens, creating his first work as early as 1920. La Nuit was a pas de deux for himself and a female student danced to the music of Anton Rubinstein. Another duet, Enigmas, which was danced barefoot, was performed at a benefit at the State Theater, as well as for some years thereafter in both Petrograd and in the West. In 1923, he and some of his colleagues formed a small troupe, the Young Ballet, for which Balanchine composed several experimental works. However, the Russian authorities disapproved of these, and the troupe was threatened with dismissal. 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. With Balanchine were Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, and Nicholas Efimov. Seen performing in London, the dancers were invited by Serge Diaghilev to audition for his renowned Ballets Russes and were taken into the company.

With the departure of Bronislava Nijinska from the Ballets Russes, Diaghilev named Balanchine as ballet master (principal choreographer) to replace her. Balanchine's first substantive effort was made using Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (1925), the first of four treatments he would make of this score. Then came a reworking of Stravinsky's Le Chant du Rossignol, in which 14-year-old Alicia Markova made her stage debut. During his time with the Ballets Russes, Balanchine created nine more ballets, including Apollon Musagète (1928) and Prodigal Son (1929).

Diaghilev’s death, and the subsequent collapse of the Ballets Russes occurred while Balanchine was making a movie with former Diaghilev ballerina Lydia Lopokova (the wife of British economist John Maynard Keynes). Thereafter, he staged dances for Britain's popular Cochran Revues and acted as guest ballet master for the Royal Danish Ballet, where he was engaged by its founder René Blum as ballet master for a new Ballets Russes.  For the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, Balanchine choreographed three ballets around the talents of the young Tamara Toumanova: Cotillon, La Concurrence, and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.

Later, with the backing of British social figure Edward James, Balanchine formed his own company, Les Ballets 1933.  For the company's first, and only, season, Balanchine 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). Though the troupe disbanded in a matter of months, it was during its London engagement that a meeting occurred that would change the history of 20th-century dance.

Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), a native of Boston and a graduate of Harvard University, harbored a dream: to establish a ballet company in America, made up of American dancers and independent of European repertory. Through Romola Nijinsky, whom Kirstein had assisted in writing her husband’s biography, he met Balanchine after a Les Ballets 1933 performance. It was at that moment that Kirstein outlined his vision to the choreographer, stressing the necessity of Balanchine’s involvement.  Deciding quickly in favor of a new start, Balanchine agreed to come to the United States.  He arrived in New York in October 1933.   Before forming a company, he is famously reported to have said "But first, a school."

Kirstein was prepared to support the idea of a school, and the first product of his and Balanchine’s collaboration was the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934 with the assistance of Edward M.M. Warburg, a Harvard colleague. Training dancers for New York City Ballet and companies worldwide, the School remains open to this day. Created for the School’s students, Balanchine’s first ballet choreographed in America--Serenade, to music by Tschaikovsky--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 in New York City in March 1935. After a handful of summer performances, plans for a tour fell through, but the American Ballet remained together as the resident ballet company at the Metropolitan Opera.  Due to tight funding however, 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 performed in the pit while the dancers were on the stage. The second program, in 1937, was 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 was unique in the 20th century. On their work together on Balustrade in 1940, Stravinsky 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 for a brief period. Then, 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 new works, Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial (later renamed Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2). After the tour, American Ballet Caravan disbanded, and for a period of time Balanchine pursued other endeavors in addition to teaching at the School. Between 1944 and 1946 he was engaged to revitalize Sergei Denham's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo after the departure of Leonide Massine. It was there that 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 by the Ballet Russe, which toured the country for nine months annually.

In 1946, Balanchine and Kirstein formed Ballet Society, presenting to small New York subscription-only audiences such new works as The Four Temperaments (1946) and Orpheus (1948). On the strength of 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 October 11, 1948 performance, 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 served as ballet master until his death in 1983.

An authoritative catalogue of Balanchine's output lists 465 works, beginning with La Nuit (1920) and ending with Variations for Orchestra (1982). During the time between these pieces, Balanchine 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); Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux and Liebeslieder Walzer (1960); A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962); Bugaku and Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1963); Don Quixote and Harlequinade (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. These included 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, with a three-week homage to Ravel, Balanchine staged New York City Ballet’s second festival. The 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 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 rendition of Mozartiana (a ballet originally choreographed for Les Ballets 1933), was created for the Tschaikovsky Festival of 1981. In 1982 he directed the Stravinsky Centennial Celebration.

Although it is for ballet choreography that he is most noted, Balanchine also worked in musical theater and film. On Broadway, he created dances for Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 and On Your Toes, including the groundbreaking ballet Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (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). 

Balanchine staged many of his ballets (or excerpts), and created new work, specifically for television: 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. "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 excerpts from Jewels. Most are now available on video. For the series, 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, 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 LincolnCenter" 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, the 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 preferred to call himself a craftsman rather than a creator, comparing himself to a cook or cabinetmaker (both hobbies of his). He was known throughout the dance world for the calm and collected way in which he worked with his dancers and colleagues. Of the art form, he 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. Like the music of great musicians, it can be enjoyed and understood without any verbal introduction or explanation. . . The important thing in ballet is the movement itself, as it is sound which is important in a symphony. A ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle, not the story, is the essential element. The choreographer and the dancer must remember that they reach the audience through the eye--and the audience, in its turn, must train itself to see what is performed upon the stage. It is the illusion created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a magician. If the illusion fails, the ballet fails, no matter how well a program note tells the audience that it has succeeded."

In addition to his earlier commendations of 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, Balanchine 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 hosted 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, by 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. The last major award Balanchine received, in absentia, was the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983. 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." 

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 to society:  "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 Tschaikovsky 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 classic medium for his ideal classic vision. We can never be without Balanchine. He is so central to the danse d'ecole 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 for ballet."

-Reprinted with permission from and courtesy of New York City Ballet.