By the time of his death on April 30, 1983, George Balanchine had created over 400 works and was recognized as a 20th-century master alongside Picasso and Stravinsky. Here is the story of how the man born Georg Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1904 went on to become the artistic director and primary choreographer of the New York City Ballet.The man who would one day rank among the greatest choreographers in the history of ballet came to the United States in late 1933 following an early career throughout Europe. His trip came at the invitation of Lincoln Kirstein, a Boston born dance connoisseur whose dream it was to establish an American school of ballet and company equivalent to those in Europe.
The first result of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration was the School of American Ballet, founded in early 1934. It later became known as the premier American ballet academy and breeding ground for the New York City Ballet, which Balanchine and Kirstein were to establish together after 14 more years, in 1948. Balanchine’s first ballet in this country was "Serenade," set to music by Tchaikovsky, which was premiered outdoors on the estate of a friend near White Plains, New York, as a workshop performance by students of the school.
The first result of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration was the School of American Ballet, founded in early 1934. It later became known as the premier American ballet academy and breeding ground for the New York City Ballet, which Balanchine and Kirstein were to establish together after 14 more years, in 1948. Balanchine’s first ballet in this country was "Serenade," set to music by Tchaikovsky, which was premiered outdoors on the estate of a friend near White Plains, New York, as a workshop performance by students of the school.
In 1935, Balanchine and Kirstein set up a touring company of dancers from the school and called it the American Ballet. That same year the Metropolitan Opera invited the company to become its resident ballet, with Balanchine as the Met’s ballet master. On October 11, 1948, Morton Baum, chairman of the City Center finance committee, saw Ballet Society, formed two years earlier by Balanchine and Kirstein, in a City Center Theater program that included "Orpheus," "Serenade" and "Symphony in C" (a ballet Balanchine had created for the Paris Opera Ballet under the title "Le Palais de Cristal" the previous year).
Baum was so impressed that he negotiated to have the company join the City Center municipal complex. Balanchine’s talents had found a permanent home. That home was to become known as New York City Ballet and Balanchine would serve as its artistic director until his death in 1983.
With a company initially strapped for cash, Balanchine eschewed elaborate costumes and sets and presented his dancers in practice clothes, an innovation he continued to use for selected ballets long after money was no longer an issue. Among the “practice-clothes ballets” in the Balanchine repertory: "Agon," "Episodes," "Ivesiana," "Kammermusic No. 2," and more than 20 Stravinsky/ Balanchine collaborations.
At this time, he also choreographed "The Nutcracker," New York City Ballet’s first full-length ballet and an enduring popular success. Although it took a long while for New York City Ballet to become a popular company, by the time Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts opened in 1964, Balanchine’s reputation was established and he was ready to reach a larger audience on a larger stage.
To many observers who followed New York City Ballet through the lean years, the opulent and elaborate productions that began to emerge at the New York State Theater must have seemed out of character. For those, however, who realized that Balanchine had dreamed of creating for America what the Maryinsky had been for Russia, the development was perfectly logical, and ballets such as "Don Quixote," "Union Jack," "Jewels," and "Vienna Waltzes" soon followed.
The legacy left by Balanchine when he died remains as profound as it is extensive.
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More on the link between PNB and Balanchine:
New York Times
September 25, 2007
Dance Review | Pacific Northwest Ballet
An Idiomatic Balanchine, Walking the Walk in Seattle
By ALASTAIR MACAULAY
SEATTLE, Sept. 23 — Since the death of George Balanchine in 1983, his choreography has become the lingua franca of international ballet. Companies that pride themselves on having a “Giselle” or a “Nutcracker” unlike, in major or minor ways, those of other companies have acquired from the Balanchine Trust versions of “Serenade” or “The Four Temperaments” that are, in costume, décor and dance text, virtually identical to those being danced by other companies around the world. What is true around the globe is more intensely true within the United States, where Balanchine lived and worked from 1934 on.
This is cause for applause. The sheer danciness of most Balanchine ballets gives audiences a basically exhilarating time. And then there are the deeper pleasures of the dances’ multilayered response to music, their brilliance of construction in space and time, their power of drama and expression, and the way their all-exposing style makes the difference between one dancer and another a fascinating matter.
Pacific Northwest Ballet, starting its 2007-8 home season in Seattle with an all-Balanchine triple bill, is an example of how the generations are changing. For decades the company was run by Kent Stowell and Francia Russell, who both had studied with and danced for Balanchine. (Ms. Russell became one of the most noted stagers of his ballets during his lifetime.) It is now directed by Peter Boal, whose first season as a professional dancer at New York City Ballet was in the year of Balanchine’s death.
Mr. Boal and his City Ballet generation, which includes Damian Woetzel (now artistic director of the Vail International Dance Festival) and Nikolaj Hübbe (starting in 2008, artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet), may be expected to help shape our view of Balanchine.
So it’s good that Pacific Northwest’s all-Balanchine program of “Square Dance,” “Prodigal Son” and “Ballet Imperial,” which I saw on Saturday afternoon and evening, was entirely idiomatic. Even when a few performers looked unready, the dancing had the extra quality of utterance that can occur when, say, an opera is sung by artists in their own language.
The orchestra, alternately conducted by Allan Dameron and Stewart Kershaw, is excellent (though Mark Salman, when playing the concerto’s solo part in “Ballet Imperial” for the second time in a day, had a few blurs). A number of New York City Ballet dancers, with yet more Balanchine experience, have recently joined the company: these include Carla Körbes, Miranda Weese and Seth Orza.
But Pacific Northwest has other dancers with the allegro technique for “Ballet Imperial” and “Square Dance,” whose lead ballerina roles are among the most arduous in the repertory. No, neither Kaori Nakamura (matinee) nor Noelani Pantastico (evening) can efface memories of Merrill Ashley in her prime in “Square Dance.” (Twenty-eight years after I last saw her dance this, her image still shines across the decades like a beacon.) But their brio, relishing the strong pulse and musical thrill of this Vivaldi-Corelli ballet, provided the most irresistible moments of the triple bill.
The company recently presented “Square Dance” at the Vail festival, at one performance with a traditional square-dance caller (as in Balanchine’s original 1957 production, “See those feet go wickety-whack!”), at another without (as in his 1976 revision). These Seattle performances did without.
Though the New York City Ballet “Square Dance” I saw in April had in some respects more technical polish at corps level (and, from Mr. Hübbe, a surpassingly eloquent interpretation of the lead male role), these Seattle performances were delivered with much more of the needed vitality. Ms. Nakamura danced with a tingling glow of excitement and challenge, Ms. Pantastico with a more relaxed delight.
Benjamin Griffiths (matinee) brought aplomb and attentiveness to the male role; Jonathan Porretta (evening), more mature, had more electricity. The ballet itself looked mint-fresh. I came out laughing at the way Balanchine matched Corelli’s music with steps that go back to the 18th century: the entrechat-quatre (“wickety-whack”) and the gargouillade look inventively modernist.
Prokofiev objected to Balanchine’s choreography for the original 1929 Diaghilev production of “The Prodigal Son”: He wanted more naturalism. Balanchine seems to have had his revenge by etching his movement into the music so that you can’t hear the score without seeing his choreography.
Though neither Mr. Porretta (matinee) nor Lucien Postlewaite (evening) had the psychological force to carry the audience through the ballet in a single vast arc, both made strong impressions in each of its three scenes. The dark-haired Mr. Porretta was more explosive, the fair-haired Mr. Postlewaite more eventually vulnerable.
Lindsi Dec (matinee) and Ariana Lallone (evening) were both imposing, inscrutable Sirens: at each performance, I loved the startling moment when the Siren, soon after being carried onto the stage, like a mysterious totem, high above the ground, suddenly swoops to the floor to seize greedily on whatever has been dropped from the Prodigal’s pockets.
In “Ballet Imperial” the stager has a wider range of choices than usual with Balanchine ballets: That title or “Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2”? Tutus or shifts? With mime and sauts de basque or without? Ms. Russell in 1997 gave Pacific Northwest a production mainly along the lines of Balanchine’s 1964 New York City Ballet staging, the décor suggesting an interior of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg; the women in tutus; mime gestures only hinted at toward the end of the slow movement; the third movement taken at a lick at which sauts de basque are impossible.
The look is both grand and athletic. Martin Pakledinaz’s costumes establish hierarchical distinction between the roles but, oddly, make the two demi-soloists brighter than the prima ballerina.
The prima role here is nonpareil in its technical challenges. Miranda Weese (matinee), who brings to it both beauty of physique and a marvelously unforced style, looks to be working her way back into form. She can deliver all the steps, but her line and dynamics aren’t consistently bright. Ms. Nakamura (evening), though less fine in terms of physical gifts and stylistic finesse, has more sparkle and musical bite, and her energy suggests that she is ready for yet more as the ballet ends.
Neither Saturday performance quite matched the dance flair of the top accounts I’ve seen (among them two last spring at New York City Ballet), but there wasn’t an instant when Pacific Northwest gave us anything less than “Ballet Imperial.” The company’s dancing, naturally lyrical and lively, here was at its most spacious and piquant.
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