George Balanchine is the undisputed choreographic genius of the twentieth century. He co-founded a major ballet dancing company and school, devised a technique and training method that produced the fastest dancers ever seen and created more than one hundred ballets. He worked along with Lincoln Kirstein, who was an intellectual and talented writer and poet.
George Balanchine was born in St. Petersburg in 1904 and was a graduate of the Imperial Theater School. He left Russia and became a ballet master at Ballets Russes with Diaghilev in Monte Carlo. During this time he choreographed his first masterpiece, Apollon Musagete, which later became known as Apollo and began his lifelong collaboration with Stravinsky.
Lincoln Kirstein (1907 – 1996) on the other hand was smitten with dance and decided that America should have a ballet of its own. He invited Balanchine to come to America to start a company. George Ballanchine first created a school that later became the School of American Ballet and he created another masterpiece called Serenade for its first students.
Balanchine and Kirstein’s companies, American Ballet Company and Ballet Caravan, struggled at first, as work was scarce for ballet dancers and they had to end up working in Hollywood or on Broadway at times.
In 1946 they formed Ballet Society and then New York City Ballet was born two years later. The company moved to its present home at Lincoln Centre in 1964.
George Balanchine was very versatile and he made beautiful tutu ballets like Symphony in C and then on the opposite end of the scale strikingly sculptural leotard ballets like Agon where there was no set. He also did lavish theme ballets and crowd pleasers like Stars and Stripes, and his Nutcracker became the gold standard of Nutcrackers’.
New York City Ballet has never been a company of stars. The star is the company and its repertory of ballets. Casting is never announced far in advance, and the orchestra doesn’t stop to allow bows at the end of a piece. The audience however always had their favourite dancers.
George Balanchine tended to marry his muses, including Maria Tallchief and Tanaquil Le Clercq, and his creative relationship with Suzanne Farrell was legendary.
George Balanchine died in 1983, and Peter Martins, who was one of the companies leading dancers of the 1970′s has taken over. Balanchine’s ballets continue to be performed throughout the world, including eventually in his native Russia.
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