George Balanchine, or originally Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze, a Russian-born choreographer, is recognized as one of the foremost choreographers in the history of concert dance. George was among a coevals of terpsichoreans who spent the old ages of World War 1 at the Imperial school of concert dance at the Mariinsky theater. George was the boy of a composer, and he besides studied music from 1921 to 1924 at the Petrograd Conservatory in St. Petersburg.
As a pupil Balanchine had already tried stage dancing. His first work in 1920 was a short piece danced to Anton Rubinsteins Nuit. He besides choreographed plants for the eventides of experimental concert dance performed by himself and his co-workers at the State school of Ballet. These early plants were criticized as excessively avant – guarde.
In 1924 Balanchine was one of four terpsichoreans who left the freshly formed Soviet Union for a circuit of Western Europe. All four terpsichoreans were invited by Impresario Sergei Diaghitev to try out for his Ballet Russes in Paris and were accepted into the company. Diaghitev besides had his oculus on Balanchine as a choreographer aswell, and after watching him present a new version of the company s Stravinsky concert dance, Le chant de Rossignol, Diaghitev hired him as concert dance maestro to replace Bronislava Nijinska. Shortly after this, Balanchine suffered a articulatio genus hurt which limited his dance and made him perpetrate to full – clip stage dancing. Balanchine served as a concert dance maestro with the Ballet Russes until the company was dissolved following Diaghitev s decease in 1929.
Balanchine returned to Paris in 1933 and formed his ain company, Les Ballets. Boston – born dance Connoisseur Lincoln Kirstein had a dream to set up an American school of concert dance that would be and even equal the established European schools. Balanchine was persuaded to travel to America and he became the choreographer for the School of American Ballet, which was founded in 1934. The school remains in operation today, preparation pupils for the New York City Ballet and companies throughout the United States and the universe.
The first concert dance Balanchine choreographed in America was Serenade, to music by Tschaikovsky. It was created as a workshop for pupils and had its universe premiere out-of-doorss on an estate in New York. In 1935, Kirstein and Balanchine set up a touring company of terpsichoreans from the school and called it The American Ballet. That same twelvemonth, the Metropolitan Opera invited the company to go its resident concert dance, with Balanchine as the concert dance Master.
Tight support permitted Balanchine to mount merely two wholly dance – oriented plants while with the Metropolitan Opera, a dance-drama version of Glucks Orfeo and Eurydice and an all-Stravinsky plan, having a resurgence of one of Balanchine s foremost ballets. Apollo. Despite the popular and critical success, Balanchine and the Metropolitan Opera separated in early 1938. Balanchine spent his following old ages learning at the school and working in musical theater and degree Fahrenheit ilms.
In 1941, he and Kirstein assembled the American Ballet Caravan, which toured South America with Balanchines new creative activities Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial. From 1944 to 1946, Balanchine was called in as artistic manager to assist regenerate the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. In 1946, Balanchine and Kirstein collaborated once more to organize Ballet Society, a company which introduced New York subscription – merely audiences to such new Balanchine works as The Four Dispositions and Stravinsky s Renard and Orpheus.
Morton Baum, president of the City Center finance commission, saw Ballet Society during one of these public presentations. He was so extremely impressed that he initiated dialogues that led to the company being invited to fall in the City Center municipal complex ( of which at the clip the New York City Drama Company and the New York City Opera were a portion of ) as the New York City Ballet. October 11 1948, the New York City Ballet was born, dancing a plan dwelling of Concerto Barocco, Orpheus, and Symphony in degree Celsius. From that clip until his decease, Balanchine served as artictc direcor for the New York City Ballet, choreographing the bulk of the productions the company has introduced since its origin. Among them were:
- Firebird -1949
- Bouree Fantasque – 1949
- Lavalse -1951
- The Nutcracker – 1954
- Ivesiana -1954
- Western Symphony -1954
- Allegro Brillante -1956
- Agon – 1957
- The Seven Deadly Sins -1958
- Stars and Stripes – 1958
- Episodes -1959
Balanchine s manner has been described as neoclassic, as reaction to the Romantic anti-classicim that was the prevalent manner in Russian and European concert dance when he had began to dance. As a choreographer, Balanchine by and large de-emphasized secret plan in his concert dances, preferring to allow dance be the star of the show, as he told an interviewer. Balanchine himself wrote: We must foremost recognize that dancing is an perfectly independent art, non simply a secondary attach toing one. I believe that it is one of the great humanistic disciplines. Like the music of great instrumentalists, it can be enjoyed and understood without any verbal debut or account.
The of import thing in concert dance is that motion itself, as it is sound which is of import in a symphonic music. A concert dance may incorporate a narrative, but ocular spectacle, non the narrative is the indispensable component. The choreographer and the terpsichorean must retrieve that they reach the audience throught the oculus – and the audience, in its bend, must develop itself to see what is performed upon the phase. It is the semblance created which convinces the audience, much as it is with the work of a prestidigitator. If the semblance fails, the concert dance fails, no affair how good a plan note tells the audience that it has succeeded.
Bibliography
- Msn Encarta hypertext transfer protocol: //encarta.msn.com/find/concise.asp? ti=OIDA5000
- School of American Ballet. Biography of George Balanchine www.sab.org/bio/biobalanchine.htm
- Robin May – The World of Ballet Great Britain, 1981
