George Balanchine (January 22, 1904 – April 30,
1983), born
Giorgi Melitonis dze Balanchivadze ( )
in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to
Georgian
parents, was one of the 20th century's foremost
choreographers, a pioneer of ballet in the
United States, co-founder and balletmaster of
New York City Ballet: his work created
modern ballet, based on his deep knowledge of classical forms and
techniques. He was a choreographer known for his musicality; he did
not illustrate music but expressed it in dance and worked
extensively with
Igor Stravinsky,
his contemporary.
Georgia and Russia
Balanchine's father, noted Georgian composer
Meliton Balanchivadze (1862–1937), was
one of the founders of the Georgian Opera. George's brother,
Andria Balanchivadze
(1906–1992), became a well-known Georgian composer. As a child,
Balanchine was not particularly interested in ballet. However, his
mother possessed a deep love for the art and had the young Giorgi
audition with his sister, who shared her mother's passion for
ballet. Since his family was mostly comprised of composers and
soldiers, it was said that Balanchine could always follow family
tradition and enroll in the military if it turned out he wasn't
talented at dancing.
In 1913 (at age nine) Balanchine moved from rural Finland to Saint
Petersburg and was enrolled in the
Imperial Ballet School, principal
school of the
Imperial Ballet, where
he studied under
Pavel Gerdt and Samuil
Andrianov (Pavel's son-in-law). With the victory of the Bolsheviks
in the
revolution, the
school was disbanded as an offensive symbol of the Tsarist regime.
To survive the privation and
martial law
of this period, Balanchine played the piano — for food, not for
money — at cabarets and silent movie theatres. Eventually the
Imperial Ballet School reopened with greatly reduced funding.
After
graduating with honours in 1921, Balanchine enrolled in the
Petrograd
Conservatory
in tandem with his corps
de ballet duties at The State Academic Theatre for Opera and
Ballet (formerly the State Theater of
Opera and Ballet). In 1922 when Balanchine was eighteen,
he married
Tamara Geva, a fifteen year
old dancer. His studies at the conservatory included advanced
piano, music theory, counterpoint, harmony, and composition.
Balanchine graduated from the conservatory in 1923, and he was a
member of the corps until 1924.
While still in his teens, Balanchine choreographed his first work,
a
pas de deux called
La Nuit
(1920, music by
Anton Rubinstein).
This was followed by another duet,
Enigma, danced in bare
feet. In 1923, with fellow dancers, he formed a small ensemble, the
Young Ballet. The choreography proved too experimental for the new
authorities, who strongly encouraged the group to disband.
On a trip
to Weimar
Republic
with the
Soviet State Dancers, Balanchine, Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, and Nicholas Efimov
defected to the west and fled to Paris
in
1924. Serge Diaghilev,
another Russian exile, asked Balanchine to join his
Ballets Russes as a choreographer.
Ballets Russes
Diaghilev soon promoted Balanchine to
balletmaster of the company and allowed him to
develop his own choreography. Between 1924 and Diaghilev's death in
1929, Balanchine created nine ballets, as well as smaller
choreographies. Unfortunately, he also suffered a serious knee
injury at this time, which limited his dancing and effectively
ended his performance career. In 1926 Balanchine and Tamara Geva
divorced. Shortly after, Balanchine commenced a relationship with
dancer
Alexandra Danilova which
lasted a few years.
After Diaghilev's death the Ballets Russes fell into disarray.
Balanchine
began to stage dances for the Cochran Revues in London, and was
retained by the Royal Danish
Ballet in Copenhagen
as guest ballet master. He returned to the
Ballets Russes when it settled in Monte Carlo
, resuming his post as ballet master for the new
Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo, and choreographed three ballets: Cotillon, La Concurrence, and Le Bourgeois
Gentilhomme. His muse in Monte Carlo was the young
Tamara Toumanova, one of the
original "
Baby Ballerinas".
When
René Blum passed
control of the company to
Colonel W. de
Basil, Balanchine again left the Ballets Russes. This time he
formed his own company, Les Ballets 1933, with the financial
backing of
Edward James and Diaghilev's
former secretary and companion
Boris
Kochno as an advisor. The company lasted only a couple of
months in 1933, but in that time several new choreographies were
conceived by Balanchine, including artistic collaborations with
Bertolt Brecht,
Kurt Weill,
Pavel
Tchelitchew,
Darius Milhaud, and
Henri Sauguet.
It was after a performance by Les Ballets 1933 that
Lincoln Kirstein, an American arts patron
with a dream of establishing a ballet company in the U.S., met and
quickly persuaded Balanchine to move to the United States. By
October of that year, Balanchine had landed overseas for the first
time and launched his influence on the character of American ballet
and dance.
United States
Upon arriving in the United States, Balanchine insisted that his
first project would be to establish a ballet school. With the
support of Lincoln Kirstein and Edward M.M. Warburg, the
School of American Ballet opened
its doors to students on January 2, 1934, less than 3 months after
Balanchine arrived in the U.S. The students premiered
Serenade at the Warburg's summer
estate later that year. During the 1930s and 1940s, in between his
ballet activities, Balanchine worked as a choreographer for musical
theater (with such notables as
Richard
Rodgers,
Lorenz Hart and
Vernon Duke). He greatly admired
Fred Astaire, describing him as "the most
interesting, the most inventive, the most elegant dancer of our
times... you see a little bit of Astaire in everybody's dancing—a
pause here, a move there. It was all Astaire originally."
[29934]
In 1935, Balanchine formed a professional company called the
American Ballet. After failing to
mount a tour, the company began performing at the
Metropolitan Opera House. In 1936
Balanchine was able to stage only
Orfeo and Eurydice and in 1937 an
evening of dance choreographed to the music of
Igor Stravinsky.
He moved
the company to Hollywood
in 1938. He rented a white two-story house
with Kopeikine on North Fairfax Avenue not far from Hollywood
Boulevard. The company reconvened as the
American Ballet Caravan and toured
North and
South America. It folded after several years.
From 1944 to 1946, Balanchine served as resident choreographer for
the
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
Soon he formed a new dance company, the
Ballet Society, again with the generous
help of Lincoln Kirstein. After it had several successful
performances, and unsuccessful ones, the
New York City Center for Music and
Drama offered the company the position of resident company at
the center. With that arrangement, in 1948 Ballet Society became
the
New York City Ballet.
Balanchine's 1954 staging of
The
Nutcracker, performed every year in New York City during
the
Christmas season, has made the
ballet a Christmas tradition in the United States, and a
money-making tradition for most of the companies that perform
it.
In the 1960s, Balanchine fell deeply in love with the young dancer
Suzanne Farrell. He created many
ballets for her, including
Don
Quixote (in which he played the
Don and Farrell
danced
Dulcinea), and the
Diamonds section of the
ballet
Jewels. Some
ballerinas, including his former wife
Maria Tallchief, quit, citing Farrell as the
reason. Balanchine obtained a
Mexican
divorce from then-wife Tanaquil Le Clercq, only to discover
Farrell had married NYCB dancer
Paul
Mejia. In 1970 both Farrell and her husband quit the company.
They moved
to Brussels
and joined
Maurice Béjart's dance
company. In 1975, Farrell returned to dance with the
NYCB.
In 1978, the first year of the new national award, George
Balanchine received the Kennedy Center Honors Award.
In 1983 after years of illness, Balanchine died of
Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease,
diagnosed only after his death. He first showed symptoms in 1978
when he began losing his balance while dancing. As the disease
progressed, his equilibrium, eyesight and hearing deteriorated. By
1982 he was incapacitated. He died the following year at the age of
79 in New York City, NY, USA. In his last years, Balanchine also
suffered from
angina and underwent
heart bypass surgery.
After his divorce from Tamara Geva, Balanchine married and divorced
three more times. All his wives were dancers, women who were his
muses:
Vera Zorina (December 1938–1946),
Maria Tallchief (1946–1952), and
Tanaquil LeClerq (1952–1969), as
was his girlfriend,
Alexandra
Danilova (1926–1933). He had no children.
Choreographed work
for the Ballets Russes
- Le Chant du Rossignol (The Song of the
Nightingale) (1925)
- Jack in the Box (1926)
- Pastorale (1926)
- Barabau (1926)
- La Chatte (1927)
- Le Triomphe de Neptune (1927)
- Apollo (1928)
- The Prodigal Son
(1929)
- Le Bal (1929)
for the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo
- Cotillon (1932)
- Concurrence (1932)
- Balustrade (1941)
- Danses Concertantes (1944 and 1972)
- La Sonnambula
(1946)
for Les Ballets 1933
- The Seven Deadly Sins (1933)
- Errante (1933)
- Les Songes (1933)
- Fastes (1933)
for the American Ballet
- Alma Mater (1934)
- Les Songes (Dreams) (1934)
- Mozartiana (1934)
- Serenade (1935)
- Errante (1935)
- Reminiscence (1935)
- Jeu de cartes
(variously, Card Game or The Card Party)
(1937)
- Le Baiser de la Fée (originally titled The Fairy's
Kiss) (1937)
for Broadway
- ::This dramatic ballet served as the climax of this musical
production and has subsequently been presented as a stand-alone
piece; however, several of the sung numbers in the show featured
dance routines as well, notably the title number.
for American Ballet Caravan
- Encounter (1936)
- Ballet Imperial (later referred to as the
Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2) (1941)
- Concerto Barocco (1941)
for the Ballet del Teatro de Colón
- Mozart Violin Concerto (1942)
for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
- Song of Norway (1944)
- Danses Concertantes (1944)
- Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1944)
- Pas de Deux (Grand adagio) (1945)
- The Night Shadow (1946)
- Raymonda (1946)
for the Ballet Theatre
for the Ballet Society
- The Four
Temperaments (1946)
- L'enfant et Les Sortilèges (The Spellbound
Child) (1946)
- Haieff Divertimento (1947)
- Symphonie Concertante (1947)
- Orpheus (1948)
for the Paris Opera Balle
for the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas
- Minkus Pas De Trois (1948)
Le Lourve de fait(1948)
for New York City Ballet
Notes
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