4.9.3. Who was Balanchine?
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This article is from the Ballet and Modern Dance FAQ, by Tom Parsons twp@panix.com with numerous contributions by others.
4.9.3. Who was Balanchine?
George Balanchine (1904-1983), born Georgi Melitonovich
Balanchivadze, was trained at the Imperial school in St Petersburg. He
left the Soviet Union in 1920 and joined Diaghilev's company in Monte
Carlo. (It was Diaghilev who had him change his name, on the grounds that
Balanchivadze would be too much for French audiences.) In 1932, he came
to the United States at the suggestion, and with the assistance, of Lincoln
Kirstein. His first act in the United States was to found the School of
American Ballet. In the 1930s he made a name for himself choreographing
for musical comedies. In 1947, he and Kirstein set up Ballet Society; the
following year this became the New York City Ballet. He was ballet master
at NYCB until his death.
(The ballet world owes an immense debt to the vision of Morton Baum
of the City Center, who was instrumental in establishing the New York City
Ballet. He dropped in one evening to see what Ballet Society, who had
rented the City Center, was up to, saw the Stravinsky/Balanchine "Orpheus",
and went to Lincoln Kirstein with a proposal. Kirstein promised him a
world-class company, and Kirstein and Balanchine delivered.)
With Balanchine, the music came first. He is remembered for saying
that he wanted us to *see* the music and to *hear* the dance. His ballets
are mostly plotless, although the structure of a piece or of a pas de deux
frequently has an emotional subtext that holds it together and gives it
a meaning beyond merely beautiful dancing (if beautiful dancing can be
said to be "mere"!). But detailed narrative was always distasteful to
Balanchine. He used to say, "There are no sisters-in-law in ballet,"
meaning that a complicated information of this sort could not be conveyed
by dance.
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