George Balanchine

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George Balanchine. (credit: ©1983 Martha Swope)

(born Jan. 22, 1904, St. Petersburg, Russia — died April 30, 1983, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Russian-born U.S. choreographer. After studying at the Imperial Ballet School, he left the Soviet Union in 1925 to join the Ballets Russes, where his choreography of Apollo (1928) exemplified the spare neoclassical style that became his trademark. His work impressed the impresario Lincoln Kirstein, who in 1933 invited "Mr. B." to form the School of American Ballet and its performing group, the American Ballet. The group became the Metropolitan Opera's resident company (1935 – 38) but disbanded in 1941. In 1946 Kirstein and Balanchine founded the Ballet Society, from which emerged the New York City Ballet in 1948. Balanchine created more than 150 works for the company, including The Nutcracker (1954), Don Quixote (1965), and Jewels (1967), and he also choreographed musicals and operas. He collaborated closely with the composer Igor Stravinsky, setting more than 30 works to his music. Balanchine's work remains in the repertoires of many companies worldwide, and he is widely considered the greatest choreographer of the 20th century.

For more information on George Balanchine, visit Britannica.com.

Balanchine, George [né Gyorgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze] (1904–83), choreographer. Born in St. Petersburg, he worked with Diaghilev and Colonel de Basil and also choreographed several London revues before settling in New York where he founded the School for American Ballet and organized the New York City Ballet Company. He was probably the greatest of 20th‐century choreographers. In his best work, Balanchine moved away from traditional ballet storytelling, and, while retaining the basic dance idioms, attempted to abstract the essence of the music around which he often created his masterpieces. His pioneering work was rarely in evidence in his superb Broadway contributions, which nonetheless displayed what ballet historian Robert Lawrence called a “crispness of phrasing, musicality of movement, and feeling for absolute design.” His first Broadway assignment was the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. In the same year he created the first ballet conceived as an integral dramatic part of a musical with “Slaughter on 10th Avenue” in On Your Toes. He later choreographed Babes in Arms (1937), I Married an Angel (1938), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), Keep Off the Grass (1940), Louisiana Purchase (1940), Cabin in the Sky (1940), The Lady Comes Across (1942), Rosalinda (1942), What's Up (1943), Dream with Music (1944), Song of Norway (1944), Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston (1945), The Chocolate Soldier (1947), Where's Charley? (1948), and Courtin' Time (1951). Biography: Balanchine, Bernard Taper, revised 1983.

The Russian-born American choreographer George Balanchine (1904-1983) formed and established the classical style of contemporary ballet in America. His choreography emphasized form rather than content, technique rather than interpretation.

George Balanchine, born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg, Russia, on January 22, 1904, was the son of a famous Russian composer. At the age of 10, he entered the Imperial Ballet School, where he learned the technically precise and athletic Russian dancing style. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Balanchine continued his training in a new government theater. In 1921 he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music to study piano while continuing work in ballet at the State Academy of Opera and Ballet. He used a group of dancers from the school to present his earliest choreographed works. One of the students was Tamara Gevergeyeva, later known as Tamara Geva, whom Balanchine married in 1922. She was the first of his four wives, who were all dancers. In 1924, when the group was invited to tour Europe as the Soviet State Dancers, Balanchine defected.

He was discovered in 1925 in Paris by the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev. When Diaghilev's most famous choreographer, Nijinska, left his ballet company, Balanchine took her place; at the age of 21 he was the ballet master and principal choreographer of the most famous ballet corps in the world. It was Diaghilev who changed the Russian's name to Balanchine. Balanchine did 10 ballets for him. When Diaghilev died and the company disbanded in 1929, Balanchine moved from one company to another until in 1933 he formed his own company, Les Ballets. That year he met Lincoln Kirstein, a young, rich American, who invited him to head the new School of American Ballet in New York City.

With the School of American Ballet and later with the New York City Ballet, Balanchine established himself as one of the world's leading contemporary classical choreographers. Almost single-handedly he brought academic excellence and quality performance to the American ballet, which had been merely a weak copy of the great European companies.

In 1934 the American Ballet Company became the resident company at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Audiences were treated to three new Balanchine ballets: Apollo, The Card Party, and The Fairy's Kiss - works that revolutionized American classical ballet style. But Balanchine's daring ballet style and the Metropolitan's conservative artistic policy caused a breach that ultimately terminated the alliance in 1938. His work in the next several years included choreography for Broadway shows and films and two ballets created in 1941 for the American Ballet Caravan, a touring group: Ballet Imperial and Concerto Barocco.

In 1946, following Kirstein's return from service in World War II, he and Balanchine established a new company, the Ballet Society. Initially financed by and limited to subscribers, in 1948 it was opened to the public. The performance of Balanchine's Orpheus was so successful that his company was invited to establish permanent residence at the New York City Center. It did so and was renamed the New York City Ballet. Finally, Balanchine had a school, a company, and a permanent theater. He developed the New York City Ballet into the foremost classical company in America, and to some critics, in the world. Here he created some of his most enduring works, including his Nutcracker and Agon. After the New York City Ballet moved to Lincoln Center's New York State Theatre in 1964, Balanchine added such wide-ranging works as Don Quixote and Union Jack.

Balanchine's choreography was not tied to the virtuosity of the ballerina, the plot, or the decor but to pure dance. The drama was in the dance, and movement was solely related to the music - a perfect dance equivalent to music. For Balanchine, the movement of the body alone created artistic excitement and evoked images of fantasy or reality. He emphasized balance, control, precision, and ease of movement. He rejected the traditional sweet style of romantic ballet, as well as the more acrobatic style of theatrical ballet, in favor of a neoclassic style stripped to its essentials - motion, movement, and music. His dancers became precision instruments of the choreographer, whose ideas and designs came from the music itself.

Balanchine died in New York City on April 30, 1983. Summing up his career in the New York Times, Anna Kisselgoff said, "More than anyone else, he elevated choreography in ballet to an independent art… In an age when ballet had been dependent on a synthesis of spectacle, storytelling, décor, mime, acting and music, and only partly on dancing, George Balanchine insisted that the dance element come first."

Further Reading

Bernard Taper, Balanchine (1963), is a popular biography. Balanchine is given extensive coverage in George Amberg, Ballet in America: The Emergence of an American Art (1949); Olga Maynard, The American Ballet (1959); Joan Lawson, A History of Ballet and Its Makers (1964); and Ferdinando Reyna, A Concise History of Ballet (trans. 1965).

Additional Sources

Buckle, Richard, and John Taras, George Balanchine: Ballet Master (Random House, 1988).

Mason, Francis, I Remember Balanchine: Recollections of the Ballet Master by Those Who Knew Him (Doubleday, 1991).

New York Times (May 1, 1983).

Balanchine, George (orig. Georgi Balanchivadze;b St Petersburg, 22 Jan. 1904, d New York, 30 Apr. 1983). Russian-US dancer, choreographer, and ballet director. Arguably the single most influential figure in 20th-century ballet and widely regarded as the chief architect of classical ballet in the US. He is most closely associated with New York City Ballet which he founded with Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine trained at the Petrograd Ballet School (1914-21) and joined the GATOB (as the Kirov was then known) in 1921. He began choreographing in 1920 while still a student, exhibiting an independence and unconventionality that would soon get him into trouble with his superiors. In 1924, while touring Germany with a company of Russian dancers and singers, he auditioned for, and was hired by, Diaghilev. Within a year Balanchine became chief choreographer of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. It was here he met Stravinsky, who was to become a life-long collaborator. In 1928 Balanchine created Apollo (originally known as Apollon musagète, to Stravinsky's score) which is generally regarded as the world's first neo-classical ballet; in 1929 he made Prodigal Son, another early masterpiece. After the death of Diaghilev in 1929, Balanchine spent several years working with various companies in Europe, including a brief spell as artistic director of Les Ballets 1933, which he founded with Boris Kochno. Also in 1933 came Kirstein's invitation to go to America. There Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet (1934) and out of it grew the American Ballet, which made its first appearance in New York in 1935. Balanchine's first ballet in the US, Serenade (1934), was made for his students; it has since become a signature work of New York City Ballet and a favourite with companies around the world. The American Ballet was resident at the Metropolitan Opera House (1935-8), after which it was disbanded. For the next few years Balanchine worked in Hollywood and on Broadway musicals. The American Ballet was revived as American Ballet Caravan for a S. American tour in 1941. In 1946 Balanchine and Kirstein founded Ballet Society, which two years later became New York City Ballet, based at the City Center. In 1950 NYCB made its first European visit (to London); in 1962 it went to the USSR. In 1964 NYCB moved to the New York State Theater in Lincoln Center, which was built to Balanchine's specifications. His artistic leadership of NYCB turned it into one of the foremost companies in the world and the ballets he made for it are among the most outstanding creations of the 20th century.

Although most of his time and energy was devoted to NYCB, Balanchine also worked with European companies and he helped to nurture regional ballet companies in the US. His great achievement was to take the classical ballet of his St Petersburg roots and redefine it in a totally different—and plotless—context. He made many forays into outright experimentation (not all of them successful) and his attempts at narrative dance were generally ill-fated. But his ability to honour the technical sophistication and sweeping elegance of 19th-century Russian classicism while stripping it of its artifice, plot, and theatricality (even to the extent of eschewing the elaboration of sets and costumes) led to the development of neo-classicism, a form which married the essence of Russian ballet to the modernist and dynamic sensibilities of an American audience. Works such as The Four Temperaments, Theme and Variations, Symphony in C, Ballet Imperial, Agon, and Symphony in Three Movements are among the greatest ballets ever made. In his work he gave equal weight to ensemble and soloists alike, and he rejected (for the most part) the star system he had been brought up with.

At the heart of every Balanchine ballet is one simple belief: that dance is music brought to physical life. Balanchine's musical credentials were impeccable: he studied piano from the age of 5 and as a teenager continued his musical education by studying theory and piano at the Petrograd Conservatory of Music. His choice of scores was adventurous and ground-breaking (from Bach to Xenakis). Balanchine married four of his ballerinas: Tamara Geva, Vera Zorina, Maria Tallchief, and Tanaquil LeClercq. A brief list of Balanchine's ballets (he made more than 200) includes: for Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo Cotillon (mus. Chabrier, 1932) and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (mus. R. Strauss, 1932); for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes Le Chant du rossignol (mus. Stravinsky, 1925), Apollon musagète (Apollo) (mus. Stravinsky, 1928), Le Bal (mus. Rieti, 1929), and The Prodigal Son (mus. Prokofiev, 1929); for Les Ballets 1933 Mozartiana (mus. Tchaikovsky) and The Seven Deadly Sins (mus. Weill); for American Ballet Serenade (mus. Tchaikovsky, 1934), Le Baiser de la fée (mus. Stravinsky, 1937), and Jeu de cartes (mus. Stravinsky, 1937); for American Ballet Caravan Concerto Barocco (mus. Bach, 1941) and Ballet Imperial (mus. Tchaikovsky, 1941); for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Danses concertantes (mus. Stravinsky, 1944); for Ballet Society The Four Temperaments (mus. Hindemith, 1946) and Orpheus (mus. Stravinsky, 1948); for Paris Opera Le Palais de cristal (later Symphony in C, mus. Bizet, 1947); for American Ballet Theatre Theme and Variations (mus. Tchaikovsky, 1947). The following ballets were all made for New York City Ballet: Firebird (mus. Stravinsky, 1949), La Valse (mus. Ravel, 1951), Scotch Symphony (mus. Mendelssohn, 1952), Nutcracker (mus. Tchaikovsky, 1954), Western Symphony (mus. Kay, 1954), Pas de dix (mus. Glazunov, 1955), Allegro brillante (mus. Tchaikovsky, 1956), Divertimento No. 15 (mus. Mozart, 1956), Agon (mus. Stravinsky, 1957), Square Dance (mus. Vivaldi and Corelli, 1957), Stars and Stripes (mus. Sousa-Kay, 1958), The Seven Deadly Sins (mus. Weill, new version 1958), Episodes (mus. Webern, 1959), Liebeslieder Walzer (mus. Brahms, 1960), A Midsummer Night's Dream (mus. Mendelssohn, 1962), Bugaku (mus. Mayuzumi, 1963), Movements for Piano and Orchestra (mus. Stravinsky, 1963), Don Quixote (mus. Nabokov, 1965), Variations (mus. Stravinsky, 1966), Jewels (mus. Fauré, Stravinsky, and Tchaikovsky, 1967), Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (mus. R. Rodgers, 1968), Who Cares? (mus. Gershwin, 1970), Symphony in Three Movements (mus. Stravinsky, 1972), Violin Concerto (mus. Stravinsky, 1972), Duo Concertant (mus. Stravinsky, 1972), Pulcinella (with Robbins, mus. Stravinsky, 1972), Coppélia (with Danilova, mus. Delibes, 1974), Vienna Waltzes (mus. J. Strauss, Lehár, and R. Strauss, 1977), Kammermusik No. 2 (mus. Hindemith, 1978), and Davidsbündlertänze (mus. Schumann, 1980). For New York City Opera he made Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (mus. R. Strauss, 1979) and Dido and Aeneas (mus. Purcell, 1979). Broadway musicals include On Your Toes (1936) and The Boys from Syracuse (1938); films include The Goldwyn Follies (1938), On Your Toes (1939), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1966); television includes Stravinsky's Noah and the Flood (1962). Co-author (with F. Mason) of Balanchine's Complete Stories of the Great Ballets (1954, 1977). Awarded the Légion d'honneur (1975), Order of Dannebrog (1978), and US Medal of Freedom (1983). In 1983 the George Balanchine Foundation was established ‘as an educational foundation to further the work and aesthetic of George Balanchine’. One of its most important projects is the Archive of Lost Choreography, which seeks to retrieve Balanchine choreography no longer in the current repertoire.

(1904-1983), choreographer and founder-director of the New York City Ballet. Born in St. Petersburg and a graduate of the former Imperial Theatrical School, Balanchine created his first dances in the experimentalist era that followed the Russian Revolution. From the first, he was recognized as a major talent, provocative and avant-garde in his reworking of classical movement. In 1924, he left Russia permanently and in the next decade choreographed for émigré companies, including Diaghilev's famed Ballets Russes and his own Les Ballets 1933.

In 1934, at the invitation of Lincoln Kirstein, the department store heir and jack-of-all-arts who now became his indefatigable patron, Balanchine settled in the United States. Initially, their efforts to establish a permanent American company met with little success, although the School of American Ballet, founded soon after Balanchine's arrival, survived to become the country's most influential training academy, which it remains today. The organization of the Ballet Society in 1946 and, two years later, of the New York City Ballet brought a happy reversal of fortune. With a permanent company at his disposal, Balanchine now embarked on the adventure that secured his position as the foremost choreographer of twentieth-century ballet.

The Balanchine style that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s rested firmly on classical technique, even as it wed this technique to distinctly modernist concerns. Although Balanchine choreographed a number of story ballets (his 1954 Nutcracker started the rage for this Christmas entertainment), his greatest works dispensed with narrative and scenery. Abstract, embedding their themes in daring and original images, they insisted on the primacy of movement in the creation of dance meaning. Thus, in Theme and Variations (1947), Symphony in C (1948), and Gounod Symphony (1958), he honored classical style by transforming it: speeding it up, complicating it, ridding it of inessentials. Balanchine's "leotard" ballets, so-called because the dancers wore practice clothes, proved even more revolutionary. Stark, anguished, set to music by Hindemith, Stravinsky, and Webern, they charted new territory in their exploration of sexuality. Created in the postwar years, The Four Temperaments (1946), Agon (1957), and Episodes (1959) remain powerful statements of modernity.

Balanchine's influence over American ballet has been immense. Under his direction, the New York City Ballet became a great international company. He gave his works freely to American regional companies, especially those directed by former nycb dancers, thereby creating a body of work analogous to a national repertory. He left a definitive mark on ballet technique, stressing speed and definition, especially in the use of the legs and feet, characteristics now associated with American ballet generally. "Ballet is woman," he was fond of saying, and in countless roles, he displayed his mastery of the female dance and his ability to develop female talent, above all the slim, musical, technically accomplished "Balanchine ballerina." He formed many outstanding dancers, including Lew Christensen, Maria Tallchief, Tanaquil LeClerq, Melissa Hayden, Edward Villella, Allegra Kent, Jacques D'Amboise, Gelsey Kirkland, Merrill Ashley, and Suzanne Farrell, regarded by many as his last and greatest muse.

Bibliography:

Lincoln Kirstein, The New York City Ballet (1973); Bernard Taper, Balanchine: A Biography, rev. ed. (1984).

Author:

Lynn Garafola

See also Dance.

See also category: Ballets by George Balanchine

George Balanchine
Born	Georgy Melitonovich Balanchivadze January 22, 1904(1904-01-22) St. Petersburg, Russia
Died	April 30, 1983 (aged 79) New York City
Occupation	choreographer, actor, director
Years active	1929 - 1983
Spouse(s)	Tamara Geva (1921-1926) Vera Zorina (1938-1946) Maria Tallchief (1946-1952) Tanaquil LeClerq (1952-1969)

George Balanchine (January 22, 1904 – April 30, 1983), born Giorgi Melitonis dze Balanchivadze (Georgian: გიორგი მელიტონის ძე ბალანჩივაძე) in Saint Petersburg, Russia, to Georgian parents,^[1] 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.^[2] 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.

Contents 1 Georgia and Russia 2 Ballets Russes 3 United States 4 Choreographed work 4.1 for the Ballets Russes 4.2 for the Ballets Russes de Monte-Carlo 4.3 for Les Ballets 1933 4.4 for the American Ballet 4.5 for Broadway 4.6 for American Ballet Caravan 4.7 for the Ballet del Teatro de Colón 4.8 for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo 4.9 for the Ballet Theatre 4.10 for the Ballet Society 4.11 for the Paris Opera Balle 4.12 for the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas 4.13 for New York City Ballet 4.14 for New York City Opera 5 Notes 6 Further reading 7 See also 8 Articles 8.1 obituaries 9 External links 9.1 Listening

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).^[3] 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.^[4]

Ballets Russes

Men of the Ballet Russe 2007 Gala Tribute "To cross time and oceans with Balanchine and Diaghilev your oldest friends, is how to live one's life."

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

Architect Philip Johnson designed the New York State Theater to the specifications of Balanchine

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."[1]

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.^[5] 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

• Ziegfeld Follies of 1936
  • Island in the West Indies
  • Maharanee
• On Your Toes by Rodgers and Hart
  • Princess Zenobia Ballet (1936)
  • Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1936)

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

• Waltz Academy (1944)
• Theme and Variations (1947)

for the Ballet Society

• The Four Temperaments (1946)
• L'enfant et Les Sortilèges (The Spellbound Child) (1946)^[6]
• Haieff Divertimento (1947)
• Symphonie Concertante (1947)
• Orpheus (1948)

for the Paris Opera Balle

• Palais de Cristal (renamed Symphony in C) (1947)

for the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas

• Minkus Pas De Trois (1948)

Le Lourve de fait(1948)

for New York City Ballet

• La Sonnambula (1946)
• Bourrée Fantasque (1949)
• The Firebird (1949; later revised with Jerome Robbins)
• Sylvia Pas De Deux (1950)
• Swan Lake (after Lev Ivanov) (1951)
• La Valse (1951)
• Harlequinade Pas De Deux (1952)
• Scotch Symphony (1952)
• Valse Fantaisie (1953/1967)
• The Nutcracker (1954)
• Ivesiana (1954)
• Western Symphony (1954)
• Glinka Pas De Trois (1955)
• Pas De Dix (1955)
• Divertimento No. 15 (1956)
• Allegro Brillante (1956)
• Agon (1957)
• Square Dance (1957)
• Gounod Symphony (1958)
• Stars and Stripes (a ballet in 5 "campaigns")' (1958)
• Episodes (1959)
• Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux (1960)
• Monumentum pro Gesualdo (1960)
• Donizetti Variations (1960)
• Liebeslieder Walzer (1960)
• Raymonda Variations (1961)
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962)
• Bugaku (1963)
• Meditation (1963)
• Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1963)
• Harlequinade (1965)
• Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (1966)
• Jewels (1967)
  • Emeralds
  • Rubies
  • Diamonds
• La Source (1968)
• Who Cares (1970)
• Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3 (1970)
• Stravinsky Festival (1972)
  • Pulcinella (with Jerome Robbins)
  • Violin Concerto
  • Symphony in Three Movements
  • Duo Concertant
  • Lost Sonata
  • Divertimento from "Le Baiser de la fée"
  • Choral Variations on Bach's "Vom Himmel Hoch"
  • Danses Concertantes
  • Scherzo Á La Russe
• Cortège Hongrois (1973)
• Coppélia (1974)
• Variations Pour Une Porte Et Un Soupir (1974)
• Ravel Festival (1975)
  • Sonatine
  • Tzigane
  • Le Tombeau de Couperin
  • Pavane
  • Shéhérazade
  • Gaspard de la Nuit
  • Rapsodie Espagnole
• The Steadfast Tin Soldier (1975)
• Chaconne (1976)
• Union Jack (1976)
• Vienna Waltzes (1977)
• Ballo della Regina (1978)
• Kammermusik No. 2 (1978)
• Robert Schuman's Davidsbündlertänze (1980)
• Walpurgisnacht Ballet (1980)
• Tschaikovsky Festival (1981)
  • Garland Dance
  • Mozartiana
• Stravinsky Centennial Celebration (1982)
  • Élégie

for New York City Opera

• Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1979)

Notes

1. ^ NY Times article by Anna Kisselgoff, June 29, 2004
2. ^ Joseph Horowitz (2008). Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts. HarperCollins. ISBN 006074846X
3. ^ Joseph Horowitz (2008). Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts. HarperCollins. ISBN 006074846X
4. ^ Joseph Horowitz (2008). Artists in Exile: How Refugees from Twentieth-Century War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts. HarperCollins. ISBN 006074846X
5. ^ Encyclopedia Brittanica, retrieved May 27, 2008.
6. ^ Balanchine created ballet sequences for Ravel's opera L'enfant et les sortilèges to Colette's libretto with what Ravel described as "Russian dancers", presumably from the Ballets Russes for the 1925 Monte Carlo premiere; this is not however listed as a Ballets Russes production.

Further reading

• Taper, Bernard (1996). George Balanchine: A Biography. University of California Press. ISBN 0520206398. 

• Joseph, Charles M. (2002). Stravinsky and Balanchine, A Journey of Invention. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-08712-8. 

• Gottlieb, Robert (2004). George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker. Harper Collins. ISBN 0060750707. 

See also

• List of ballets by George Balanchine
• List of Eastern Bloc defectors

• Category:Ballets by George Balanchine

Articles

• NY Times by Anna Kisselgoff, June 30^th, 2003
• Keeper of the Jewels, The New York Review of Books, volume 55, number 15, by Robert Gottlieb, October 9^th, 2008

obituaries

• Sunday NY Times by Anna Kisselgoff, May 1^st, 1983

External links

George Balanchine Trust website SAB website

NYCB website George Balanchine Foundation website

Listening

• Art of the States: Dreams A recording of George Antheil's score for the Balanchine ballet

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Persondata
NAME	Balanchine, George
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Russian-American choreographer and ballet master and master teacher
DATE OF BIRTH	Spring January 22, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lomonosov, Russia, Georgia
DATE OF DEATH	April 30, 1983
PLACE OF DEATH	New York City, New York, United States

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