FREE ESSAY ON GEORGE BALANCHINE

GEORGE BALANCHINE

11.13.00 
One of the most important and influential people in the world of ballet is George
Balanchine. He became a legend long before he died. He brought the standards of dance up
to a level that had never been seen before, and he created a new audience for ballet.
Balanchine was one of the greatest and most prolific choreographers in ballet history,
choreographing at least 300 ballets; he was rivaled in quantity only by Jules Perrot and
Marius Petipa. 
At the age of nine he started training at the Imperial School in St. Petersburg. He
rarely saw his family because they lived far away and he became the ward of Grigory
Grigorevich, who was in charge of the school. There Balanchine performed his first role
as cupid in Sleeping Beauty. During the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Imperial School
closed and the students were put out on the street. Balanchine was cut off from his
family in the Caucasus, and was taken in to live with Mr. Grigorevich. The school did
reopen and Balanchine graduated in 1921. He then joined the Soviet State Ballet. Upon
graduation Balanchine married Geva, a fellow student whom he had met in the ballroom
dancing class. Geva described her husband as a cross between a poet and a general. 
In order to have his choreography seen, Blanchine organized a small company called The
Young Ballet, to perform at halturas (bread and butter jobs). At the Maryinsky,
Balanchine had been assigned to stage the procession in Rimski-Korsakoff's opera Coq
d'Or, and what he devised, although beautiful, shattered tradition. The company tried to
re-train him, but he wouldn't conform. His choreography continued to be controversial, so
the board at the Maryinsky Theater dismissed him from the company. They also threatened
all of Blanchine's dancers with the same fate if they continued to dance for him.
In 1924, with Vladimir Dimitriev's help, Balanchine, Tamara Geva, Nicholas Efimov, and
Alexandra Danilova formed the Soviet State Dancers, and were allowed to tour Germany
during the Maryinsky vacation. They decided not to return to Russia, but to defect and go
to England. The small company did so poorly in London that they were bought out of their
contracts. They then went to Paris in hopes of finding work. Serge Diaghilev heard of
this Russian company and sent for them. He hired the four dancers, and also allowed
Dimitriev to work for the company. Diaghilev thought the Georgian's name Balanchivadze
was too difficult to pronounce and changed it to Balanchine. Diaghilev was immediately
impressed with Balanchine's creative ballets and wanted him to choreograph for the opera
in Monte Carlo. For the Ballets Russes he created Apollo in 1928 and The Prodigal Son in
1929, which have remained Blanchine's signature pieces to this day. In 1926 Geva divorced
him and went to America, and Alexandra Danilova became his unofficial wife.
In 1929, while still with the Diaghilev company. Balanchine choreographed and danced in
Dark Red Roses, the first talking motion picture in England. It was at this time that
Balanchine heard of Diaghilev's death, leaving him and the entire Ballets Russes without
work.
George Balanchine past successes found him work as a choreographer in London, Copenhagen,
Paris and also for a new company in Monte Carlo under the sponsorship of the Monaco Royal
House. Rene Blum and Colonel William de Basil were the impresario and director of the
Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Balanchine was fired from the Blum - De Basil company
because of his unorthodox choreography and was replaced by Leonide Massine. In 1933
Balanchine formed his own company, Les Ballet 1933. It opened to poor reviews in Paris
and gave only 20 performances in England.
It was in England that he met his future benefactor, Lincoln Kirstein, a wealthy young
American. Kirstein, with his friend Edward M.M.Warburg, invited Balanchine and Vladimir
Dimitriev to come to America in order to open a ballet school in Hartford, Conn., far
away from the enticements of Broadway. Since the stage at the Hartford Museum was too
small for ballet performances Balanchine refused the offer. 
Kirstein searched the island of Manhattan until he found an appropriate place. The School
of American Ballet (SAB) opened at 59th Street and Madison Avenue on January 1, 1934. At
first there were only adult students, and the school operated in conjunction with
Catherine and Dorothy Littlefield, who already had a company in Philadelphia and had been
on a European tour. Dorothy taught at SAB. Harold and Lew Christensen were among the
students.
During evening classes at SAB, Balanchine, in order to teach performance skills,
choreographed an abstract ballet upon his students using Tchiaikowsky's Serenade for
Strings; called Serenade; this was his first ballet for American dancers. At the request
of Edward Warburg's father, it was first performed in 1934 on the lawn of the Warburg
estate in Connecticut. A few months later the group of four formed a small company called
The American Ballet. It was for this company that Balanchine used, for the first time, an
American theme in his ballet Alma Mater.
In 1935 The American Ballet became the ballet company of the Metropolitan Opera Co., but
as with the Maryinsky Opera, Balanchine had problems with the management. His dances in
Carmen overshadowed the singers. He was able to persuade the Metropolitan to have his
dancers do a Stravinsky Festival in 1937, for which he choreographed Card Game. 
To keep the dancers employed during the summer, Ballet Caravan was created. Many of the
young dancers, including Lew Christensen, William Dollar, Eugene Loring, and Erick
Hawkins, had a chance to choreograph for this company. In the spring of 1941 Ballet
Caravan and the American Ballet joined forces to tour Latin America under the sponsorship
of the State Department. Because of World War II both companies were disbanded after the
tour.
Balanchine's energy and creativity allowed him to choreograph 17 Broadway shows, and he
was also invited by Samuel Goldwyn to choreograph a number of movies. He choreographed On
Your Toes with Tamara Geva and Ray Bolger for Broadway, and then a movie version with
Vera Zorina and Eddie Albert.
To Balanchine, entertainment was entertainment. When he was asked in 1941 by the Ringling
Bros. Circus to choreograph a ballet for 14 elephants he agreed, and commissioned
Stravinsky to write the music for Circus Polka. 
Ballet Society, the successor to the American Ballet, was organized in 1946 and gave its
first performance at the Central High School of Needle Trades in New York City. They were
so successful that in 1948 the company was invited to become a permanent unit of the New
York City Center, with the new name of The New York City Ballet.
When Morton Baum, head of the finance committee for the New York City Center, saw Ballet
Society perform George Balanchine's Orpheus in 1948, he invited Lincoln Kirstein and
George Balanchine to join the city-supported group. Ballet Society became the New York
City Ballet, and the company remained at the City Center for sixteen years.
The opening night of the New York City Ballet (October 1948) at the City Center was an
auspicious occasion. The first program consisted of Symphony in C (choreographed to a
newly discovered symphony by George Bizet which was first presented as Le Palais de
cristal at the Paris Opera), Orpheus, and Concerto Barocco. At last Balanchine felt
secure enough to form the company he had always wanted, with the School of American
Ballet to train the dancers. Because Balanchine wanted the audiences to come to see
ballets instead of star dancers, he listed his principal dancers in alphabetical order.
In the years that followed, Balanchine created some of his greatest ballets including
Scotch Symphony (1952), Western Symphony (1954), Square Dance (1957), and Stars and
Stripes (1958) Although he also created story ballets -- Le Baiser de la Fee(1934), Don
Quixote (1965), La Sonnambula (1946), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (1962) -- most of his
ballets were called abstract (plotless). Balanchine's most famous story ballet, The
Nutcracker (1954), has become the money-maker of all time. It has been performed every
year during the holiday season since its premiere. Balanchine married Vera Zorina in 1938
and starred her on Broadway and in the movies. After Zorina he married Maria Tallchief in
1946, and created Orpheus (1948), Firebird (1949), Swan Lake (1951), Scotch Symphony
(1952), The Nutcracker (1954), and Allegro Brillante (1956) for her. After eight years of
marriage she got an annulment, because she said the marriage had never been consummated.
For Tanaquil LeClerq, his fourth wife (whom he married in 1952) he created La Valze
(1951), Bourree Fantasque (1949) Western Symphony and Ivesiana (both in1954). Her career
ended after she was tragically stricken with polio. Before their divorce was finalized
Balanchine became infatuated with his final protege, Suzanne Farrell, for whom he created
many of his last great ballets: Mozartiana (1981), Don Quixote (1965), and Diamonds in
Jewels (1967). After Balanchine recovered from a mysterious illness, he continued to work
until his death. He died of Jakob-Creutzfeldt syndrome, on April 30, 1983. Balanchine's
funeral was held in a Russian Orthodox Church and that night the New York City Ballet
performed as scheduled. Balanchine's repretare is still widely performed and he has made
a mjor impact on the world of ballet.