This week I wanted to present a figure that all who are even only a little familiar with ballet history are likely to have heard of, and even know a little about: George Balanchine, a dancer, choreographer, ballet master, and before all else a reformer, pioneer, innovator, creator of genius who is universally considered as the father of American ballet. In this blog I'll just go through the main things which make of Balanchine such a unique figure in the history of the art, and what it was exactly which he founded and which was so new to the world of his time. Next I'll go through a little bit of his own history, before blending it again with that of ballet.
The famous Waltz of the Snowflakes from Balanchine's (NYCB's) Nutcracker.
First of all we all have seen at some point in our lives, if not a live performance of it, at least pictures of New York City Ballet's Nutcracker, with snowflakes holding props amidst falling snowflakes in a dynamic, magical stage design. We know this version of the beloved American holiday classic is unique in the world, and very different from that of the traditional Paris Opera or Russian Bolshoi ballets. But we perhaps ignore that NYCB's Nutcracker is only a small example of an entire trend which came to birth in New York in the 1940s and 50s; a trend that was single-handedly created by a Russian-born man of the name of Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze, who came to be universally known by his American professional name George Balanchine. That name has become synonymous with American ballet in the 20th century: with muscular, sprightly, incredibly fast dancers with extraordinary stamina and an all-American manner of solving the most daunting technical challenges foisted upon them by their ruthless and tyrannical ballet master. But this is only the surface of Balanchine's story. In fact he was much more than a tyrannical ballet master, although he had perhaps to be tyrannical to impose his new style of ballet in the time and place where he lived: he was a genial innovator and an outstanding director who managed his entire production in its smallest details, and went on to create a style that would bear his name, a style that was to become a landmark in the history of ballet. We hear of the French style and the Russian, the Danish, the English of course with the Royal Ballet - but instead of hearing of the American, we hear of the Balanchine style of ballet. This is because Balanchine single-handedly created his school, and the tenets whereon it rested.
"Mr. B" the ballet master, teacher, choreographer, single-handed founder of American Ballet as we know it.
Balanchine was born in St Petersburg in the then Russian Empire, to an opera singer and composer who co-founded an opera & ballet theatre and was culture minister of the short-lived Democratic republic of Georgia, and a mother most probably of German origin. He didn't originally care for dance but was still enrolled in ballet classes together with his sister Tamara, on his mother's insistence, while their brother became a composer, following their father's footsteps. After formation at the Mariinsky Theatre (then known as the Kirov) during which he even choreographed his first work, a pas de deux titled La Nuit, he became the main choreographer of the Ballets Russes then directed by Sergei Diaghilev. He injured his knee at some point in his life and decided that his performing career was ended: this was the signal for him to focus on choreography. But it was in America that he was to make his fortune.
Balanchine rehearsing with his company, first Ballet Society and then known as the New York City Ballet ever since the New York City Centre welcomed them as the residing company.
At the time the United States already had a school of ballet of their own, but Balanchine insisted that his first task upon arriving was to found a ballet school, to develop better technique in view of creating his company. On this initiative, the School of American Ballet opened its doors on January 2nd, 1934: the beginning of something which was to become a world-phenomenon. It was in the 1940s, that he founded his new dance company in New York, Ballet Society, with the help of Lincoln Kirstein, a poet and patron of the arts whom he had first met when creating the School of American Ballet. The company was later given home at the New York City Centre, and earned the title of New York City Ballet which it has retained to this day, founded in 1948.
And there is reached the point in the story where it becomes history. Balanchine not only choreographed his own version of the Nutcracker, which we know so well, and is still performed yearly by the New York City Ballet, characteristic for its entrancing, sprightly choreography and amazing stage effects of corps formation; but the company also performed myriads of other Balanchine works that are still beloved today, such as the Tchaikovsky pas de deux, Jewels, Serenade, all these names which have become synonymous with a new style of ballet that is whole-heartedly American. It was not as a Russian ballet dancer, that Balanchine earned his fame, but as an American choreographer, by bringing his expertise, his passion and his unique vision to the United States where he found the dancers that would be able to answer to his specific, and often exacting, demands. He created a style of ballet that, while still being ballet, was entirely unique not only to the US, but to the world.
Now what did make this style so unique? It was first a question of technique of the dancers. Balanchine usually started his classes without the barre exercises, preferring to give his students warmup exercises in the centre, because he deemed barre unnecessary because of ballet's nature as a performance art, to be executed on stage. He also modified the elementary positions of ballet, which had been established more than two centuries earlier at the school of the Sun King - and which we've explored in an earlier blog. For instance, Suzanne Farrell, one of his favourite students and interpreter of many of his roles, considered by many as a "muse" to the choreographer, describes one of his demands as to preparations for turns in her autobiography, holding on to the air:
"He [Balanchine] asked me to start my pirouette, and I settled into a nice, comfortable fourth position. [...] 'Why don't you try a big fourth?' he said. I shuffled my legs a little wider and looked at him for approval. 'Bigger.' Again I shuffled a few more inches. 'Bigger.' Now I was feeling really uncomfortable with my legs so far apart that the notion of pushing off for a turn was becoming a fantasy. 'More,' was the next suggestion, and though I silently tried to accommodate him, he knew what the rest of the dancers were thinking - no self-respecting ballerina would ever take such a wide stance before a turn. 'More.' By now my legs were so far apart that I risked losing my grip and slipping to the floor in a split. If this was a Balanchine experiment, I wished he had used another guinea pig. [...] 'Now turn.' Never in my life had I turned from such a deep lunge, and my instincts told me to shuffle back to where I had begun, but I looked at Mr. B and thought better of it. He seemed so happy and excited, and I did after all want to please him. Half defiantly (I was sure that I would fall on my face) and half curiously I turned... and turned... and turned. While these pirouettes were perhaps not the cleanest or most precise I had ever done, they were the most glorious in ways I had not felt before; it was a feeling I had never known and have never forgotten. Mr. B watched with his head held high, and when I finished, he was the only one in the whole room who was not astonished that I was still upright. 'You see!' he said with a little smile and held his finger up in the air like a magician who has just pulled a rabbit out of a hat. [...] The turn that had begun with such painstaking resistance and hard labour resulted in such a wonderful sensation that I decided then and there that this man knew exactly what he was doing - [...] Now that I had turned this way once, I could never turn again the old way. [...] I never went backward into a stingy fourth position again."
This testimony by one of the most famously known of the Balanchine ballerinas describes with an admirably revealing simplicity just what was so special about this new technique. "Mr. B" as he was commonly called at the ballet, had a definite idea of how he wanted a specific choreography, or variation, or step performed, and he defied the traditional rules that still held sway in his country of birth, to achieve greater expressiveness, rapidity, and bravado in turns, jumps, and particularly in fast combinations. His ballets, many of them danced to the music of Gershwin, Stravinsky, or Prokofiev, with whom he established a close artistic partnership, featured steps which especially in turns are never seen anywhere else in the traditional ballet repertoire, and are highly recognizable. His work Chaconne, in which a male & female dancer rival each other in steps of daunting rapidity and precision, is a wonderful illustration of his Grand Allegro technique. This was all new to the world of dance and revolutionized ballet in a way, breathing a breeze of fresh air on all that had been so coded and well-preserved throughout the centuries from the time of the Sun King, or the much more recent one of the Ballet Russes, of which Balanchine himself was part at some point as we have seen; but more importantly it created a style of ballet which the United States could call their own, which became associated with New York and its skyscrapers, with the music of Gershwin, of Rodgers, of Lorenz Hart and Vernon Duke. In an earlier ballet from 1928, Apollon Musagète, choreographed to the music of Stravinsky, he blended classical Greek myth & ballet with jazz, and brought the male dancer to the forefront, which had already become uncommon at the time. In short he revolutionized everything that had been common taste in the form until then, not necessarily by figuring its entire opposite but by creating something new that deeply mirrored American society at the time, blending, as Gershwin had done musically for instance in his Rhapsody in Blue, classical technique & jazz.
Suzanne Farrell (1945-), Balanchine's "muse" for whom he created many of his roles.
This was a giant step for the United States as a country; but for a man to single-handedly achieve such a step is truly exceptional in the history of Art, and somewhat mirrors achievements such as Wagner's in opera. So next time you go see Balanchine's Nutcracker, remember that you're seeing history in the making! And if you're watching with attention you'll notice that many of the steps performed by the dancers - indeed the most fascinating steps - are not to be seen in any other ballet in the traditional repertoire. It's fiery, bold, defiant, glib & perky, and brilliant all at the same time - it's Balanchine.
Peter Martins & Suzanne Farrell in Chaconne.
Comments