GEORGE BALANCHINE Choreographer
George Balanchine transformed the world of ballet. He is widely regarded as the most influential choreographer of the 20th century, and he co-founded two of ballet’s most important institutions: New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet. Balanchine was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1904, studied at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, and danced with the Maryinsky Theatre Ballet Company, where he began choreographing short works. In the summer of 1924, Balanchine left the newly formed Soviet Union for Europe, where he was invited by impresario Serge Diaghilev to join the Ballets Russes. For that company, Balanchine choreographed his first important ballets: Apollo (1928) and Prodigal Son (1929). After Ballets Russes was dissolved following Diaghilev’s death in 1929, Balanchine spent his next few years on a variety of projects in Europe and then formed his own company, Les Ballets 1933, in Paris. Following a performance of Les Ballets 1933 at the Savoy Theater in London, he met American arts connoisseur Lincoln Kirstein, who later persuaded him to come to the United States. In 1934, the pair founded the School of American Ballet, which remains in operation to this day, training students for companies around the world. Balanchine’s first ballet in the U.S., Serenade , set to music by Tschaikovsky, was created for SAB students and was first performed on June 9, 1934, on the grounds of the Warburg estate in White Plains, N.Y. Balanchine and Kirstein founded several short-lived ballet companies before forming Ballet Society in 1946, which was renamed New York City Ballet in 1948. Balanchine served as the Company’s ballet master from that year until his death in 1983, building it into one of the most important performing arts institutions in the world, and a cornerstone of the cultural life of New York City. He choreographed 425 works over the course of 60-plus years, and his musical choices ranged from Tschaikovsky (one of his favorite composers) to Stravinsky (his compatriot and friend) to Gershwin (who embodied the choreographer’s love of America). Many of Balanchine’s works are considered masterpieces and are performed by ballet companies all over the world. Igor Stravinsky, one of the leading composers of the twentieth century, has had a tremendous impact on the world of classical music. Over the course of his career, he composed in a remarkable variety of styles, incorporating Russian and French traditions, neo-classicism, 12-tone principles, jazz—anything that intrigued and inspired him. Stravinsky was born outside of St. Petersburg in 1882, and while he later became a citizen of first France and then the U.S., he often turned to his Russian roots for his compositions, drawing on folk melodies and rhythms. Early in his career, he came to the attention of Serge Diaghilev, the impresario behind the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev commissioned several scores from Stravinsky that have gone on to become classics of both the ballet stage and the concert hall: The Firebird (1910), Petroushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913). As his music evolved over the course of his life, he became more interested in economical, pared-down compositions, and his work is recognizable by its clarity of sound, rhythmic drive, and appealing austerity. Stravinsky died in New York, in 1971. In Stravinsky’s obituary in The New York Times , George Balanchine said of his friend and fellow Russian, “I feel he is still with us. He has left us the treasures of his genius, which will live with us forever.”
IGOR STRAVINSKY Composer
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