choreographic references
- ASHTON - BALANCHINE - MACMILLAN - MAURICE BEJART - MIKHAIL FOKINE -
FAMILY OF NEOCLASSICAL CHOREOGRAPHERS: GEORGE BALANCHINEGeorge Balanchine -Biography Throughout his childhood in St-Petersburg where he was born in 1904, Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze was brought up in the tradition of the academic ballet inherited from Marius Petipa.
After experiencing Diaghilev’s "Russian Ballets" which were staged in Paris and Monte-Carlo from 1909 to 1929, Balanchine met Stravinsky and completely modernized his approach.
Even his first choreographies such as Apollo in 1928, bear witness to his desire "to transform sound into movement".
American patron of the arts, Lincoln Kirstein took this "European Russian" to the United States where he founded the School of American Ballet in 1934. This led to the birth of several ballet companies; one of which, the New York City Ballet, Balanchine directed until he died in 1983.
In April 1985, following the death of Balanchine, the catalogue of his works which included ballets as well as musical comedies and even the circus, listed 425 choreographies. It contained several versions of the same ballet, as, over the years, Balanchine revised both choreography and general presentation. He used to say: “Just like performers, points of view change".
George Balanchine knew how to modernize classical ballet; he widened the vocabulary and introduced a dynamism into the rhythms; with him, ballet became "a visualization" of the music. He directed the New York City Ballet which he turned into one of the best companies in the world. Rudolf Nureyev danced with the company as a "guest"; Balanchine only ever created one ballet for Nureyev: Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1979).
Rudolf Nureyev nursed an enormous admiration for George Balanchine’s choreography. "I was intrigued and enthralled when I saw Apollon for the first time... It was in Leningrad, at the beginning of 1961... the ballet was danced by Alicia Alonso’s Cuban company. I asked myself why he had adapted these movements.... It was pure ballet but it seemed to interpret thoughts and words, without resorting to pantomime. Movements took on a symbolic dimension". (Rudolf Nureyev).
Balanchine's ballets
danced by Rudolf Nureyev :
Agon
Apollon
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme
NUREYEV AND BALANCHINE Rudolf Nureyev nursed an enormous admiration for George Balanchine’s choreography. "I was intrigued and enthralled when I saw Apollon for the first time... It was in Leningrad, at the beginning of 1961... the ballet was danced by Alicia Alonso’s Cuban company. I asked myself why he had adapted these movements.... It was pure ballet but it seemed to interpret thoughts and words, without resorting to pantomime. Movements took on a symbolic dimension". (Rudolf Nureyev).
As of his first interviews in 1961, following his “leap to freedom” on the 16th June, the young defector from the Kirov declared that he wanted to go to Copenhagen to work with the dancers of the Danish Ballet Royal, that next he wished to go to London and from there to fly on to New York: “I would very much like to work under the direction of Balanchine”.
It was in January 1962, together with the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn, that Rudolf Nureyev had the chance of meeting Balanchine. Rudolf informed the choreographer, over dinner, of his wish to dance with the New York City Ballet and Balanchine replied: “You do not know how to dance the way we dance in our company, and it would take you too long to learn. Go on… continue dancing your princes, and when you’re tired of them, come back and see me.”
Rudolf left and made his debut with the Royal Ballet in London at Covent Garden (Giselle on the 21st February 1962 with Margot Fonteyn), then, on the occasion of the performances of the Rught Pages Company from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, he made his American debut on the 10th March 1962 in the pas de deux from Don Quixote with Sonia Arova. Balanchine, who was in the audience, did not come backstage. This pained Rudolf who confided in an interview with the journalist Anatole Chujoy: “I am a romantic dancer, Mr Balanchine’s ballets are unknown territory for me, totally different from anything I have danced up until now, but all I ask is to know more about them.”
Rudolf had to do his training in Balanchine’s ballets without Balanchine and with other ballet companies than that of NYCB: Theme & Variations with the American Ballet Theatre (December 1962), Apollo with the Vienna Opera Ballet (September 1967), The Prodigal Son with the London Royal Ballet (January 1973), as well as Agon, the variation of the first pas de trois, also with the Royal Ballet (December 1973).
After having read an interview with Nureyev in the New York Times in January 1979 in which he declared "I have wanted to dance a ballet comedy for years!", Balanchine thought of Rudolf for a new performance of the Bourgeois Gentilhomme (using the music of Richard Strauss); he had previously staged this ballet in 1932 and 1944 for the "Russian Ballets" in Monte Carlo. Rehearsals began in February 1979 and the Opening Night was on the 8th April 1979 in the Lincoln Centre State Theatre, where the New York City Ballet regularly performed. Rudolf in the “changing” role of Cléonte was partnered with Patricia Mc Bride and Jean-Pierre Bonnefons.
A month later, Rudolf Nureyev staged Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme with the Paris Opera Ballet, in the first half prior to performances of Manfred, in the Palais des Sports.
J.L.B.
