Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world. This had an inestimable influence on the growth of dance in America. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. Among his best-known dances for the stage is “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue,” originally created for Broadway’s On Your Toes (1936).The musical was later made into a movie.Ī major artistic figure of the twentieth century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. He also choreographed for films, operas, revues, and musicals. His final ballet, a new version of Stravinsky’s Variations for Orchestra, was created in 1982. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983.īalanchine’s more than 400 dance works include Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), Le Palais de Cristal, later renamed Symphony in C (1947), Orpheus (1948), The Nutcracker (1954), Agon (1957), Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972), Vienna Waltzes (1977), Ballo della Regina (1978), and Mozartiana (1981). Several ballet companies directed by the two were created and dissolved in the years that followed, while Balanchine found other outlets for his choreography.Eventually, with a performance on October 11, 1948, New York City Ballet was born. This was the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934, the first product of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration. At Balanchine’s behest, Kirstein was also prepared to support the formation of an American academy of ballet that would eventually rival the long-established schools of Europe.
He came to the United States in late 1933, at the age of 29, accepting the invitation of the young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907-96), whose great passions included the dream of creating a ballet company in America. Petersburg, Russia, George Balanchine is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet.
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