GEORGE
BALANCHINE
Born
in 1904 in St Petersburg where he spent his childhood, Georgi Melitonovitch
Balanchidazé (his father, a composer, was of Georgian origin) was
brought up in the tradition of academic ballet, inherited from Marius
Petipa.Through the “Ballets Russes” of Diaghilev, performed
in Paris and Monte-Carlo between 1909 and 1929, George Balanchine meets
Igor Stravinsky and opens to modernity.His first choreographies (like
“Apollo and the Muses” in 1928) are already examples of his
desire to make ballet a visual form of music, “transforming sound
into movement”.
The American patron, Lincoln Kirstein, took this “European Russian”
to the United States to found (in 1934) the School of American Ballet,
which gave birth to several companies. Among these, the New York City
Ballet- directed by Balanchine from 1948 until his death in 1983. With
this company the choreographer could develop his art of modernising classical
ballet, widening the vocabulary with terms from the music-hall and jazz;
playing with the mobility of lines, the variety of enchainements, unexpected
combinations of steps, the rapidity of group displacement creating an
impression of perpetual movement. Jocelyne Le BourhisHow can one become
a choreographer? How can one become Verlaine? To be a choreographer is
not a job, it’s a state. You have to be or have been a good dancer,
to know how to teach, to have a great experience of the stage, to be a
musician, and a comedian. A choreographer is a man in a million.A million
pas de deux When did you stage your first choreography?
In Russia, just before joining Diaghilev. I loved moving, I loved music,
I wanted to make others move. I staged my first ballet at the age of sixteen.When
you have to compose a ballet, do you listen and listen again to music
? No, I don’t listen to it, I watch it. I read the score, and this
is the way that music can be understood. Music is not only a melody but
a harmony, a rhythm, it is also the personality of the composer. You must
feel who he really is. Stravinsky, for instance, is a Turk and an acrobat.
His music is, at the same time, oriental and Russian, not in the same
way as the actual Russia or Russian restaurants, like blinis-vodka, but
in the same way as Scythes before a ballet.You must watch the music and
listen to the dancers…What has changed since the sumptuous period
of the Russian Ballets?The “sumptuous” period of the Russian
Ballets, you’re joking! Diaghilev kept the same pair of trousers
for 20 years. I sold my clothes at the flea market to eat. We couldn’t
dance more than two weeks in Paris: as early as the second night, the
audience was thinning away. In England, we could dance four weeks a year,
maximum. Today, the New York City Ballet dances 25 weeks a year in New
York and several other companies perform at the same time. Today, the
public likes dance.Interview by Sylvie de Nussac, 1980Source: Autumn Festival
in Paris, 1972-1982 Jean-Pierre Leonardini, Marie Collin and Josephine
Markovits.Ed. Messidor/Temps Actuels, Paris, 1982