TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/83/83capmil.1

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                                                                                May 9, 1983

The Joy of Pure Movement

George Balanchine: 1904-1983


His enthusiasms included the painting of Braque, the writing of
Pushkin, the politics of Eisenhower and the comedy of Jack
Benny. But there was never any doubt about George Balanchine's
greatest love. "I am a dancer," he once said, "body, soul and
brain."  When he died last week at 79, Balanchine was more than
that; he was possibly the greatest choreographer of the century.
He brilliantly synthesized ballet's elegant classical heritage
with the explosive athletic energy of modern dance and the
show-biz turns of jazz and tap. A co-founder of the New York
City Ballet, America's leading company, the Russian-born
Balanchine wholeheartedly embraced all things American:
clothes, attitudes and especially the American bodies that he
idealized in his choreography. Above all, he was an artist
whose dances stirred the heart while they beguiled the eye.

In such revolutionary works as Concerto Borocco (1941) and The
Four Temperaments (1946), Balanchine reveled in the joy of pure
movement, unencumbered by sets, costumes or plot. "Swan Lake
is a bore,"  he declared. For Balanchine, dance was really
about motion, not the Wilis, the choreographer's intent, he
felt, should be made explicit without panoply or program notes.
"The curtain should just go up," he said, "and if the
spectators understand what's going on, it's good--if not, not."

Music, not pageantry, capitalized Balanchine's art. Some
choreographers view music as a necessary evil, and blithely
pillage masterworks to accompany their dances. Balanchine, a
conservatory-trained pianist who might have had a concert
career, was far more respectful. Watching him rehearse once,
Martha Graham observed: "It's like watching light pass through
a prism. The music passes through him, and in the same natural
yet marvelous way that a prism refracts light, he refracts music
into dance."

Balanchine's musical acumen paid off, spectacularly, in an
almost lifelong partnership with Composer Igor Stravinsky,
resulting in such landmarks as Apollo (1928), Orpheus (1947) and
Agon (1957). The first dance Balanchine ever made to
Stravinsky's music in the West was a segment of the Song of the
Nightingale in 1925, and the last major project he worked on,
the City Ballet's 1982 Stravinsky centennial celebration,
including a new version of Noah and the Flood.

Born Georgi Melitonovich Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg, the
son of a composer, young George got into ballet by accident.
Accompanying his sister to a tryout at the Imperial School of
Ballet, Balanchine found himself accepted after he walked across
the floor in front of the judges, who were impressed by the nine
year-old's strength, posture and fierce, aquiline good looks.
By his mid-teens, he was choreographing. After leaving Russia
in 1924, Balanchine made his way to Paris and at 21 became
balletmaster of Serge Diaghilev's famed Ballets Russes.

In 1933 Balanchine formed his own company. One thunderstruck
member of his audience was a young American balletomane named
Lincoln Kirstein, an heir to a Boston department store fortune
who dreamed of firmly establishing dance in America. Together,
he and Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet in New
York City in 1934; within six months, Balanchine created the
ensemble masterpiece, Serenade, that exemplified his artistic
philosophy: a plotless, continuously flowing tapestry of
movement in which each dancer moves in and out of the ensemble
to play an individual role.

He also branched out to Broadway and Hollywood, racking up an
impressive string of hits, including On Your Toes (1936), the
first Broadway musical to integrate dance sequences with the
plot. In 1948 Balanchine and Kirstein's company, then called
Ballet Society, became the New York City Ballet. Despite the
size of its activities today, the City Ballet remains very much
what it was at the beginning: a 104-member instrument of one
man's artistic vision; in that, it is unique among the world's
major companies.

Balanchine's aplomb was the stuff of ballet legend. At 5 p.m.
on the day of the 1954 premiere of The Nutcracker, one of the
few story ballets in the City Ballet's repertoire, Balanchine
discovered that some of the costumes were not ready. Instead
of throwing a fit, he calmly picked up a needle and thread and
set to work among the seamstresses. Recalled Choreographer
Jerome Robbins, now running the City Ballet in association with
Dancer-Choreographer Peter Martins: "There sat Balanchine,
sewing away as if he didn't have a care in the world."

Balanchine displayed the same equable temperament in his daily
life. A fast worker, he rarely began to choreograph a new piece
until about three weeks before its premiere. Unconcerned with
wealth, he made money and spent it freely. He was married five
times (once by common law), each time to a beautiful ballerina
he had made famous:  Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, Vera
Zorina, Maria Tallchief and Tanquil LeClerq. He remained on
good terms with them all. "There's no ugliness in a
relationship with him," said Geva. "George has no hate in him."

Balanchine loved women, and for him dance was feminine.
"Ballet," he once said, "is the female thing. It is woman."
The Balanchine ballerina is distinctive: long-legged,
small-boned and high-breasted, with a small head and a strong
back. Even in the City Ballet, a no-stars company, women
dancers like Suzanne Farrell hold primacy of place.

Balanchine understood the ephemeral nature of ballet, an art
lacking a widely understood and commonly used notational system
to preserve its repertoire. "I don't want my ballets to live,"
he once said. "If I'm away from the theater one day, they don't
look the same. If I'm gone a year, they're all different. Like
a flower, ballet grows, opens and tomorrow is gone."  Instead
of preserving, he kept creating. "How can I quit?" he once
wondered. "I'm a choreographer. As long as I can move around
enough to show my dancers what I want them to dance, I expect
to go on making ballets. That's my job."

--By Michael Walsh




July 4, 1983

"Since I was 14, I have wanted to be the director of a ballet
company. Isn't that strange, to be so sure?  I must be a
fanatic."  Or he must be Peter Martins. The dancer-
choreographer made the observation three years ago, and now that
he has become head of the New York City Ballet, along with Jerome
Robbins, he intends to let nothing stand in the say of his dream.
Not even his dancing. Last week Martins, 36, announced that he
was giving up his calling of the past 29 years. Said he: "I'm too
vain to dance badly; too professional to direct poorly. One or
the other would have to suffer."  He will probably dance his last
in November, in City Ballet's annual production of The Nutcracker.
That has a nice symmetry to it:  Martins would be exiting in the
same role that he performed in his New York debut with the
company 16 Christmases ago.