Balanchine: through the eyes of choreographers now.

Choreographers the world over have been touched by Balanchine's genius. Last fall DANCE MAGAZINE interviewed contemporary choreographers about their responses to his work, both positive and negative. Their candid, thoughtful, and sometimes surprising answers reveal how his influence reaches into the present.

Peter Martins 

Artistic Director and Ballet Master in Chief, New York City Ballet 

WHEN I FIRST learned Apollo with the Royal Danish Ballet in the spring of 1967, it didn't mean anything to me. It was just another ballet, another bunch of steps: do this, do that, do this, and I did it. A few months later, Balanchine's company was on tour and needed someone to replace an injured Jacques d'Amboise--within forty-eight hours! I went to Edinburgh and met Balanchine. He took his jacket off, rolled up his sleeves, and said, "I will now teach you the ballet, dear." He took the ballet apart and we spent an entire afternoon--he, Suzanne [Farrell], and I.

As I got acquainted with him and his works, I could not believe the scope of his oeuvre. He seemed to be able to do anything. It was a revelation for a 20-year-old kid in a little town like Copenhagen who had been bored with ballet. This man appeared, and I fell in love with ballet.

Balanchine's work was like a guide or a textbook. The way he dealt with the music fascinated me and fostered my interest in choreography. He never choreographed the melodic line. He choreographed to the underlying rhythm, to the things in the music that you almost couldn't hear. That was my first discovery. Then he broke up the meter, which nobody else did. If the music was in 4, he might do a step in 3. He would do 7s when the music was in 8s. He'd be all over the place, but it came out in the end.

I don't ever want to depart from Balanchine's vision. If I do, that's fine, or if I don't, that's fine too. I've always maintained that if you try to be unique, it ain't gonna happen.

My favorite ballet? Apollo is right up there. Another is Serenade. When I rehearse these ballets I'm supposed to tell people what to do. Sometimes I sit in front of the rehearsal and I say nothing. I'm in awe.

Superficially there have been times when I have looked at parts of a ballet and said to myself, "C'mon George, you've done this; don't bring out that old bag of tricks." And yet, when I see him doing it, there's something absolutely endearing about it. He trusted his language. It's like using the same words and sentences in another book.

The greatest thing about Balanchine, in my view, is that when the music was less strong or vital, when there was a weak passage, he came up with a great step. It was like he was saying, "OK, Igor, this is not as great as your past passage; I'll fix it." And vice versa: when there was some fabulous passage in the music that was like, "whoa!"--you could hear it and sing it--he eased off. He would say, "OK, I don't have to do a great step here; the music will carry it."

Eliot Feld 

Choreographer

MY FIRST Balanchine ballet was The Nutcracker, when I was the prince, second cast, in 1954. I was 12. I think that some idea of beauty, of coherence in dancing, just became a part of me. I feel that my attitude about clarity, freedom of movement, and pushing through space came from those first experiences.

Later, seeing the premiere of Bugaku or Seven Deadly Sins, I remember how sexy Allegra [Kent] was--how goddamn erotic she was. And I remember seeing the beginning of Union Jack, where about 120 people march in--absolute inevitable flow like nature unfolding. The ease and seamlessness of all of these people was like lava; it just kept coming and coming.

For me Prodigal Son is just kickass; it's an amazingly inventive way to tell a story. If yon look at it for pure choreographic invention, it is sublime.

When I danced Theme and Variations with American Ballet Theatre, there was a device we called "scrambled eggs"--when you take hands and the girls go under and around. There are endless permutations of that. In some ballets they get tied up in the most wonderful knots. Those are the ones I appreciate. Where it's more like nineteenth-century classicism, it's less interesting to me because I can figure that out.

Balanchine was a transplanted American, so Western Symphony has a quality of divertissement. He has amalgamated the continuity of the tradition with the impulse of a new place, a new tempo, a new informality. I wasn't born in St. Petersburg. I'm an American choreographer with an affinity for this elegant tradition of European ballet, but not without license to violate it as needed, because it's not all of me.

I like to think of myself as both an heir and a rebel. You can't keep living in your parents' house. You need to move out and make the rules of your life. Balanchine, as great as he is, is not the Catholic Church. There are other ways to get to heaven.

Lar Lubovitch

Artistic Director, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company 

WHEN I FIRST saw his work in the '60s, I saw wildly driven people dancing with a full-tilt energy, using their bodies in extreme ways. It looked very modern to me. Subsequently I recognized the astonishing craft and the underlying simplicity of being guided by the music so perfectly. Since then, I've gone back to Balanchine intermittently to rediscover the tools of the craft of choreography, akin to a well-made piece of furniture where everything is impeccably balanced.

I've never been particularly fond of the gender politics in his work. On the one hand the women are exalted, but on the other, their personhood is dependent on the man's manipulation of them. It puts them in a rarefied category. But that's how he was brought up at the Maryinsky Ballet. He never quite modernized the male-female roles.

The obvious choices for favorites are Apollo, Serenade, and later The Four Temperaments and Concerto Barocco--the modernist works. There's always something to learn, even from the bad pieces.

Balanchine was a businessman; he did pieces like PAMTGG ("Pan Am Makes the Going Great") to get a big piece of change. He was the head of a company, and dances like that were completely within reason for him, but it's not going to stand out in the canon of great things he's done.

Helgi Tomasson

Artistic Director, San Francisco Ballet 

THE FIRST Balanchine ballet I saw was Theme and Variations, and the music and dance came together in a way I had not seen before. I said, "That's what I would like to dance," which I did many years later.

Balanchine knew how to end ballets well. The ending of The Four Temperaments is emotionally uplifting--the jete lifts moving in a cross pattern. The end of Violin Concerto is fantastic. They're going a mile a minute, and all of a sudden they pose, as if there's nothing to it. It makes yon want to see it again.

When I was at City, Ballet, I wanted to choreograph. But I delayed it because I thought, "What am I going to do when Balanchine and Robbins are putting out good ballets every year?" It was intimidating. When I approached Balanchine, he encouraged me and suggested that I choreograph for the school. He came to a rehearsal and looked at it. He thought for a while and said, "Why don't you rethink the first movement?" He didn't tell me why or what to do. I did, and he came back later and said, "Much better."

Julia Adam

Choreographer

WHEN I WAS 8 or 9, I saw one of those Great Performances on TV with Suzanne Farrell dancing. I was blown away by the athleticism and abandon. As a student at the National Ballet School in Toronto, I danced Serenade, and my god, that was amazing! The sensation was that I felt the music through my body as I danced. And I understood the machine, the way he was putting the work together. I knew when the girl four rows over and six girls back was on the wrong foot. Later we did Concerto Barocco, and I was excited by the way he syncopated and found the underlying rhythm. I did a lot of flamenco in my training; it felt like flamenco on pointe.

Coming from a Royal Ballet-type school, watching Balanchine excited me as much as when I saw my first modern artwork. You could take everything away and boldly slash the stage with line and energy, and still it was emotional. I love to watch Prodigal Son; the way he uses the goons is so modern--and he made it in 1929!

As a choreographer I learned from Balanchine to dare to let many things go on, that the movement isn't only propelled from the lead violin. That tiny bass sound can be moving one group, and that clarinet or trumpet can be moving another. There's space in the score for many things, not just one idea.

John Alleyne

Artistic Director, Ballet British Columbia

WHEN I WAS an intermediate student at the National Ballet School in Toronto, Concerto Barocco was done on the seniors. I immediately went to the library' and took out the score to try to understand this man's genius. When I went to study in New York, I was amazed by the power of his musicality and the force of his dancers moving through space. The biggest thing that affected me is the contradiction of classicism and innovation--how the use of space and steps have such a classical form, but are so innovative.

His transitions are magical and unpredictable. The transition is important to my work, too. I will start a gesture and break the flow and then find a way for another continuity.

Balanchine's works were pared down; the excess was gone. I see a lot of European work that is operatic, filled with excess, whereas Balanchine is truly American. But when he goes too far, it becomes a bit of a caricature. I do have a little trouble with Stars and Stripes.

The device of Balanchine's that I get tired of? Three times and change. Sometimes I'm like, "Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, got it." I understand, but it's not where my mind works.

Mark Morris

Artistic Director, Mark Morris Dance group

I WAS 14 years old when I saw Pennsylvania Ballet in Vancouver do Concerto Barocco. I thought it was funny and beautiful and delightful; it reminded me of the Busby Berkeley movies that I'd been watching.

I think Balanchine's musicality is way more sophisticated than the three-of-one-thing and one-of-the-other, which is the Ivanov/Petipa point of view--to square off the phrasing to get you back to the corner. Balanchine does that too, but always in some fabulous, kooky way.

I love the device of assigning musical voices to people. There are surprises even though I know exactly how it's worked out. Other times I don't. In Monumentum Pro Gesualdo, eight people walk backward from each side, and they go through each other. I've seen that piece a thousand times, and I can't figure it out. It's like a magic walk through the looking glass.

John Neumeier

Artistic Director, Hamburg Ballet

WHEN I FIRST saw Agon and The Four Temperaments I was bowled over. This was a good shock for me of how to use music that has nothing to do with the technique of the classroom. I saw such an unexpected dialogue in the Agon pas de deux. It expanded my idea of the possibility of classical dance. Serenade has suggestions of dramas that are not possible to articulate in words.

I heard about an interesting conversation long ago. John Martin [dance critic for The New York Times from 1927 to 1962] said he admired Balanchine's work because it's so architectural. Sybil Shearer replied, "Yes, it's the same on both sides." Theme and Variations for me is the best of that genre of symmetrical ballets.

With certain works you sense the inspiration as a whole, like he must have started and rrruhhHHH! the whole thing came out.

There is no doubt that he is a great, great choreographer, but I sometimes feel that he is used too often as the high mark of classical dance of today. I rebel against comparing all dance to how Balanchine would have done it.

Peter Anastos

Choreographer

THE FIRST Balanchine ballet I saw was Stars and Stripes. I didn't really get it. I think it's true of all great artists that the more you see, the more you want to see. You cannot possibly, tell Balanchine's breadth and depth from watching one of his ballets. It's like discovering a fantastic jewel box, and there's a little pearl on top, but you keep digging down and there are diamonds and emeralds and all kinds of fabulous stuff.

His vision was forward and backward. He knew everything about the past, and he harnessed it in service to the future. If you look at his most romantic and backward-looking ballets, there are signs of the modernism to come; and if you look at his modern ballets, they contain the past. He had a 360-degree vision.

I made him my hero. I do things in my work that are Balanchinian--streamlined steps, the organization of the space, how steps are put together. But my humor is basically slapstick. Some of the things Balanchine did were witty, but I'm going after the belly laughs. My influences are equal parts Balanchine and Lucille Ball.

Balanchine was never coarse, but he had some weird bad-taste issues, for instance in costuming, as only Russians can do. He wasn't afraid to be cheesy. I love those moments, for example the fairy in Harlequinade. He knew exactly what he was doing, and made yon thrill to see it.

I like the masterpieces like Agon, Apollo, and Concerto Barocco because you never get sick of them. The ballets I learned more from, though, are the middle-level ballets. Liebeslieder Walzer has lessons about technique. I love Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet. With a giant cast, it's a lesson in how in distribute steps that are different from each other but all hold together.

Least favorite: Variations for a Door and a Sigh (Variations Pour une Porte et un Soupir). It was like a car crash: you couldn't look at it and you couldn't look away. It was kind of Eurotrash.

Balanchine used the changing of the corners--people saute from the corner to the center at the same time that others saute from the center to the corner--in nearly every ballet. It's just an economical way to move people around. He speeded up an old-fashioned device, making it simultaneous instead of sequential. Part of his timelessness is that he took these old devices and made them work.

Robert Garland

Choreographer based at Dance Theatre of Harlem 

WHEN I WAS a student at Juilliard, I watched Mr. Balanchine rehearse at the SAB studios. He was already sick and was wearing a patch over one eye. I loved his calm, and I try to imitate that. It wasn't about him, it was about the dancers. He essentially democratized the art form. For instance, in Symphony in C all the dancers, from principals to corps, wear the same costumes. Every dancer is important in his ballets.

At DTH I danced in many Balanchine ballets. I felt a connection between Mr. Balanchine's work and the nonnarrative, pure dance works of Talley Beatty, Alvin Alley, Louis Johnson, and other African-American choreographers.

According to a letter written by [Lincoln] Kirstein [in 1933], Balanchine originally wanted half his dancers to be white and half to be black. When he made Agon [with Diana Adams and Arthur Mitchell in 1957] it was about more than differences in skin tones, or black and white: it was part of his democratic vision.

The ballet that is my favorite right now is Robert Schumann's "Davidsbundlertanze." It doesn't look like a Balanchine ballet, but the way he fearlessly applied himself to the Schumann music was a great example of how to stretch yourself.

My least favorite is Harlequinade. It seems as if this was made as a vehicle for Edward Villella, but I never felt he was comfortable with it.

I like to combine all of my dance backgrounds, which include Horton, West African, jazz, and Taylor. Mr. Balanchine's gift to me was in creating a neoclassical "soil" where I can plant new seeds.

Miriam Mahdaviani

Choreographer

I LOVE Tombeau de Couperin. It's eight couples, and the two sides of the stage are mirror images of each other. Three-quarters of the way through, he breaks the symmetry. Just when you think you know what to expect, he says, "Guess what folks: I'm not making everything balanced."

Mr. B never held back, and I try not to hold back in my work. One of his code words to his dancers was "Bigger." You'd see him standing in the wings, and you would dance as big as you possibly could, fulfilling everything the dance had to say at that moment.

Mr. B had an ease about coming up with the right steps for the music. It spilled out of him, and he didn't have to go back and fix it. I was bowled over by that. I really have to work at it. I do a lot of back and forth with the dancers to get something that's comfortable for them as well as that says what I want to say.

Karole Armitage

Artistic Director, Armitage Gone! Dance

MY FIRST BALLET TEACHER was straight from NYCB, and she taught us parts of Serenade for our recital when I was 4. It enchanted me utterly. I loved the feeling of dancing to that music and being beautiful and mysterious.

Originally the only thing I wanted to do was dance Balanchine. I went to SAB and North Carolina School of the Arts and danced with him in the Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve. As an adolescent, I thought the tutus and romanticism were very old. I left and went to New York to do something more contemporary. I danced with Merce Cunningham and discovered a whole new world. Maybe ten years after, I realized that all that unrequited love in Balanchine that I thought was old-fashioned is actually the unrequited reality of life! I now see it as something universal and timeless. Style-wise, it remains of its era.

The part of Balanchine's heritage I'm drawn to is dance as a poetic, metaphorical function, for instance the idealized love or the existential angst of The Four Temperaments. I'm also drawn to the virtuosity, the rhythmic syncopation, and the extreme positions he used to create line on a proscenium stage.

I'm not interested in symmetrical space. I'm interested in the exploded field of space that Cunningham brought to dance. I've always adored being completely off-balance, so it's not the world of controlled and sovereign certitude; it's the world of incertitude, off-balance, de-centeredness.

The Four Temperaments is phenomenally innovative--the way he combines modern dance and ballet at that early era. The feeling of destiny moving beyond the individual's control is profound and very modern and I love it.

Christopher Wheeldon

Resident Choreographer, New York City Ballet

THE ROYAL BALLET did Agon when I was at the school and I thought, "I do not care if I never see another ballet by this choreographer." I was brought up on The Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and Sleeping Beauty--all of the classics. This ballet had no scenery, angular choreography, and the Stravinsky music, and it was jarring to me as a 12-year-old. Now, I think that it's a great work, but only when it's been performed brilliantly.

With Agon, Balanchine taught me the poetry of the grotesque--that something beautiful and moving can come out of a very harsh aesthetic. His work also taught me about going into the music on different levels and presenting what you discover architecturally in space.

One time I was standing in the wings for Jewels, and Peter Martins pointed out how you never really notice entrances and exits in "Diamonds," how seamless the integration between the corps work and the principals' work is. Your eye never has to fight to know what to look at. The worst thing is to have interesting steps, but you don't get the full value. One of the things wrong with Slavonic Dances was that I overchoreographed.

I like the invention and simplicity of The Four Temperaments, and how brilliantly the storytelling comes across in Prodigal Son.

I'm not a fan of Walpurgisnacht Ballet. I don't think it's great music, and the ballet is like a giant hair salon on fire. But even when Balanchine's not at his strongest, there are moments I love, like the solo girl's part. I'm not crazy about Harlequinade. I had to run around with a giant leather sausage beating everyone; maybe that's why I don't like it. And it's not just because I'm a snobby Brit, but there are moments of Union Jack that I have a hard time with.

But we're celebrating the most important voice in dance in the world. Nobody's perfect.