The Joy of Pure Movement

By Michael Walsh

George Balanchine: 1904-1983

His enthusiasms included the paintings of Braque, the writings 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 Barocco (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, catalyzed 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, included 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 Tanaquil 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 This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.