Lincoln Kirstein
One of the most famous contemporary choreographers in the world, George Balanchine came to the United States from Sankt Petersburg in far 1933. Being the son of Russian composer, he began studying the piano at the age of five. His dance graduation began some later, at the age of nine, in Imperial Ballet School of the St. Petersburg academy. His first dancing debute, a cupid, took place in the Maryinsky Theatre Ballet Company production of The Sleeping Beauty at the age of 10. In the summer of 1924, Balanchine was one of four dancers who left the newly formed Soviet Union for a tour of Western Europe. All dancers, George Balanchine, Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova and Nicholas Efimov were invited by impresario Sergei Diaghilev to audition for his Ballets Russes in Paris and were accepted into the company.
Very soon, after watching him stage a new version of the company's Stravinsky ballet, Le Chant de Rossignol Diaghilev could discern in young dancer a choreographer then hired him as ballet master to replace Bronislava Nijinski. Shortly after this Balanchine served as ballet master with Ballets Russes until the company was dissolved, then he spent the next few years on a variety of projects which took him all over Europe: choreographing for the Royal Danish Ballet; staging dance extravaganzas for Britain's popular Cochran Musical Theater Revues; and working with DeBasil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (where he discovered young Tamara Toumanova).
Decided to form his own company he returns to Paris, starting collaboration with such leading artistic figures as Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, artist Pavel Tchelitchew, and composers Darius Milhaud and Henri Sauguet. Exactly this period a meeting occurred to change the history of 20th century dance. Later, in 1934, agreed to come to America, Balanchine founded the School of American Ballet to train students for the New York City Ballet and companies throughout the United States and the world. The first ballet he choreographed was Serenade to music by Tschaikovsky.
Today it's really hard to imgine modern ballet without George Balanchine. There is The George Balanchine Foundation which mission is to develope dance and its allied arts in the United States and throughout the world on behalf of the dance community at large. This goal is pursued through a broad range of activities and programs, including concentrated research, ballet reconstructions, publications, lectures and videos, and other innovative projects.
"God creates, I do not create. I assemble and I steal everywhere to do it - from what I see, from what the dancers can do, from what others do.
In ballet a complicated story is impossible to tell... we can't dance synonyms.
In my ballets, woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better.
Most ballet teachers in the United States are terrible. If they were in medicine, everyone would be poisoned.
One is born to be a great dancer.
The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener".
George Balanchine on Dance
