by Chava Pearl Lansky | Oct 10, 2023 | News, Onstage, The Latest
On October 11, 1948, the curtain at the City Center for Music and Drama opened on New York City Ballet for the first time. The then-fledgling company performed three George Balanchine ballets: Concerto Barocco, Orpheus, and Symphony in C. Balanchine and his...
by Martha Anne Toll | Feb 27, 2023 | News, The Latest
Alice Robb’s Don’t Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet (Mariner Books, $29.99) opens a window into ballet’s behind-the-scenes mysteries. Part memoir, part reportage, the book explores George Balanchine’s artistic legacy, as well as the physical and technical...
by Leigh Witchel | Apr 19, 2022 | Company Life
One of the trickiest moves in Balanchine’s Serenade isn’t a dance step, and it wasn’t even part of the ballet until it was well past 40. It’s the moment where the Waltz Girl undoes her hair onstage before the final movement. It can go beautifully or badly, including...
by Martha Anne Toll | Apr 12, 2022 | News, The Latest
Toni Bentley reached ballet’s heights as part of the last group of New York City Ballet dancers to work with George Balanchine. Even before a hip injury forced her into early retirement, she had penned Winter Season: A Dancer’s Journal, a beautiful take on daily life...
by Maria Kowroski As Told To Gavin Larsen | Nov 26, 2020 | Dream Role, Profiles
The first time I was called to learn Mozartiana, I didn’t think I would actually get to do it. It’s a coveted ballerina role in the company, and I was still early in my career. But I got to dance it once or twice, and then not again for many years. The...
by Sophie Robertson For Dance Spirit | Mar 3, 2020 | Technique, Training
As a teacher and choreographer, George Balanchine—founder of the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet—finessed even the smallest details. And in his technique, extra-special attention is paid to the carriage of the head, which is both unique...
by Lucy Van Cleef | Dec 25, 2019 | Everything Nutcracker, News
The Nutcracker has been a dancer’s tradition for over 125 years. As a student at Russia’s Imperial Ballet School in Saint Petersburg in the early 1900s, a young George Balanchine performed in the original production of The Nutcracker, created in 1892, at...
by Margaret Fuhrer | Dec 23, 2019 | Career, Instagram, Profiles
In one sense, American Ballet Theatre soloist Calvin Royal III’s company debut as the lead in George Balanchine’s Apollo in October felt momentous: a black dancer, in a historically lily-white company, portraying a god. In another, it felt inevitable:...