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Pas de deux - Stravinsky and BalanchineStravinsky's work in ballet falls neatly into two periods. First he worked for Serge Diaghilev, on a succession of works that ran from The Firebird in 1910 to Apollo in 1928, the year before the great impresario's death. The composer may not have known it at the time, but with that last work Diaghilev had bequeathed him a successor, for all his ballet scores thereafter were written for the choreographer of Apollo: George Balanchine. Born in 1904, Balanchine was more than 20 years younger than Stravinsky, and had come to maturity in a Russia already Soviet. Even so, the two men had much in common. Both grew up in St Petersburg, within artistic families; Balanchine's father was a composer and Stravinsky's a solo bass singer at the principal theatre, the Mariinsky, where the young Balanchine began his training in the dance school. Also, unusually for a dancer-choreographer, Balanchine had a thorough musical education, in piano and composition. He could speak the composer's native language - or, rather, the composer's two native languages: music and Russian. Their first contact came in 1925. The year before, Balanchine had left the Soviet Union with a small company, including his first wife, to tour western Europe. None of them went back, for they were spotted by Diaghilev in London and drawn into his Ballets Russes. Though only 20 when he joined Diaghilev's troupe, Balanchine already had experience as a choreographer, and Diaghilev gave him his chance - not least with that first Stravinsky assignment, to revise the composer's wartime ballet Chant du rossignol (Song of the Nightingale) in the original designs by the french artist Henri Matisse. At the first performance the Nightingale was danced by Alicia Markova and the Mechanical Nightingale by the choreographer, still dancing at that time (though not for much longer). Three years later he was given a new Stravinsky score to stage, Apollon musagète (or Apollo, as it was renamed), with Serge Lifar in the title role. Stravinsky was delighted by this work, by how its new dance language paralleled his musical language in depending on classical models given a modern twist. He, in Apollo, looked back through Tchaikovsky to Jean-Baptiste Lully, one of Louis XIV's chief composers, but also sideways to the café music of the period. Balanchine, similarly, proved himself a noble heir to the tradition that had culminated in the 19th century classical choreographer Marius Petipa, but showed he also knew how people - young people of his own generation - were moving in cabarets and dance halls. Click here to continue to part two of three |
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