George Balanchine — ballet (nyc ballet) with roots in the Russian Empire
George Balanchine was born Georgi Melitonovich Balanchivadze in St Petersburg on 22 January 1904, the son of the Georgian composer Meliton Balanchivadze; his younger brother Andria also became a composer in Georgia. He was formed entirely within the Russian Imperial ballet.
At nine he was accepted, at his mother's insistence, into the ballet section of the Imperial Theatre School in St Petersburg, where he studied under Pavel Gerdt and Samuil Andrianov, and at ten he appeared as a Cupid in Marius Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty at the Mariinsky. The school closed during the Revolution of 1917 and reopened with much reduced funding; he graduated in 1921, joined the state ballet company and began choreographing short works.
In the summer of 1924 he and three other dancers, Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova and Nicholas Efimov, were permitted by the Soviet government to leave on a tour of Western Europe. They did not go back. After auditioning for Sergei Diaghilev all four joined the Ballets Russes, and Diaghilev, who found Balanchivadze hard to pronounce, shortened the name to Balanchine. He made him ballet master, the company's chief choreographer. For Diaghilev he created Apollon musagète (1928), to Stravinsky, and Prodigal Son (1929), to Prokofiev, both still in the repertory; in all he made nine ballets for the company.
After Diaghilev's death in 1929 he worked for several companies and formed his own, Les Ballets 1933. In London that year Lincoln Kirstein invited him to America. He insisted on a school first, and the School of American Ballet held its first class on 2 January 1934; his first American ballet, Serenade, to Tchaikovsky, was made for its students. In 1941 their American Ballet Caravan gave the first performances of Concerto Barocco and Ballet Imperial, set to Tchaikovsky's Second Piano Concerto. After several short-lived companies he and Kirstein formed Ballet Society in 1946, which in 1948 became New York City Ballet.
He was its ballet master and chief choreographer for the rest of his life, drawing above all on Tchaikovsky and on Stravinsky, his compatriot and friend. He died in New York on 30 April 1983, aged seventy-nine.
"Left Soviet Russia in summer 1924 with a small group of dancers permitted to tour Western Europe; joined Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and later settled in the United States (1933)."
Migration storyTracing the roots — St Petersburg
Born Georgi Balanchivadze in St Petersburg in 1904, son of the Georgian composer Meliton Balanchivadze, he trained at the Imperial Ballet School and danced at the Mariinsky. In 1924 he was one of four dancers permitted to leave Soviet Russia for a tour of Western Europe, and did not return.
Born Georgi Melitonovich Balanchivadze in St Petersburg, son of the Georgian composer Meliton Balanchivadze; his brother Andria became a Georgian composer.
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St Petersburg. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
""My muse must come to me on union time.""