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How did George Balanchine influence American ballet: its aesthetic, its choreography, the pedagogical practices?
Hello! Thanks for your question about George Balanchine's influence on American ballet's aesthetics, choreography and pedagogical practices.
Below you will find a deep dive of my finding.
METHODOLOGY
To provide an interesting overview of George Balanchine's influence on American ballet I have read the materials provided in the request, to learn about George Balanchine's work and life.
Further I looked through the resources compiled by my colleague and searched for additional resources, favoring the most informative, but also the most credible ones.
I focused my research primarily on information regarding his contribution to ballet style, choreography, aesthetics and pedagogy, but also included several biographical facts, to provide an overview of who was George Balanchine and what shaped his vision and work.
WHO WAS GEORGE BALANCHINE?
George Balanchine was the "most influential choreographer of classical ballet in the United States in the 20th century".
Born in Russia, in 1904, George Balanchine (originally named Georgi Balanchivadze) was one of the three children of Meliton, a singer and composer, and Maria, a pianist.
As a kid, George didn't like anything related to performance, refusing to dance as his siblings did at house parties. When his mother took him along with her and his sister, Tamara, to an audition at the Maryinsky School of Ballet, the 10 years old George had no intention of auditioning. However, after someone suggested him to audition since he was already there, he did, and was accepted, while his sister wasn't.
Despite of being enrolled in Ballet School he still showed more interest in music. At the age of 15 he applied to the Conservatory of Music, and was accepted, but could not finish his studies because of the difficult conditions he had to endure during the Bolshevik revolution. Critics argue that his deep knowledge of music was the "foundation for his later excellence in choreography."
While in ballet school George Balanchine broke the established rules of classical ballet in his choreographies, being accused of inappropriately using pointe, and also of eroticism and obscenity. Starting the dance with his female partner lying across his shoulders and arms was considered unacceptable, as the only allowed contact between male and female dancers at that time was supporting the ballerina at her waist level during her turns. Later in his career Balanchine departed from many ballet conventions, for example, having Arthur Mitchell, an African American man, dance with a white woman in his 1957 production of "Agon", which was at the time considered outrageous and extremely sensual.
In the year when he graduated the Maryinsky School of Ballet he saw a performance that he found "thoroughly unconventional and profoundly provocative", with elements of gymnastics and acrobatics, this trend being evident later in his own work.
After working for five years in Paris, a period during which he has absorbed the European ballet culture of that time, George Balanchine met Lincoln Kirstein, a wealthy ballet enthusiast who wanted to bring classical ballet to America. His intention was to form a dance school, so that the ballet company would be able to hire thoroughly prepared dancers for their performances. Balanchine agreed to head the school, being fascinated with the American culture and attracted by the possibility to work with athletic American women he had admired in movies, such as Ginger Rogers.
In United States Balanchine worked on a wide range of productions, from ballet and opera ballet to Hollywood movies and Broadway shows.
In 1946 Balanchine with Kirstein founded what was later called the New York City Ballet, where Balanchine developed his neoclassical style that later spread across the world and served as principal choreographer and ballet master until his death, in 1983.
Nowadays George Balanchine "is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet."
One of his most financially successful works was "the Nutcracker", which was the most durable and profitable production of New York City Ballet and also attracted many students to the School of American Ballet.
His most renowned works are the "bold modernist masterpieces he produced primarily during his years at New York City Ballet: Four Temperaments, 1946; Agon, 1957; Episodes, 1959; Movements for Piano and Orchestra, 1963; Stravinsky Violin Concerto 1972; and Kammermusik No 2, 1978."
At the time of his death, at the age of 79, more than 60 troupes from different countries were performing his ballets.
HOW DID GEORGE BALANCHINE INFLUENCE THE AMERICAN BALLET AESTHETICS AND CHOREOGRAPHY?
George Balanchine's choreography is known for the speed and lightness of movement.
One of the moves he introduced, the overhead lift of the female dancer, is one of the most used moves in contemporary ballet.
An important influence in Balanchine's work was his collaboration with the composer Igor Stravinsky. As the son of a composer and having studied piano from the age of five, Balanchine considered that music was the basis of dance, saying that "I am just a simple choreographer that learned how to read music." Thus, Balanchine believed that that what is called now "ballet" was invented by musicians like Tchaikovsky, Delibes, and Stravinsky. One of his most popularized sayings was "see the music, hear the dance".
"His influence on all aspects of technique, choreographic style, music, costume, lighting, and stage design has been far-reaching." Many of his ballets, "not only dispensed with characters and plots but threw out elaborate designs, both sets and costumes".
One of the most remarkable things about Balanchine was his inventiveness and the large variety of inspiration sources he used for his creations. He used music from different kinds of composers, from the classical Mozart, Brahms, Handel and Vivaldi, to Stravinsky, Sousa and Gottschalk.
Balanchine reinvented the American ballet, creating a new contemporary style, on the basis of Russian classical technique.
Balanchine's style is described as "neoclassical", that came as a reaction to the over-theatrical Romantic anti-classicism. An important particularity of his choreography was that he "de-emphasized plot in his ballet", emphasizing the dance itself instead. As he wrote himself, "ballet may contain a story, but the visual spectacle, not the story is the essential element."
When working on choreography Balanchine was more interested in the musical plot, rather than the story. Having an extensive musical knowledge he would thoroughly study the scores of the music, and would try to create moves that would correspond to the music.
When describing his working process his students say that he never came to the studio with a developed set of movements. He could only create the choreography while working with dancers directly. He said that "You can't sit down and think about dancing, you have to get up and dance. You take people and move them and see if their movements correspond to the music."
Balanchine has successfully fused the modern dance concepts with older ballet ideas.
"As historian and critic Jennifer Homans puts it, “Balanchine’s most classical dances have a radical edge, and his most revolutionary dances were always rooted in classical forms”".
He believed that everything in history recurs, but in another form: "We all live in the same time forever. There is no future and there is no past."
Stravinsky, the composer he collaborated with on many projects, had the same idea, quoting Goethe that "Everything has been thought of before; the task is to think of it again."
Balanchine believed in the importance of knowing the tradition, saying that "You must go through tradition, absorb it, and become in a way a reincarnation of all the artistic periods that have come before you."
His different vision of ballet costumes was evident from his school years. In a dance choreographed at the age of 16 for a school performance he was criticized because he had the ballerina dancing on pointe, while wearing a tunic, but the rule was that the pointe should only be weared with the classic tutu. In many of his later choreographical works the dancers did not wear any formal ballet costumes at all. His modern dances were performed in simple black and white rehearsal clothes, emphasizing the idea the "“movement in choreography is an end in itself".
George Balanchine brought to ballet his passion for "American popular culture—of African-American dance, Westerns, Broadway showgirls, and Fred Astaire —with a style characterized by speed, spaciousness, clarity of execution, musicality, and the rhythms of modern American life."
In conclusion, the main characteristics of Balanchine's choreography style include:
o fast, light, acrobatic moves;
o distancing the dancing from plot or story, celebrating the beauty of dance itself;
o redefining the role of the supporting dancers in ballet, transforming them into a contributing character, not merely a decorative element;
o a new style of dancing which was "both “packed”—full of complication, gradation, variation—and yet extraordinarily clean, quick, and natural-looking", and continues to be the dominant style in American ballet;
o modern ballet shows with dancers wearing simple black and white practice apparel;
BALANCHINE CRITICISM AND CONTROVERSY
A 2014 article, entitled "The After-Effects of the Balanchine Body on American Ballet", discusses how Balanchine brought from Russia and contributed to the popularization of the "skinny white girl" stereotype of a prima ballerina.
Balanchine was strict in choosing his dancers, his preferred body type being tall and having long legs, long arms, short torso, thin bones, very thin body, long neck and small head.
His obsession with body aesthetics made him turn down many offers to work with television shows, as he didn't like "the way the camera made the dancers' noses and feet long and their legs short."
About those who were not accepted in his works he used to say "She (or he) doesn't look like a dancer."
Many of his critics accuse him also of the fact that his moves are too damaging to the joints of the dancers. When creating new moves he was focused on the aesthetics, on the way it looks, disregarding some of the classical ballet techniques and changing the moves in such a ways that they looked more casual, but, arguably, were not adapted to the human anatomy.
He was also accused of being responsible for inducing anorexia and bulimia in dancers, in his pursuit for the ideal ballet body.
One on the most well known ballerinas he had worked with, Suzanne Farrell, who has retired from dancing after having a hip replacement surgery, describes how Balanchine often developed his moves from certain mistakes in rehearsals: "One day as I fell out of a turn into a backbend lunge he said, “Can you do that again, can you fall more…lean more…bend more?” I said, “Let me try,” and he countered, “Is it impossible?”… By now I knew nothing was impossible, at least physically [!], and replied, “No, it’s not. Let me work on it.” If I couldn’t repeat the movement immediately, we would leave those places sketchy until the next day."
In an essay criticizing Balanchine's influence on ballet, accusing him of creating and encouraging unnatural moves that are very detrimental to the bodies of dancers, K.L. Kanter writes "No-one is trying to take the New York City Ballet, as a company, away from Americans. What I would, however, ask you to do, is to think about whether there may exist another world, a world of ideas, quite different from what you think of as classical dancing today."
Whether or not the author is right, this essay attests to the incontestable influence of George Balanchine's work on American ballet.
BALANCHINE PEDAGOGY
I haven't found much about Balanchine's specific teaching techniques, although he was repeatedly characterized as being "despotic."
However, The George Balanchine Foundation collaborated with his former students to create "The Balanchine Essays", a ten-part series, providing over nine hours of video on Balanchine's technique, something he had wanted to create in his late years.
CONCLUSION
To wrap it up, George Balanchine had an indisputable influence on classic ballet in United States, as well as internationally.
Adored by some and criticized by others, George Balanchine left an impressive body of work that continues to provide inspiration to ballet dancers and choreographers.
I hope that the students will enjoy to learn about George Balanchine as much as I did. Thanks for using Wonder! Please let us know if we can help with anything else!