George Balanchine

Major partners of the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

Major partners of
the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

A suivre:

Abbé Perrin (Director of...

Directors, ballet masters, stage directors, choreographers, architects, ... Octave discovers the personalities that have marked the history of the Opera which continues to attract the great names of music and dance.

George Balanchine entered the Imperial Ballet School in Saint Petersburg in 1913 and created his first choreographies in 1920. In 1923, he was appointed ballet master at the Maly Theatre, Saint Petersburg’s second major ballet venue. Taking advantage of his inclusion in a Soviet State tour of dancers to Germany in 1924, he fled his country, moved to France, and became a dancer and choreographer in the troupe of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes before being named its Ballet Master in 1926. His introduction to Igor Stravinsky around the creation of Apollo (1927) marked the start of one of the most famous artistic collaborations of the 20^th century.

In 1933 he was asked by Lincoln Kirstein to create a ballet school in the United States—the School of American Ballet. From 1948 onwards, Balanchine would enjoy a prestigious career leading the New York City Ballet. In 1947, he was asked by Georges Hirsch to assume the role of ballet master at the Paris Opera Ballet for a period of six months. As such, George Balanchine created his first work for the Company, Le Palais de cristal (1947). Today, the repertoire includes some thirty of his works, underscoring the special relationship that the choreographer maintained with the Opera until his death in 1983: Serenade, Concerto Barocco, The Four Temperaments, Scottish Symphony, The Prodigal Son, Agon, Orpheus, Capriccio, Sonatine, Le Tombeau de Couperin, Tzigane, La Valse, La Sonnambula, Chaconne, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, Tchaikovsky Pas de deux, Violin Concerto, Symphony in Three Movements, Theme and Variations, Allegro Brillante, Western Symphony, Jewels, Sylvia Pas de deux... More recently, the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet have performed Brahms - Schönberg Quartet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.