George Balanchine: The Man Who Remade Ballet

The New York City Ballet rehearses in Amsterdam with choreographer George Balanchine in 1965. Public Domain

“Nutcracker,” that ubiquitous Christmastide ballet even now readying to launch its annual conquest of American ballet audiences, was originally a magnificent Russian flop. It became an American—and global—success because of one man: George Balanchine.

Balanchine (1904–83) was a Georgian born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He escaped his native land after the Bolshevik revolution and became the most important American choreographer—some would say the most important choreographer, period—of the 20th century. He did so by exercising a Chestertonian paradox: Balanchine saved traditional ballet by changing it.

When Balanchine began his career in the early 1920s, the classical ballet technique emerging into prominence was that of the Russian ballerina Agrippina Vaganova. A distinguishing feature of Vaganova technique was attention to the pose. Ballet enjoys a vocabulary of dance steps that celebrate the upward direction of human posture. That’s why female ballet dancers frequently go “en pointe,” dancing on their toes, and why lifts and jumps are a central part of ballet. For Vaganova, these steps are there to lead us to a pose. Speaking generally, we can say that the steps are links between poses.

American Speed

Agrippina Vaganova in St. Petersburg, circa 1910. Public Domain

But Vaganova was Russian, while Balanchine became thoroughly American. From the moment he slipped out of the Soviet Union and into the West, Balanchine started making changes to traditional style. These were not rejections of basic ballet principals, but developments of them along already given lines. For example, extension—the ballet principal of raising the leg and holding it extended from the torso—became exaggerated in Balanchine, whose dancers trained to exhibit maximum extension of all limbs.

In addition, Vaganova’s emphasis on pose required a certain reservation of tempo; one couldn’t rush into an arabesque if one wished to hold it. Balanchine, on the other hand, thrived on the fast pace of his newfound home in America. With the establishment of Balanchine’s School of American Ballet in 1934 and the founding of his New York City Ballet in 1948, ballet picked up its pace.

This new emphasis on speed led to yet another new twist: Because his dancers moved so quickly, they barely had time to touch down on stage. In many Balanchine ballets, the dancers seem perpetually airborne.

These and other similar innovations caused Vaganova partisans to label Balanchine’s technique and style as “mere athleticism,” while Balanchine’s champions found Vaganova reluctant to enter the 20th century. Yet both hailed from the same tradition, and both carried that tradition forward in different ways. If the large number of Balanchine-based companies today implies preference (in this country, at least) for Balanchine, credit the choreographer’s attention to the cultural climate. As America was fast, sharp, and clean, so Balanchine’s mature ballets were fast, sharp, and clean. This in no way signaled a break from the past, but an adaptation of it.

Ballets That Span the Century

Sara Mearns dances as the Sugarplum Fairy in George Balanchine's "The Nutcracker." Paul Kolnik/The George Balanchine Trust, New York City Ballet

Dancer-choreographer John Clifford, artistic director of the Los Angeles Dance Theater, maintains a YouTube channel featuring videos of works by him and others. Many Balanchine ballets, including the following, can be found here, for which we owe Clifford a debt of thanks.

Most popular is New York City Ballet’s “Nutcracker,” which Balanchine restaged in 1954, restoring it to repertoire status after decades of obscurity. It was Balanchine’s production that launched the popularity of “Nutcrackers” all over the country. It is widely available on video.

“Chaconne” is a short (over six minutes) pas de deux that premiered in 1976 to the music of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s 1762 opera “Orfeo and Euridice.” Balanchine sticks very close to traditional classical vocabulary here, but the speed and continuity of the steps, plus the fluid interaction of the dancers, make the piece float.

“Apollo” (“Apollon Musagète”), from 1928, was Balanchine’s earliest masterpiece, set to music by Igor Stravinsky. It depicts the mythological birth and ascent of the Greek sun god. The video is from 1965 and in black and white.

“Western Symphony” is a joyful tribute to all things cowboy, reflecting Balanchine’s enthusiasm for Western movies and bola ties (which he wore most of his life). From 1954, it features a compilation of folk music arranged by American composer Hershy Kay.

“Mozartiana” was set to the music of Mozart, as orchestrated by Tchaikovsky. Some sources will credit only Tchaikovsky, but, in fact, each of the suite’s four movements is an arrangement by Tchaikovsky of a Mozart piano score, or in one case, a choral piece transcribed for piano. From 1981—and generally considered Balanchine’s final masterpiece—this astonishing work from the choreographer’s last years reflects his deep musicianship. The son of one composer and brother of another, Balanchine played piano almost every day of his life and brought his knowledge of musical harmonies and structure to bear on his choreography.

Creativity: Communism Versus Capitalism

Balanchine returned to the USSR only once, in 1962, at the behest of the U.S. State Department. According to Jennifer Homans, author of the prize-winning 2023 book “Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century,” “the sight of communism sickened him.” His beloved homeland had been lost to state bureaucrats. Ironically, too, while Balanchine, in the “reactionary” West, had produced miraculous innovations in ballet, Russian dance, in the “progressive” Soviet Union, had stood stock-still.

American dancer and choreographer George Balanchine, in 1976. AFP/Getty Images

A river flows through many changes along its banks, yet it is always the same river. So it is with Western arts, which change yet stay themselves. Richard Wagner’s operas seem barely related to Gregorian chant, yet they belong at different ends of the same tradition. One feels certain that a dancer from the court of Louis XIV, transported to a performance of Balanchine’s “Mozartiana,” wouldn’t begin to connect his courtly experience from the 17th century with what he’s seeing in the present, yet connected they are. Innovation, it would seem, is the crown of tradition.

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