New York City Ballet ‘All Balanchine’ (Spring 2018)

DANCE / April 29, 2018 by Editors

New York City Ballet’s Spring 2018 “All Balanchine” program includes Apollo, Le Tombeau de Couperin, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, & Symphony in Three Movements at The David H. Koch Theater in Lincoln Center from April 25 – 29, 2018.

All Balanchine Ballets

Apollo

https://youtu.be/brXYtiP2X-4

Apollo (1928) was Balanchine’s first collaboration with Stravinsky. This was the beginning of neoclassical ballet. It made Balanchine famous when Apollo was premiered by Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Paris.

Apollo is the Greek and Roman god of music. In the ballet, the young god approaches adulthood through the influences of the muses of poetry, theatre and dance.

The original set and costumes were created by French painter André Bauchant. Coco Chanel designed new costumes in 1929. Over the years, Balanchine stripped away most of the set and costumes.

The famous pose where the three muses and Apollo merge into one figure is sublime.

Le Tombeau de Couperin

This ballet set to music by Maurice Ravel is based on 18th-century French court dances.

Ravel composed the music in 1919 in memory of friends who died in World War I. Balanchine choreographed the music for NYCB’s Ravel Festival in 1975.

Eight couples make two quadrilles and dance geometric forms like a kaleidoscope.

Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux

https://youtu.be/NsL1639qGUY

Tschaikovsky composed this music for Bolshoi prima Anna Sobeshchanskaya in his 1877 Swan Lake. It wasn’t part of the printed score and so was lost. Petipa replaced the missing music with some music from Act I which is now the famous Black Swan pas de deux.

When the original was rediscovered, Balanchine got permission to choreograph it in 1960.