Today, asking the average person to imagine a ballet dancer usually conjures up an image of a tall, statuesque woman with long, thin legs and a stern demeanor. However, what many people do not realize is that the image of a ballerina has changed drastically since the advent of the dance form. Originally conceived in the Renaissance, ballet as an art form was not initially the athletic pursuit of dancing on the toes that it is today. The art form that came to be known as ballet originated in the royal courts of the Italian Renaissance, and spread from there into France and England (Reyna). However, it was the French that truly developed the art form with the creation of the Paris Opera Ballet. Ballet dancers during this time were similar to actors and opera singers; they were tasked with putting on performances and entertaining the royal court (Reyna).
Ballet continued to develop differently in different parts of the world, leading to a variety of vastly different styles. Today, the ballet world is mostly split geographically, with certain styles of ballet being known as the “Russian” style, while others are “French” or “Italian” (Reyna). Different dancers may be technically different and may dance certain variations better than others based on the style of technique they were taught.
Perhaps one of the most influential individuals in the ballet world was George Balanchine. Born in 1904, Balanchine went on to be the cofounder of the New York City Ballet, one of the world’s premier ballet companies. However, perhaps even more notably, Balanchine became one of the leading choreographers of the company, ushering in the era that came to be known as the “neoclassical” ballet (Taper).
Balanchine was also one of the first to find aesthetic appeal in the idea of long, high extensions in his dancers. Prior to Balanchine’s rise to fame and popularity, dancers were focused on storytelling; Balanchine ushered in a new era of dance in which the dancer had to be a stellar athlete as well as a wonderful artist. Today, ballet’s long-legged women with unrelenting flexibility are the logical extension of Balanchine’s quest for the ideal female dancer. Some argue that Balanchine eventually found this ideal dancer in a young woman named Suzanne Farrell.
Many people do not know or understand the world of ballet, but many go to see “The Nutcracker” during the Christmas season. For many people, this is the only ballet that they will see in their entire lives. This famous piece has been choreographed and re-choreographed a number of times, but the most famous variation on Tchaikovsky's famous score was choreographed by Balanchine (Taper). Balanchine himself performed in the ballet with one of his famous dancers, Suzanne Farrell, in the role of Drosselmeyer (Taper). He also danced with Farrell in the role of Don Quixote in a ballet of the same name.
It was during this time that Balanchine began expressing interest in changing the aesthetic of ballet (Taper). Balanchine became enamored of Suzanne Farrell, a young dancer with long, clean lines and a graceful aesthetic; Balanchine began to see the ideal dancer as a woman with long, lean limbs and minimal body fat (Taper). To this day, the ballet aesthetic for classically-trained dancers remains the same. Farrell became something of a muse to Balanchine; his obsession with her, her dancing, and her grace even led him to divorce his wife and create a multitude of ballets in honor of the young dancer (Taper). Without Suzanne Farrell, the world may never have seen some of Balanchine’s greatest works; while their relationship was rocky and tempestuous, it certainly inspired great things of both Balanchine and Farrell.
One of the ballets that Balanchine created for Farrell was the “Diamonds” variation from Balanchine’s ballet entitled “Jewels” (Taper). “Diamonds” is set to music by Tchaikovsky, and features the kind of sweeping, graceful movement that Farrell was known for. Unlike the other variations in “Jewels,” the costuming in the “Diamonds” variation is very classical in style, with the pancake tutus and jeweled tiaras that Balanchine preferred for his neoclassical takes on the classical ballet stories.
Although Balanchine is often lauded for his choreography of some of the classical works (like “The Nutcracker”), one of his most influential contributions to the dance world was his development of the contemporary ballet. Contemporary ballets are often shorter than a full-length production, and often do not tell a story in the same way that the classical and neoclassical ballets do; however, they evoke emotion and feeling in the viewer in a way that the classical ballet may not (Reyna). They are ballets that are a testament to the music, rather than being a slave to a storyline or character.
According to a choreographer for the American Contemporary Ballet, a ballet company that is concerned with reproducing the works of Balanchine, Balanchine had a new and different take on the tradition of dance as a form of storytelling. “‘Dance is fairly limited as a storytelling medium, but as a musical one that works in a visual realm, it’s unlimited,’ Mr. Jones said in an interview. ‘It was Balanchine’s realization of this — and his development of its musical vocabulary, aside from the works themselves — that was his greatest contribution’” (Looseleaf). The fact that so many ballet companies still perform Balanchine’s works to this day-- some exclusively so-- is a testament to the power and timeless nature of his ballets.
Balanchine himself had an artistic view that deviated sharply from the ballet masters that came before him. He made many artistic and aesthetic decisions that were considered strange and nontraditional by his peers, and some were even lambasted as deconstructing the art of the ballet. Goldner writes:
Balanchine's style has been described as neoclassic, a reaction to the Romantic anti-classicism, (which had turned into exaggerated theatricality) that was the prevailing style in Russian and European ballet when he had begun to dance. As a choreographer, Balanchine generally de-emphasized plot in his ballets, preferring to let “dance be the star of the show,” as he once told an interviewer. Nevertheless, tantalizing hints of story color works ranging from Agon to Liebeslieder Walzer,and such ballets as La Valse, Apollo, Scotch Symphony, La Sonnambula, Harlequinade and Prodigal Son — as well as the full-length Nutcracker, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Coppelia — integrate the elements of dancing and narrative. (Goldner)
This new and different take on the classical ballet became known as the neoclassical ballet style; many of the “classical” ballets that are performed today are performed with Balanchine’s deconstructed method of storytelling via dance and music.
Looking again at Balanchine’s most well-known choreography, “The Nutcracker,” it is easy to see why his philosophy on dance and choreography became so popular. As Goldner notes, the prevailing aesthetic in the pre-Balanchine years was exaggerated and theatrical; however, this type of dance did not seem to appeal to American audiences. “The Nutcracker” is a fantastic and whimsical story, and no excess theatricality is needed to make the story seem exaggerated and excessive.
Rather than utilize the prevailing style of the time, Balanchine pared down the theatricality of the choreography, instead letting the dancers and the dancing tell the story of “The Nutcracker” (Taper). In the Balanchine version of the ballet, Clara, the main character of the story, is played by a child; for most of the ballet, she sits and watches the other dancers dance and perform, eventually witnessing the Sugar Plum Fairy and her prince dance a grand pas de deux (Goldner). In other versions of the ballet, Clara is played by an adult, and dances as a principal soloist in the ballet (Goldner).
Removing Clara as a soloist allowed Balanchine to tell the story of “The Nutcracker” in the way he preferred: as a series of variations that could almost be stand-alone ballets, without any kind of context needed. This is, perhaps, most obvious in the scenes in which Clara and the Nutcracker go to the candy palace and witness all the different types of sweets dance their respective variations, thanking Clara for killing the Mouse King (Goldner).
It is easy to see how Balanchine adapted his preferred style of choreography across a number of different types of productions. His contemporary ballets, like “Jewels” and “Symphony in C” are essentially plotless, relying instead on the movement and the music to evoke emotion in the viewer. Even his classical ballets are deconstructed in this way, with each act and scene acting nearly independently of the others, and only coming together to tell a story in a cursory way.
Balanchine was a zeitgeist, a giant of his time. Without Balanchine and his contributions to modern ballet, the form and style of ballet in the United States and Europe would be vastly different. Indeed, even the dancers would look differently than they do today: it was Balanchine who introduced the idea that a ballerina should be long and lean, with clean lines. He often stated that this aesthetic was the best way for a choreographer to express the technique of ballet (Taper).
Works cited
Balanchine, George and Francis Mason. Balanchine's Complete stories of the great ballets. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977. Online.
Goldner, Nancy. Balanchine variations. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2008. Online.
Looseleaf, Victoria. "Balanchine’s Palm-Fringed Muse." The New York Times, May 17. 2013: Online.
Reyna, Ferdinando. A concise history of ballet. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1965. Online.
Taper, Bernard. Balanchine, a biography. New York, N.Y.: Times Books, 1984. Online.
