My Experiance with Classic Balenchine

Well I hope you missed me, I have been having some trouble logging on to blogger and couldn't add new stuff. I finnally found some information to suggest it might be an incompatibility with the browser I was using sure enough it worked like a charm when I switched browsers. But now that its working I feel like the various moments have passed. the picture on the left is Suzanne Farrell and George Balanchine in rehearsal.
(© Martha Swope, Life Magazine 1968)


I was very excited to tell about the Classic Balenchine ballets that Kevin and I recently saw preformed by the Boston ballet. It was my first exposure to Balenchine . I loved it! " we saw "Ballo Della Regina" (1978), "La Valse" (1951), "The Four Temperaments" (1946). If I had to choose a favorite i would go with La Valse It was hauntingly beautiful, I espusually loved the skirts that were layers of gorgeously bright tulle with a black tulle on top. It had a stunning affect espesually when they floofed it. I will quote here from the Boston ballet web sight the story synopis

"La Valse is one of Balanchine's most haunting creations, a neo-Romantic ballet in two parts danced to Maurice Ravel's Valses Nobles et Sentimentales, followed by La Valse. The first half of the ballet is made up of a number of moody waltzes that create a sense of disquiet, even dread. The second part of the ballet takes place in a ballroom draped in black, where a beautiful girl in a white dress – originally danced by Balanchine's fourth wife, Tanaquil LeClercq (they would marry the following year) – finds herself helpless to stave off the beckoning of a Death figure. In a preface to the score of La Valse, which Ravel called a "choreographic poem," the composer wrote, "Drifting clouds give glimpses, through rifts, of couples waltzing. The clouds gradually scatter, and an immense hall can be seen, filled with a whirling crowd." He also quoted Comte de Salvandy in notes about the ballet, saying, "We are dancing on the edge of a volcano." All this is captured in Balanchine's ballet: like the music, it is achingly beautiful and full of foreboding. " (www.bostonballet.org)

In the End she (The girl in white) is taken by death and the costumes agian are wonderful he robes her in black and slips long black gloves over her white ones. once death is gone and she lies lifeless on the floor the crowd of waltzer returns and discovering her some of the men lift her body and twist it dangerouly about while other take up the dance agian as thoughnothing had happend its beautiful and eery.

So you can see I have developed an interest in Balenchine and in the Dancer Tanaquil, who originally danced the part of the woman in white in La Valce. I learned from the Program that she contracted polio in 1956 I think that would put her around 27 years old. She could no longer dance but she continued in ballet as a teacher. she passed away in 2001.
I have checked a dvd out of the libary about the life of Balenchine. If I learn more interesting bits I will pass them on.