Balanchine, George

Balanchine, George [né Gyorgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze] (1904–83), choreographer. Born in St. Petersburg, he worked with Diaghilev and Colonel de Basil and also choreographed several London revues before settling in New York where he founded the School for American Ballet and organized the New York City Ballet Company. He was probably the greatest of 20th‐century choreographers. In his best work, Balanchine moved away from traditional ballet storytelling, and, while retaining the basic dance idioms, attempted to abstract the essence of the music around which he often created his masterpieces. His pioneering work was rarely in evidence in his superb Broadway contributions, which nonetheless displayed what ballet historian Robert Lawrence called a “crispness of phrasing, musicality of movement, and feeling for absolute design.” His first Broadway assignment was the Ziegfeld Follies of 1936. In the same year he created the first ballet conceived as an integral dramatic part of a musical with “Slaughter on 10th Avenue” in On Your Toes. He later choreographed Babes in Arms (1937), I Married an Angel (1938), The Boys from Syracuse (1938), Keep Off the Grass (1940), Louisiana Purchase (1940), Cabin in the Sky (1940), The Lady Comes Across (1942), Rosalinda (1942), What's Up (1943), Dream with Music (1944), Song of Norway (1944), Mr. Strauss Goes to Boston (1945), The Chocolate Soldier (1947), Where's Charley? (1948), and Courtin' Time (1951). Biography: Balanchine, Bernard Taper, revised 1983.