Season 167
November 25, 2018
Symphony in C
Music: Georges Bizet, Symphony No. 1 in C major
Staging balletmaster: Ben Huys
Costume Designer: Nina Ananiashvili
Conductor: David Mukeria
Nutsa Chekurashvili (first appearance),Boris Zhurilov (first appearance)
Nino Samadashvili, David Ananeli
Ruika Yokoyama (first appearance), Yonen Takano
Mari Eloshvili (first appearance), Raphael Spyker (first appearance)
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Serenade
Nutsa Chekurashvili, Nino Samadashvili, Ekaterine Surmava,
David Ananeli, Philip Fedulov
Staged by Bart Cook and Maria Calegari
Special thanks to Ms.Marilyn Burbank, President of Mirella Dancewear,
for costumes of Serenade
Mozartiana
Musik: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Suite No. 4, Mozartiana, Op. 61
Ekaterine Surmava, Yonen Takano
Gigue - Aggelos Antoniou (first appearance)
Staging: Bart Cook, Maria Calegari
Designer: Rouben Ter-Arutunian
Costume Designer: Natia Sirbiladze
State Opera House of Georgia Orchestra
Conductor: Dvaid Mukeria
Director of the Ballet Company
Nina Ananiashvili
*The late-comers will not be allowed in until the first interval.
The ballets of George Balanchine are presented by arrangement with The George Balanchine Trust and have been produced in accordance with the Balanchine Style© and Balanchine Technique© service standards established and provided by the Trust.
Symphony in C
Bizet composed Symphony in C major at the age of 17, under tutorship of Charles Gounod at the Paris Conservatory. The manuscript was regarded missing for decades, and once discovered was published at the Conservatory’s library, in 1933. Balanchine first heared about the missing score from Stravinsky. After only two weeks of work with Paris Opera Ballet he staged one act ballet Le Palais de Crista. Ballet premiere was held in 1947, while Balanchine was guest balletmaster at Grand Opera. The following year, Balanchine included this ballet in “New York City Ballet” first programme, where he simplified costumes and decorations and changed the name. From that day it is reffered as Symphony in C.
A Serenade is a Dance in the Light of the Moon
Serenade was my first ballet in the United States. Soon after my arrival in America, Lincoln Kirstein, Edward M. M. Warburg, and I opened the School of American Ballet in New York. As part of the school curriculum, I started an evening ballet class in stage technique, to give students some idea of how dancing on stage differs from classwork. Serenade evolved from the lessons I gave.
… Many people think there is a concealed story in the ballet. There is not. There are, simply, dancers in motion to a beautiful piece of music. The only story is the music's story, a serenade, a dance, if you like, in the light of the moon.
Because Tchaikovsky's score, though it was not composed for the ballet, has in its danceable four movements different qualities suggestive of different emotions and human situations, parts of the ballet seem to have a story: the apparently "pure" dance takes on a kind of plot. But this plot, inherent in the score, contains many stories-it is many things to many listeners to the music, and many things to many people who see the ballet.
Serenade has seen a number of different productions.
(From 101 Stories of the Great Ballets by George Balanchine & Francis Mason )
Mozartiana
The first “Paris” version of the ballet Mozartiana to Tchaikovsky's Suite No 4 for Orchestra, of the same name, for which the composer adopted four short piano pieces by Mozart, was staged by George Balanchine in 1933 for his short-lived, “Ballet 1933” Company. It was the first of Balanchine's ballets to music by Tchaikovsky. In his early Mozartiana, stylized in imitation of the eighteenth century, the choreographer used to only classical dance, but also some devices of the commedia dell'arte, as well as bright and colorful costumes by Christian Berard.
In 1981, Balanchine created a second version of the ballet. His new Mozartiana was a chamber and very intimate work, intended for the connoisseur of late twentieth century classical dance. For all its outer elegance and stylistic subtlety, it is openly spiritual. Mozartiana, after all, is 77-year old Balanchine's spiritual testament, like the Requiem was Mozart's and the 6th Symphony was Tchaikovsky's.
The revelations in Mozartiana helped the ballerina to cope with the death of her beloved choreographer which followed two years after the ballet's premiere. Balanchine died on 30th April, 1983, on St Lazarus' Day. On that day, Lincoln Kirstein said: “Now Balanchine is with Mozart, Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky… That we continue to dance will bring him back to life…”
The first dancer to follow Suzanne Farrell in the difficult ballerina role was Maria Calegari. The Tbilisi Ballet's production of Mozartiana, making the 250th anniversary of Mozart's death, is her fourth restaging of this work.