"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".

(From 101 Stories of the Great Ballets by George Balanchine & Francis Mason )

 Concerto Barocco

This work began as an exercise by Balanchine for the School of American Ballet and was performed by American Ballet Caravan on its historic tour of South America and later entered the repertory of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. In 1951, Balanchine permanently eliminated the original costumes and dressed the dancers in practice clothes, probably the first appearance of what has come to be regarded as a signature Balanchine costume for contemporary works. On October 11, 1948, Concerto Barocco was one of three ballets on the program at New York City Ballet's first performance.

Apollo

George Balanchine created Apollo to Igor Stravinsky’s music for Diaghilev’s Company in 1928.The ballet praises the power of art and beauty. It was with this work set to the music of Stravinsky, that Balanchine, at age 24, achieved international recognition and began his lifelong partnership with the composer. And he later described the choreography of Apollo as the turning point in his creative life.

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.