He was a trail-blazing genius who electrified US ballet. But he was also a dictatorial grudge-bearer who married four of his dancers. How should we remember the Russian-American choreographer?
‘I don’t have a past. I have a continuous present,” said the great Russian-American choreographer George Balanchine, a great believer in forward motion. When Balanchine’s health began to fail, in his mid-70s, he resisted making a will, not thinking that the hundreds of ballets he had created would live on without him. When the IRS posthumously valued his repertory, it decided that the maximum shelf life of even his greatest ballets was just 15 years.
Yet today, almost exactly 40 years after Balanchine’s death, his works are as popular as ever. New York City Ballet (NYCB), the company he founded, has just announced its 75th anniversary season, with dozens of performances of his works. Masterful ballets such as Serenade, Symphony in C and Agon are still regularly danced around the world. This summer, the Australian Ballet comes to the UK to perform his Jewels. When Carlos Acosta marks his 50th birthday on stage in July, it is Balanchine’s Apollo that he will dance.
