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Balanchine IN ballets


Guest TosaBeth

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Guest TosaBeth

*Apologies* if this isn't the right forum for this question. It crosses the lines, I guess, between history/videos/choreographers....

Besides Drosselmeier and Don Q, did Balanchine himself perform - regularly or not - in other productions?

Thanks for any insight.

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Well, he did perform regularly with the Ballets Russes before he came to America, but in America the one other ballet I can think of him in was "Mazurka from a Life for the Tsar" - a character dance from 1950. I think he also played Polio in "Resurgence", a ballet he made for the March of Dimes in the 40s.

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he also performed alongside jerome robbins in his stravinsky festival staging (1972) of PULCHINELLA, where the two balletmasters danced as elaborately costumed beggars.

television director merrill brockway reported recently that it wasn't until the 11th hour of preparing to tape the DANCE IN AMERICA performance of THE PRODIGAL SON that someone said, 'oh, Mr. B, maybe you could perform as the father,' and balanchine reportedly said, 'i was waiting for you to ask me,' but decided it was too late at that juncture to do so. (so near, yet so far...) i don't know for certain if he ever performed this role on stage.

the film DARK RED ROSES includes balanchine, performing barechested, in harem pants, with his hair braided down his back, as a cut-throat pirate in a number that could be a pastiche of one of the cavern scenes from LE CORSAIRE.

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On pp. 319 – 329 of CHOREOGRAHY BY BALANCHINE (Viking) there is a full list of the roles Balanchine danced from 1915/17 through 1972. I took the query here to ask about roles he danced with his own companies in the US. (I added the DARK RED ROSES note to suggest a way to see what Balanchine looked like on stage.) The only role that would seem to be missing from his career is one I noted on a Soviet ballet concert poster from 1923, when Balanchine danced the Satyr in what would seem to be a pas de deux a trois called something like LOVE OF DIANA (likely taken from LE ROI CANDAULE) in which Elza Vil’ and Viktor Semenov danced Diana and Endymion, respectively, in Petrograd.

There are a number of photos of Balanchine’s performing on stage in PORTRAIT OF MR. B (A Ballet Society Book), including in the SPECTRE and DARK RED ROSES roles mentioned above.

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I saw Balanchine as Drosselmeier and Don Q and also the Mazurka from Life for the Tsar. In the latter, his true self was exposed to the audience and he appeared to be uncomfortable with the whole thing. He was more effective with heavy makeup and costuming.

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the aleksandr golovin costume design shown here was intended for members of the suite of servants attending kastchei in FIREBIRD; it's dated 1924 - two years later, in 1926, as part of diagilev's ballets russes, balanchine danced Kastchei himself in london (there's a newspaper picture of balanchine as Kastchei in PORTRAIT OF MR. B.) balanchine's name is written on the sketch itself, presumably because he was cast to perform this attending role, which appears in the catalogue of balanchine roles of CHOREOGRAPHY BY GEORGE BALANCHINE as possibly being in 1921. other names written on the sketch that strike me are those of [nicholas] eifmov (who left soviet russia in balanchine's group) and [mikhail] mikhailov, who became well known as a leading dancer in post-imperial russian ballet.

post-11-1091473908.jpg

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as noted above, CHOREOGRAPHY BY GEORGE BALANCHINE lists some 10 pages of roles danced by Balanchine; my commentary is limited to the ones he danced in later years with NYCB. pointing to DARK RED ROSES and to the golovin sketch is to illustrate but two of his parts, not that these are the only ones. as noted, the full list covers some 10 pages of text in his catalogue and numbers over 120 different roles.

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In her recently-published biography of Jerome Robbins, Deborah Jowitt writes that Balanchine was very fond of "The Concert' and often watched from the wings. One night in 1956, when Todd Bolender, who originated the part of the cigar-chomping henpecked husband was ill with the flu, Balanchine went on in his place.

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There is a picture in Fred Fehl's photo book of that performance of The Concert with LeClercq and Balanchine. In that same collection (Fred Fehl; At New York City Ballet), there are pictures of Balanchine performing in other ballets mentioned above - Don Q. Pulcinella, and Nutcracker - as well as rehearsing dancers where he can be seen acting out portions (such as Slaughter on Tenth Avenue).

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