Did Balanchine choreograph much for male danseurs?

[Marga]

In February, Tiit Helimets was quoted in the Estonian online news as saying (referring to George Balanchine):

"Aga noorele mehele pole tal palju rolle."

(translation: But he doesn't have many roles for young men")

Helimets is a principal dancer with the Birmingham National Ballet and received his training and start in Estonia. He and his wife, American Molly Smolen, were guesting with the Estonian National Ballet in Sleeping Beauty and Giselle. He was interviewed for "Eesti Päevaleht Online" in a sort of "local boy visits home company after attaining stardom abroad" vein. Because he has learned Apollo and Western Symphony in England, he cited these as ballets he liked to perform, and continued to say with regret that Balanchine didn't choreography many roles for men!

That first struck me as absurd and naive. When I started to think about it, I found I had a bit of a hard time making my list of good (forget great!) Balanchinian male roles. Who can help? :shrug:

[lampwick]

Prodigal Son is a favorite of mine. The role of the Son requires virtuoso technique as well as acting ability. The last scene is gut wrenching beautiful.

[Alexandra]

Balanchine has wonderful roles for men!!!!

Short list -- others will add, I'm sure but let's start with Apollo and Prodigal Son.

Rubies, Melancholic and Phlegmatic in Four Ts, Stars and Stripes, Harlequin in Harlequinade, Theme and Variations, Vienna Waltzes (5 different star parts), Symphony in 3 Movements, Symphony in C...., Donizetti Variations......etc.

Okay, so you don't get to roll around on the floor and bay at the moon a lot, but there's a lot to dance!

[liebs]

And Baiser de la Fee, Union Jack, Brahms-Schoenberg (2 parts)

[djb]

Perhaps that is the impression people get because of the ballets he choreographed that have good dancing parts for only 1 man, while the rest of the men are mainly partnering or doing relatively undemanding dancing.

[dirac]

Let's not forget Oberon and Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Recently, I also saw for this first time his very unusual solo – a moody sarabande, no jumping around-- for the leading man in "Square Dance."

Balanchine did make many wonderful roles for men, but his public and some private statements on the subject often make people think otherwise. This isn't entirely a contradiction; he made distinguished roles for men, but for him the locus of classical dance was embodied in women, not in men, and so his primary concerns were elsewhere – and that's very evident in the ballets. There may also have been a hangover from his Diaghilev experience -- he didn't like having to compose to order for Lifar (even though the results, Apollo and Prodigal Son, turned out to be two of the best roles for men ever!).

And it should be noted that even the partnering roles aren't just partnering – the chief male roles for men in "Emeralds" and "Diamonds," for example, aren't the equal of the role made for Edward Villella in "Rubies" – but they are very different from one another, and in neither case is the fellow just an anonymous porteur.

[perky]

Oberon and Puck in Midsummer Night's Dream. I would also add the two men's parts in Violin Concerto.

Dirac posted just before me!

[Alexandra]

Lampwick and I were posting at the same time, too -- sorry, lampwick; I didn't mean to ignore your comments!

djb, something Clive Barnes said at a Kennedy Center panel when the Royal brought its Ashton week here two seasons ago relates to your comment (Barnes having been watching both Balanchine and Ashton since the 1940s). (paraphrasing) We must remember that when Ashton and Balanchine were working, they really didn't have a large pool of male talent on which to draw. When they had good men, they used them.

I think that may be why there are fewer challenging supporting parts for men, compared with women (and I don't mean to imply that your comment was meant to be critical at all, just saying that to put the Estonian comment in some perspective).

[Mel Johnson]

Tchaikovsky pas de deux.

[Farrell Fan]

How about Mozartiana? That's got two great male roles.

[Helene]

Agon has two terrific ones, too.

[Hans]

This list of male roles includes some very distinguished ones, but it simply pales in comparison with the number of good roles for women. I understand the point about not having many good men, but what about in the sixties when NYCB was a well-established company and there were plenty of men to go around?

[Marga]

Thanks to all for your wonderful responses! After ticking off Apollo (which Tiit Helimets had mentioned), Prodigal Son, Rubies, Stars and Stripes and Union Jack (the latter two, in featuring several men, are not ballets that leave you recalling only one male lead) in my mind, and then considering whether Puck qualified as a general "male" role, since to me it will forever remain an "Arthur Mitchell" role, I had to stop and try to remember all that I had seen back at NYCB over 35 years ago. That's where my visual knowledge of Balanchine comes from in addition to the few videos that have been made. My old brain has a hard time remembering actual choreography or even the gist of it sometimes. So, the Four T's, Symphony in C, Donizetti, etc. all seem hazy to me as I try to recall the weight of the male roles in them.

Interestingly, Peter Martins had something to say on this subject in I Remember Balanchine: "I do not think Balanchine neglected his best male dancers. I just think he was not as interested in us as he was in the women. That's all. He thought of us, and he put us onstage, and he cast us, but he cast us according to the women."

In reading your contributions to this thread, I can't say that I can fully agree with Martins about this. (I wonder if Martins still feels this way?) I don't think that Balanchine was thinking of his ballerinas when he choreographed Prodigal Son or even Oberon for Villella or one of the many roles he created for John Clifford, for example. He used Clifford because of the special talents Clifford had: an explosive jump, a quicksilver muscle memory and a determination to put his own creative ideas to use.

When he choreographed for Arthur Mitchell in Agon, Balanchine was focussing on the contrast of black and white in both skin color and costume and another dancer would not have done as well for him because of that aim. In Slaughter, however, Balanchine picked Mitchell because of his ability to move in the jazzy way he wanted. This role was definitely made for the male without being cast "according to the women", as Martins said.

It's unfortunate that the greater dance world has comparatively little intimate knowledge of Balanchine. That leaves them open to the hype and opinions of those who do not have a complete base from which to make critical assessments.

[Leigh Witchel]

From his comments at the Balanchine Symposium on March 23, I'd say yes, he still feels that way. I'm trying to remember the specifics, but in an exchange that he and Kent Stowell had on the panel, it was really clear that they felt that men were second class citizens in the classroom in Balanchine's world - I do not recall them specifically mentioning his choreography in the same light though they may have. You could tell neither of them liked that fact.