"George Balanchine vs. The Met"

[Helene]

In the October 2004 issue of Opera News (with a drawing of Pavarotti on the front), there is a five-page article by Lynn Garafola on American Ballet and its tenure at the Metropolitan Opera house in the 1930's. Excepting a George Platt Lines of Lew Christensen as Apollo, most of the photos are rarely published. There's a striking photo of Ruthanna Boris in a pose from a solo from Carmen.

From the article it sounds as if Balanchine created dances that were more suited to the Parisian audiences with which he was familiar under Diaghilev than the conservative and rather puritanical audiences at the Met. For example, Garafola writes,

Ruthanna Boris, a charter member of the American Ballet remembers Hell [in Orfeo] as full of "monkey business."  Dancers slithered on the wide, shallow steps, while male devils on wires flew overhead.

and she quotes critic Danton Walker,

Many disparaging things have been said about Rosina Galli's old-regime ballet, but at any rate Mme. Galli never introduced snake-hips into the temple dances, had her ballerinas doing splits, or permitted the boys and girls to go piggy-back or jump between each other's legs in the victory scene [in Aida].

(Alors!)

Garafola attributes the real nail in the coffin to when in the third year of American Ballet's contract, Lincoln Kirstein took some of the dancers off to Ballet Caravan, and he lost Warburg's patronage:

His father had died, and with conditions deteriorating in Europe, there were more important things for the son of a leading Jewish family to do than run and fund a ballet company.

It's a great article worth reading.

[Jack Reed]

It's nearly all here:

http://www.metguild.org/operanews/issue/ar...=893&issueID=40

Missing are three pictures, the one of the 1934 Mozartiana "rehearsal" on page 45 (it looks staged for the camera to me), and the two on page 46, one publicizing the American Ballet's apearance in The Goldwyn Follies and the other of Tamara Geva in Errante.

But the text is all there, and I agree, it's well worth reading. Thanks, Helene!

(There's another picture on page 2, uncredited and uncaptioned. Does anyone know what or who it's of?)

[Amy Reusch]

Darn, I was going to print it out for a dancer who is appearing in Aida (Hartford) this weekend, but this time around the site says I have to be a subscriber to access the article. Glad I was able read it before the door slammed shut.

[Jack Reed]

Amy, I wouldn't tell you what to do, but I was glad I sprang for the hard-copy version at my favorite Border's. More pictures better reproduced.