What Did Kirstein Say?

[Mme. Hermine]

A slight topic, I'm sure, but since I was there and I seem to recall this differently than other people, maybe others can tell me: The day Mr. Balanchine died, I was in the audience for the evening's performance, in which I seem to recall Lincoln Kirstein saying "He's with Stravinsky now!". Others have quoted him differently. Does anyone else remember what he said? Also I don't have the program any more. What was it? (Agon? Sigh....)

[Ari]

I wasn't there because I was at the SAB Workshop that night. It began an hour before the NYCB performance, so Kirstein came out and made a speech before that performance, too. He was joined by Peter Martins and John Taras -- I don't remember if Robbins was also there. He said, "Mr. B is with Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky now," and went on to say that the school and the company were institutions and would continue to thrive.

Just the three of them coming out on the stage together was quite an emotional experience. Everyone's spirits had been very subdued, of course, very different from the celebratory mood of most Workshops, and their appearance helped dispel the gloom somewhat and prepare us to enjoy the performance.

[Farrell Fan]

I was at the SAB Workshop too, and agree with Ari about what Kirstein said. Robbins was there, too -- and the sight of the four of them coming out together was profoundly moving.

[Jack Reed]

I was there too, Mme. Hermine. I watched the matinee and evening performances and caught up with SAB on Monday. Your quotation agrees with my memory as far as you go, and I remember a little bit more. Evidently, Robert Gottlieb was also there, and part of what I remember matches up with what he says in his new book, George Balanchine, The Ballet Maker:

"Appropriately, it was Lincoln Kirstein who, fifty years earlier, had brought Balanchine to America, who spoke to the audience from the stage, saying to us, ' I don't have to tell you that Mr. B is with Mozart and Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky.' If any thought could have helped, it would have been that."

I think those who helped many of us the most, though, after they themselves recovered, were "the dear dancers", in Paul Taylor's phrase (about his own dancers, actually), who danced on for a few years more as though Mr. B. were still in the second wing on our left.

The other part I remember Kirstein saying from the stage is something to the effect "...that this [gesturing to the stage on either side of him] should continue" but this may have been a little later.

The matinee program was Mother Goose, Kammermusik No. 2, and The Four Seasons; in the evening, it was Divertimento No. 15, The Magic Flute, and Symphony in C. What Gottlieb, the insider this time, says explains some of what we saw: "At the matinee, von Aroldingen managed to dance Kammermusik No. 2 - Peter Martins had asked her if she wanted to dance, and she knew that she had to. That evening, Suzanne Farrell went on in Symphony in C. Martins was hardly dancing any longer, most of his time devoted to running the company, but when she asked him to dance with her that night, he readily agreed."

What we saw and heard that evening, you may remember, was a half-dozen announced substitutions, but in the second movement of Symphony in C, when the solo oboe began to sing, we saw with the additional effect of surprise that Farrell's partner was Peter Martins, whose appearace had not been announced. (They had, FWIW for the sake of perspective, performed the role together as recently as the preceding Thursday.)

So, okay, yeah, it's a slight topic, but it was a momentous occasion, and highly charged emotionally. Later, when that charge had dissipated, someone would wisecrack about what Balanchine was up to where he had gone: "Probably he's driving the angels nuts with all those battements tendus he's demanding!'