Balanchine's Waltzes

[drb]

Laura Jacobs writes on Mr. B's Liebeslieder Waltzer and Vienna Waltzes for Playbill. It is now available online:

http://www.playbillarts.com/features/article/4428.html

Regarding Liebeslieder:

"In the first act," Balanchine told his biographer Bernard Taper, "it's the real people that are dancing. In the second act, it's their souls."

Regarding Vienna, Jacobs writes:

When the stage is overwhelmed by a climactic corps of identically dressed women in white, their gowns rising like whitecaps on the wind and the ballet pitching and flashing in ecstatic apotheosis, the connection is complete: It's the swan song of the waltz era. As for that young woman so deeply lost in thought, a role made on Suzanne Farrell, she might be any dancer alone in the studio with the mirror. In her person--drifting, dreaming--ballet and the waltz are one.

[Mel Johnson]

"Made on Suzanne Farrell"? Wasn't that Diana Adams' part? In 1960, Suzanne didn't even have her Ford Foundation scholarship yet.

(Oop! I have been corrected. I see now that the statement references Vienna Waltzes.)

[dirac]

In the interests of pedantic accuracy, I have read that Balanchine began making the role on Stephanie Saland while Farrell was absent, although Farrell's role was intended for her, of course.