George Balanchine Essay -- Choreographer Art Ballet Essays

George BalanchineIf composers are the masters of time, then the choreographer George Balanchine is the master of ocular realization of that time in human terms. A master in both the kinesthetic and symphonyal frames of creativity, he did not devote his energies to music opthalmicization by assigning a certain number of dancers to typify strings, others the brass, and still others woodwinds or percussion notwithstanding by creating a visual analogy in space that restates the musical structure with the trained dancers body. He claimed that ballet... should not be an illustrator of even...the most substantive of literary sources. It will plow for itself. The ballet is flowers, beauty, poetry...I am, if you please, an advocate of pure art. Balanchines most intense desire was to key audiences see music and hear dancing.Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze was born the second of three children to Meliton Balanchivadze and his wife Marie on January 22,1904 in the village of Banodzha in western Georgia. His older baby was named Tamara and his younger brother, Andrei. Georgi was a very reserved child and never showed his emotions. When he was punished he would hide, afraid someone would see him crying. When translated, balanchivadze means jesters countersign, which always amused Balanchine because his father was a singer and composer, and his mother was a pianist who encouraged the musical development of her children. When Meliton was home from his many tours and remove trips he would teach the children to sing, and all three of them took piano lessons. At parties Andrei and Tamara would oft dance for the guests but Georgi refused because he hated anything to do with dance and performance.When she reached the functionary age for admitt... ... companies perform at least one Balanchine work. Upon his death, it was written in the New York Review of Books that George Balanchine liked to say, quoting Mayakovsky, I am not a man, but a cloud in trousers. And now th at luminous cloud has floated off, exit us with a loss far deeper than the grave.Works CitedA Ballet Society Book. Portraits of Mr. B Photographs of George Balanchine. New York The Viking Press, 1984.Buckle, Richard. George Balanchine Ballet Master. New York Random House, 1988.Flatow, Sheryl. The Balanchine self-reliance Guardian of the Legacy. Dance Magazine. December 1990, p 58-61.McDonagh, Don. George Balanchine. Boston Twayne Publishers, 1983.Reynolds, Nancy. Balanchine in the USSR Cultural Revelation. Dance Magazine. January 1994, p 88-90.Taper, Bernard. Balanchine A Biography. New York times Books, 1984.