New York City Ballet

Agon

Choreography by: George Balanchine

Music by: Igor Stravinsky

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Credits

Music: Agon (1953-56)
Premiere: December 1, 1957, New York City Ballet, City Center of Music and Drama
Original Cast: Todd Bolender, Barbara Milberg, Barbara Walczak, Roy Tobias, Jonathan Watts, Melissa Hayden, Diana Adams, Arthur Mitchell
Length: 25 Min.
Lighting by: Nananne Porcher (original production); Mark Stanley (current production)

The apex of the Stravinsky/Balanchine collaboration, Agon is an intense masterwork, ever contemporary in its athletic competitiveness.

The Agon pieces were all modeled after examples in a French dance manual of the mid-17^th Century. Agon (“The Contest”) is not a mythical subject piece to complete a trilogy with Apollo and Orpheus. In fact, it has no musical or choreographic subject beyond the new interpretation of the venerable dances which are its pretext. It was even conceived without provision for scenery and was independent, at least in Stravinsky’s mind, of décor, period, and style.

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