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Emeralds

Music
Gabriel Fauré
Choreography
George Balanchine

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Emeralds floats at Fauré's mesmerizing pace, evoking an underwater setting with delicate and pliable movement.

The music for Emeralds, the first section of George Balanchine's three-part masterpiece Jewels, is taken from the respective concert suites Gabriel Fauré derived from the incidental music he composed in 1889 for Edmond Haraucourt's Shylock, a French verse adaptation of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and in 1898 for Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande. The order of the numbers used and their sources are as follows: "Prélude," "Fileuse," "Sicilienne"; (all from Pelléas et Mélisande), "Entr’acte," "Nocturne," "Epithalame," "Final"; (all from Shylock), and "La Mort de Mélisande" (from Pelléas et Mélisande). Balanchine added the "Nocturne" pas de deux and the final pas de sept in 1976.

31 minutes

ANATOMY OF A DANCE

INDIANA WOODWARD ON GEORGE BALANCHINE’S EMERALDS

Indiana Woodward infuses each moment in this solo with an essence of perfume, a fragrant ode to Violette Verdy, the originator of the role Woodward is seen performing. 

Anatomy of a Dance

Abi Stafford on George Balanchine's EMERALDS

Former Principal Dancer Abi Stafford talks about how a gentle and graceful solo in Emeralds provides an opportunity to step out of her comfort zone, en pointe in sparkling adagio set to Gabriel Fauré’s music

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