Masters at Work: Balanchine & Robbins I

Steeped in Tradition, Rich with Invention: Two Masterpieces by NYCB’s Originating Choreographers

Ballets from the Company’s founding choreographers make for a unique pairing. Balanchine’s enchanting Serenade, famously the first ballet he created in America, danced to an all-strings composition from Tschaikovsky, has long been a staple of the international repertory. The Goldberg Variations, created by Robbins in 1971, uses the full Bach piano score of the title to illustrate the potentially infinite variety of classical choreography, in a two-part ballet that bridges the baroque and the contemporary, the high-spirited and the formal, the romantic and the mysterious.