Performance Dates
FOUR EVOCATIVE COMPOSERS, ONE INVENTIVE CHOREOGRAPHER
A feast for Balanchine devotees. The oldest Balanchine ballet in the repertory, the neoclassical masterwork Apollo, first staged in 1928, leads a bill that traces the choreographer’s work across an astonishing half-century. Also on the program is the exhilarating Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, a supremely stylish dance created to music originally written for Swan Lake. And representing the latter years of Balanchine’s career are two dances created in the 1970s: the vivacious Ballo della Regina, with its quicksilver choreography and sprightly music by Giuseppe Verdi, and the entrancing Chaconne, which includes a memorably beautiful pas de deux and a thrilling ensemble finale, set to music drawn from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice.
Ballets on this Program
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Apollo
Balanchine's first collaboration with Stravinsky and one of his earliest international successes, Apollo presents the young god as he is ushered into adulthood by the muses of poetry, mime, and dance.
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Ballo della Regina
The jaw-dropping technical feats of Ballo della Regina’s choreography were originally devised to challenge the lead ballerina, who must exhibit carefree joyousness while performing steps that push the limits of physical possibility.
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Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux
A virtuosic ballet, Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux is brief, beautiful, and beloved – an adrenaline rush for both dancers and audiences.
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Chaconne
By turns elegiac and courtly, Chaconne begins with a dreamlike prologue and concludes with a grand series of classical dances.
