Program
All Balanchine III
FEB 16, 20 mat, 21, 26
Performance Dates
FOUR DISTINCT SETTINGS EXEMPLIFY OUR FOUNDER’S MULTIFACETED IMAGINATION
Balanchine’s wide-ranging inspirations find ample representation in a program that transports audiences and dancers alike. An abstract ballet that takes an ancient theory of the four humors as its point of departure, The Four Temperaments is set to a commissioned piece by Paul Hindemith. Initially the second movement of the 1967 ballet Glinkiana, Valse Fantaisie’s 19th-century score sets its six dancers awhirl in three-quarter time. For Errante, Balanchine returned to music composed in the 20th century, by Maurice Ravel, creating an incandescent solo on Suzanne Farrell, who reconstructed the ballet in 2024. And with Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, the stage transforms into that of a 1930s cabaret, where gangsters, their molls, and doomed romance rule the foot-lit night.
Ballets on this Program
-
The Four Temperaments
A ballet with unceasing appeal, The Four Temperaments references the medieval concept of psychological humors through its classically grounded but definitively modern movement.
-
Valse Fantaisie
This brief but captivating ballet finds a principal couple and a corps de ballet of four women in a whirl of perpetual motion set to Glinka’s swooning melodies.
-
Errante (formerly titled Tzigane)
This choreographic fantasy begins with the sound of a plaintive violin that signals the beginning of the ballerina's five-minute solo. At its end, she is joined by her partner and four couples.
-
Slaughter on Tenth Avenue
An audience favorite with showbiz glam, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is a vampy ballet about a jealous Russian premier danseur and his hoofing American rival.
