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ENTERTAINMENT CULTURE DANCE The Ballet that Changed Everything Balanchine’s ‘Serenade’ took women out of a fairy tale setting—and created a new model for American dance BY TONI BENTLEY ERENADE” was the first ballet George Balanchine choreographed in Amer- ica, whereby he planted the seeds for the next ‘S50 fertile years during which he re- shaped classical ballet, with its French, Italian, Danish and Russian roots, as an American art form. It was 1934, he was 30 years old, and just off the boat, literally, having barely avoided detention at Ellis Island, from St. Petersburg via Europe where he was Diaghilev’s last choreographer for the Ballets Russes. “Serenade” was his third masterpiece (after “Apollon musagète” in 1928 and “Le Fils Prodigue” in 1929)—and the first of many to his beloved Tchaikovsky. The ballet is set to the composer’s soaring score “Serenade for Strings in C.” Tchaikovsky called the piece—com- posed at the same time as the 1812 Overture—“his “favorite child,” writ- ten, he said from “inner compulsion . from the heart . I am terribly in love with this Serenade.” In this single early work, remark- ably, Balanchine made a dance that would become the Rosetta Stone for a new kind of dancer, the American classical dancer. He brought a kind of democracy into the hierarchical land of ballet classicism, lifting it from its dusty 19th-century splendor, and cre- ated, simultaneously, an aristocracy for American dancers who had none. But he had plenty, having been a sub- ject, as a child in St. Petersburg, of the last Czar in Russian history. And he was willing to impart his Imperial Paul Kolnik; New York City Ballet Archives (below) heritage. In “Serenade” all the female dancers are dressed identically. They are all women—one woman, finding her place among others and her place The Next Serenade alone. As a young dancer for Bal- “Serenade” will be performed by anchine, I was among them. New York City Ballet during its in- As the heavy gold curtain rises at augural fall season from Sept. 14- the start of “Serenade,” 17 girl danc- Oct. 10 at the David H. Koch The- ers in long pale blue gowns are ar- ater at Lincoln Center on Sept. 14, ranged in two adjoining diamonds, 18 (matinee) and 30, and Oct. 2. tethered estrogen. We do not move, The NYCB’s fall season will also grip gravity, feet parallel, pointe include two rare evenings of all- shoes suctioned together side by side, Balanchine ballets on Sept. 15 and head tilted to the right. The right arm 18, the latter an all-Stravinsky is lifted to the side in a soft diagonal, evening as well, where one can palm facing outward, fingers extend- witness two of the greatest art- ing separately, upwardly, shielding as ists of the 20th-century working if from some lunar light. This is the in explosive unison. There will also first diagonal in “Serenade,” a ballet be three performances of the Bal- brimming with that merging line: anchine/Bach 1941 ballet “Con- This is female terrain. certo Barocco” on Oct. 1, 2 and 9, From this opening choir of sloping an 18-minute masterpiece so pure arms flows an infinite number of such and trim that it will cleanse your lines, some small, some huge. There soul—or at least remind you why is the “peel,” where 16 dancers form a art is entirely essential. full-stage diagonal, each body in pro- file, slightly in front of the last, and then, one by one, each ripples off into Balanchine’s woman is no longer a the wings, creating a thrilling wave of creature yearning for her man, but an whirling space. In later sections, artist for whom men are transitory there are off-center arabesque lunges, not primary. (It is worth remembering drags and upside-down leaps, a dou- The American Ballet’s production of ‘Serenade,’ 1935, above; and a New York City Ballet ‘Serenade,’ 2003. that “Serenade” was made nearly ble diagonal crisscrossing of kneeling, three decades before Betty Friedan pushing and turning, and then finally nade.” In this ballet Balanchine revis- King could have imagined, a deeper women free—but not to be with their published “The Feminine Mystique.”) the closing procession heading to ited, saluted and then condensed all language now expanded to its es- lovers happily ever after. He had While she may well stand on the high upstage. Ballet is live geometry, of classical dance history before him sence. something else entirely in mind, this shoulders of men—as she does, liter- a Euclidean art, and “Serenade” illus- into 32 minutes (or less depending But it was not only the technique man who loved women. ally, in the final magnificent closing of trates a dancer’s trajectory, a on the conductor that evening.) This of classical ballet that Balanchine Yanking these beauties from their “Serenade”—she does not attain any- woman’s inclined ascent. was a ballet for the century where streamlined, as if a missile, in “Sere- poetic, otherworldly suffering, a thing as pedestrian as equality. She When Balanchine was asked what speed was the byword, the century nade.” He also paid tribute (the refer- stance so suited to ballet’s tender lan- attains transcendence, perhaps in life, “Serenade” is about, he said that it is that saw the Bomb, the Moon, the ences in the ballet are numerous and guage, Balanchine thrusts them perhaps in death, and her companions just “a dance in the moonlight.” “A Concorde, the Internet and Picasso. witty, both subtle and obvious) to the squarely—disregarding their objec- —her acolytes, her handmaidens, her boy and girl on the stage,” Balanchine He took the actual physical technique glorious works that were, and remain, tions, dragging petticoats, and pro- mythic sisters, her fellow witches—are famously said when berated for his of the art, first codified in the court its legendary triune: “Giselle” (1841), testing parents—into the 20th and, it those of her own sex. disinterest in stories. “How much of Louis XIV, and edited out all but “Swan Lake” (1877) and “The Sleep- would now appear, the 21st, century. Where are they going as the cur- story do you want?” the essentials, trusting its core—the ing Beauty” (1890). In “Serenade” he Balanchine stripped his heroine—she tain lowers and they rise? Into that So “Serenade” is a romance? Well, human body at its highest beauty—to not only catapulted the whole art will always be that—of her specificity, light. To where it comes from. The yes, it may well be the most Roman- still be, as it were, divine. Gone were form forward intact, tightened and her wings and feathers and weighty journey of the dancer. I believe, having tic ballet ever devised: a flock of the masks: the wigs, the mime, the heightened, but, most radical of all, in crown, and of her impetuous depen- danced the ballet over 50 times, they young girls, diaphanous dresses, decorations and yes, the stories, the removing the story, he rewrote it. You dence. And he sends this creature he have gone to a kind of Heaven—the loose tresses, a fall (a death?), a few fairy tales (Balanchine liked to say know, the girl-boy one. finds, this real woman, to her destiny, one we can’t see, can barely conceive, nebulous men coming and going, and there are “no mothers-in-law in bal- It was very touch-and-go for these to Eternity, alone, unadorned but for and yet so desire. In class one day, the yearning burn of loss, loss, loss, let.”) Perhaps strangest of all, he 19th-century gals: Aurora, the Sleep- the echo in her loosened hair of Gi- Balanchine said, “You can see Para- all set to Tchaikovsky is indeed a rec- dared to disregard the natural leth- ing Beauty, is already 116 years old at selle gone mad. Underneath the elab- dise, but you can’t get in”—but then ipe for tragic rhapsody. But “Sere- argy of the human body. (During her wedding, while both Giselle and orate camouflage he has uncovered he never danced “Serenade.” nade” does not stop there, flooded as class, while we were sweating bullets, Odette, the Swan Queen, only achieve an artist. it is in beauty, tulle and evanescent he would hold his forefinger up in the any kind of consummation—of the “Serenade” is one of the greatest Toni Bentley danced with the New moonlight. No, there is an edge, a ra- air, and say with a gleeful little smile, most platonic kind—with their be- works of art ever made about a York City Ballet for 10 years and is zor-sharp subversion where the boy- “The body is lazy! That’s why I am loveds in the afterlife, if at all. woman artist—her sacrifices, her vul- the author of five books. She is writ- girl affair goes right off the rails and here!”) While distilling the form he Trapped in love, by love, it is only nerability, her work and her love af- ing a book about Balanchine’s “Sere- something more profound beckons. lost none of its beauty or tradition love that will save them, the familiar fairs. (Balanchine told one of his fa- nade.” Her essay “The Bad Lion” will A little history is in order to un- and he found it to be faster, bigger, Catch-22 of doomed romance. In vorite dancers that the ballet could be published in “The Best American derstand the revolution that is “Sere- longer, jazzier than anything the Sun “Serenade” Balanchine sets these have been called simply “Ballerina.”) Essays 2010” this month.

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