Classic Balanchine May 17–Jun 9, 2018 Program Background Prodigal Son Music: Sergei Prokofiev, Le Fils Prodigue, Op. 46 Choreography: George Balanchine Staging: Elyse Borne Scenic and Costume Design: Georges Rouault Lighting Design: John Cuff World Premiere: May 21, 1929, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, Théâtre Sarah-Bernhardt, Paris Boston Ballet Premiere: Feb 7, 1966 Stravinsky Violin Concerto Music: Igor Stravinsky, Violin Concerto in D major Choreography: George Balanchine Staging: Paul Boos, Colleen Neary Lighting Design: John Cuff World Premiere: Jun 18, 1972, New York City Ballet, New York Boston Ballet Premiere: May 5, 2017, Boston Opera House, Boston, Massachusetts Chaconne Music: Christoph Willibald von Gluck, from the opera Orfeo ed Euridice Choreography: George Balanchine Staging: Diana White Costume Design: Barbara Karinska Lighting Design: John Cuff World Premiere: Jan 22, 1977, New York City Ballet, New York Boston Ballet Premiere: May 17, 2018, Boston Opera House, Boston, Massachusetts BIO: George Balanchine Choreographer Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Balanchine (1904–1983) is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. He came to the United States in late 1933 at the age of 29, accepting the invitation of the young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907–96), whose great passions included the dream of creating a ballet company in America. At Balanchine’s behest, Kirstein was also prepared to support the formation of an American academy of ballet that would eventually rival the long-established schools of Europe. This was the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934, the first product of the Balanchine–Kirstein collaboration. Several ballet companies directed by the two were created and dissolved in the years that followed, while Balanchine found other outlets for his choreography. Eventually, with a performance on October 11, 1948, the New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983. Balanchine’s more than 400 dance works include Serenade (1934); Concerto Barocco (1941); Le Palais de Cristal, later renamed Symphony in C (1947); Orpheus (1948); The Nutcracker (1954); Agon (1957); Symphony in Three Movements (1972); Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972); Vienna Waltzes (1977); Ballo della Regina (1978); and Mozartiana (1981). His final ballet, a new version of Stravinsky’s Variations for Orchestra, was created in 1982. He also choreographed for films, operas, revues and musicals. Among his best-known dances for the stage is Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, originally created for Broadway’s On Your Toes (1936). The musical was later made into a movie. A major artistic figure of the 20th century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. This had an inestimable influence on the growth of dance in America. Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world. BIO: Beatrice Jona Affron Guest Conductor Beatrice Jona Affron has been Music Director and Conductor of Pennsylvania Ballet since 1997. She has conducted many Balanchine ballets as well as other classics, such as The Sleeping Beauty, Romeo and Juliet, and The Firebird. Also in Philadelphia, she led the world premiere performances of Christopher Wheeldon’s Swan Lake. A graduate of Yale University, Affron studied conducting with Robert Spano and Pascal Verrot at New England Conservatory. Affron is an active opera conductor, and has led several works by Philip Glass, including Galileo Galilei and the national tour of Les Enfants Terribles. At Boston Lyric Opera, she has conducted Glass’s Akhnaten and Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. She led Argento’s Miss Havisham’s Fire at Opera Theatre Saint Louis and Donizetti’s Lucie de Lammermoor at Glimmerglass Opera. Recently, Affron has appeared as a guest conductor with the Kennedy Center Orchestra, the National Arts Center of Canada Orchestra, Atlanta Ballet, and Nashville Ballet. Classic Balanchine Press Quotes Prodigal Son “The tradition goes back, outside ballet, to aspects of 19th-century Romanticism: the belle dame sans merci. Yet Balanchine takes an old tradition and makes it newly shocking.” (Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times, October 25, 2016) “In the 1920s, the Russian ballet world considered Balanchine a radical, and “Prodigal Son” has plenty of evidence: experimental gymnastics, realistic pantomime, bizarre character dancing and plenty of sex. The academic classical vocabulary for which he’s celebrated can be found if you look for it, but a couple years shy of its 90th birthday, the work still looks newly minted.” (Lewis Segal, The Los Angeles Times, March 13, 2017) Stravinsky Violin Concerto “This was first-rate Balanchine from the company: Soloists and back-ups were excellent throughout.” (Jeffrey Gantz, The Boston Globe, May 7, 2017) “By now it must be acknowledged that Balanchine technique is stamped into the DNA of the Boston Ballet performers…So it’s no surprise that the Boston Ballet premiere of ‘Stravinsky Violin Concerto’ was such a satisfying presentation.” (Iris Fanger, The Patriot Ledger, May 7, 2017) Chaconne “The dancing of the second half is so exuberantly sharp and exacting you might cut yourself on its edges.” (Sarah Kaufman, The Washington Post, March 6, 2009) “The footwork is brilliant and buoyant…The cornucopia of steps cascades forth without a pause for breath.” (Marina Harss, DanceTabs, October 11, 2014) George Balanchine “Nonetheless it was Balanchine, in New York, who staged Stravinsky’s most extreme ideas. He created a profusion of new masterpieces even after Stravinsky’s death in 1971…for staggering works of poetic dance drama.” (Alastair Macaulay, The New York Times, September 13, 2012) “George Balanchine is more than the greatest choreographer of the twentieth century…a Mozartian genius, but one who lived long enough to elegize and reconjure elegant phantoms of the past.” (James Wolcott, Vanity Fair, October 12, 2014) .