Oct 9, 2023
In this first part of a special Hear the Dance episode, host and former NYCB Dancer Silas Farley is joined by dance scholar Jennifer Homans to discuss her recently published biography, "Mr. B: George Balanchine's 20th Century.” Homans describes how her own background as a dancer—including as a student at the School of American Ballet in the 1970s—and a return to Balanchine’s works while facing personal loss inspired her lasting interest in the Company’s founding choreographer. Farley and Homans dig into Balanchine’s Georgian upbringing, the way the hardship and uncertainty of his years in Russia and France shaped his vocabulary, and the spirituality that infuses both his approach to the creative process and to the ballets he choreographed themselves. (1:03:58)
Written by Silas Farley
Edited by Gus Reed
Music:
Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major (1931) by Igor
Stravinsky
Symphony in Three Movements (1945) by Igor Stravinsky
All music performed by New York City Ballet Orchestra
Reading List:
Balanchine: A Biography by Bernard Taper
George Balanchine: Ballet Master by Richard Buckle in Collaboration
with John Taras
Balanchine and the Lost Muse: Revolution and the Making of a
Choreographer by Elizabeth Kendall
George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker by Robert Gottlieb
Balletmaster: A Dancer’s Vision of George Balanchine by Moira
Shearer
By With To & From: A Lincoln Kirstein Reader by Lincoln Kirstein,
Edited by Nicholas Jenkins
Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans