WEBVTT - S2: Ep 2 - Ritual Healing 0:00:01.000 --> 0:00:04.040 When Elizabeth Kendall was in her early twenties, she didn't 0:00:04.080 --> 0:00:06.720 think there would be anything for her in a balancing ballet. 0:00:07.840 --> 0:00:09.720 And I thought it would be old fashioned because it 0:00:09.800 --> 0:00:14.080 was ballet in the ballet in my childhood was old fashioned. 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:17.840 So I resisted going to the New York City Ballet 0:00:17.880 --> 0:00:20.360 for quite some time, a sort of a decent amount 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:24.560 of time. It was the nineteen seventies. Elizabeth was a 0:00:24.640 --> 0:00:28.480 dance writer in New York. She was young, ballet was old. 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:33.160 She loved postmodern, avant garde dance. She believed art should 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:37.920 be challenging, angry, Even good art questioned what came before 0:00:38.360 --> 0:00:42.440 it exposed hypocrisy. She hadn't been in New York long, 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:45.440 and she was still finding her way as a writer 0:00:45.720 --> 0:00:49.160 and as a person. She was trying to move past 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.640 a family tragedy. Her mother had recently died in a 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:57.080 car accident. I was the driver of the car that 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:01.520 killed my mother. There so a lot of stuff to bear, 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:04.920 a lot of healing that had to go on. But 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:08.680 I think a healthy psyche hills itself by numbing as 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:15.000 self as much as possible. Now, two years later, she 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.160 was in New York writing about dance another critic told 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:23.160 her she had to see balancing, so she finally dragged 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.319 herself to the New York State Theater to see Balancing's 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:40.119 Raimonda variations. Elizabeth had a press seat and a perfect view. 0:01:41.360 --> 0:01:50.880 The lights went down and the music began. M h 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:55.880 and I just remember a unique kind of orchestral sound, 0:01:56.560 --> 0:02:00.600 harps and flutes and strings mingling its so it sounds 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:11.600 a little like Heaven might sound. At first glance, it 0:02:11.639 --> 0:02:14.800 was classic traditional ballet, a man and a woman dancing 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:17.800 a pot of da many women on point wearing pink 0:02:17.800 --> 0:02:20.480 and blue tuttoos that flounced like clouds as they moved. 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.480 But what I saw on the stage wasn't anything like 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:32.519 the ballet from my young childhood. This wasn't about old manners. 0:02:34.560 --> 0:02:39.160 There were these people jumping and leaping and whirling around 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.960 in formation that animated the stage as a sort of 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:53.640 magic box that manufactured volume and excitement. The music and 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:56.760 the ballet steps gloamed together to make us fear in 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.480 which everything was alive, and the effect it was of 0:03:00.800 --> 0:03:05.639 three D music, music that surrounded you and you were 0:03:05.680 --> 0:03:16.360 inside it. And I remember very distinctly feeling in the 0:03:16.400 --> 0:03:21.160 audience this is a party, and I'm a guest. I've 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.280 been invited, and for some reason that thought was terribly 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:29.560 moving and terribly inclusive, and the thing came over me. 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.359 This is a gift, this is joy, this is celebration. 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:42.680 I suddenly realized not only that this was worth returning 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.760 to again and again because something had reached me in 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.560 the soul, but it also let me know that art 0:03:49.640 --> 0:03:55.400 did not have to be stern and challenging. Art could 0:03:55.400 --> 0:04:02.360 be something that was purely nourishing and purely exhilarating, that 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:08.040 was ecstatic and tragic at the same time. After that night, 0:04:08.440 --> 0:04:12.760 Elizabeth started going to balancing ballets a lot, but I 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.440 would go back and I would experiment a little. I 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:17.800 would go to the theater and the lights would go down, 0:04:17.800 --> 0:04:21.400 and I would say, Okay, I'm going to give you 0:04:21.440 --> 0:04:24.640 my mood. I'm going to give you all these troubles 0:04:25.080 --> 0:04:27.560 and you do something with it, said I to the stage, 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:32.160 and then I would walk out and I felt like 0:04:32.320 --> 0:04:37.400 somebody had rinsed me. That sounds suspiciously like baptism talk, 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:41.000 but it's all to say that I was, in fact 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:45.240 receiving something that I deeply needed, and I hadn't known 0:04:45.320 --> 0:04:48.280 what form I needed it in some kind of a ceremony, 0:04:48.400 --> 0:05:01.240 some kind of a ritual, kind of healing from my 0:05:01.360 --> 0:05:05.200 heart podcasts and Rocco Punch. This is the Turning Room 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:24.839 of Mirrors America Lance Part two, Ritual Healing. Balancing was 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.320 not a guy who put on airs. So when I 0:05:28.360 --> 0:05:30.880 began to see the New York City Ballet, I would 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:34.919 sometimes run into Balancing at a fruit stand on the 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.919 street in the Upper West Side where he lived, and 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:40.159 I would like to give a little bow, and he 0:05:40.160 --> 0:05:45.640 would give an exaggeratedly courteous bow because he was a 0:05:45.640 --> 0:05:52.440 admirer of women. That was the extent of their interaction 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:55.760 until she was on assignment for the Ford Foundation. She 0:05:55.839 --> 0:05:59.840 got the chance to interview him one on one. And 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:05.240 I dressed up to look nice, and there I was 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.479 presenting myself at his office at the New York State Theater, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:13.239 and he was very courtly. He was casually but beautifully dressed, 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.640 a gentleman, and you could see that he moved well. 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.919 He was light on his feet. Elizabeth sat down with 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:25.520 Balancing in his office. He was interested in just having 0:06:25.560 --> 0:06:31.960 a young, attractively dressed, bursting with nerves and vitality, person 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:35.840 of the female presentation in front of him, and he 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.800 just talked. And the first thing he said was, so, 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:43.120 what we have to talk about is boring, yes, And 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:45.600 I said, oh, Mr Balanchin, I agree, it's going to 0:06:45.720 --> 0:06:47.920 be boring. And I don't really want to even take 0:06:47.960 --> 0:06:50.839 your time. I don't need this interview horribly, and I 0:06:50.880 --> 0:06:53.520 can leave. And he said, no, no, no, He said, 0:06:53.520 --> 0:06:56.400 we do interview and then we talk. He really thought 0:06:56.440 --> 0:07:02.679 about questions and answered I'd gotten to the end. I said, okay, 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:05.200 that's the last question. And he said, do you know 0:07:05.240 --> 0:07:09.600 what I did in the revolution? And I said no, no, 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.559 I don't. And he said what I did to eat? 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:19.400 He said, I sewed saddles and he showed me the 0:07:19.520 --> 0:07:37.080 sewing gestures. He sewed leather saddles together for horses. Balancine 0:07:37.080 --> 0:07:41.600 started to tell Elizabeth the story of his life. He 0:07:41.720 --> 0:07:44.239 told a tale that felt like folklore from a place 0:07:44.280 --> 0:07:46.320 and time far from the man sitting with her in 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:52.680 his office in New York. In. This encounter would launch 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:56.080 Elizabeth down a path of deep exploration into Balancine's life. 0:07:56.920 --> 0:07:59.760 She learned to write fluently in Russian and travel to St. 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.240 Pete Ersburg to piece together a picture of How this 0:08:02.320 --> 0:08:07.120 man came to popularize ballet in America. How he created 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.480 work that would so deeply move her in a theater 0:08:09.600 --> 0:08:13.320 in New York that it helped her heal after trauma. 0:08:16.240 --> 0:08:24.200 This is that story. Balancine was born in nineteen o four. 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:31.320 His name was Georgie Meltanovich Balancavazza. Georgie lived in St. Petersburg, Russia. 0:08:31.880 --> 0:08:35.040 From the beginning, he was steeped in music. His mom 0:08:35.080 --> 0:08:39.119 played piano, his dad was a Georgian opera singer and composer. 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:45.280 But they had limited resources. Then the extraordinary event happened 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.360 that they won a lot of money, a fortune in 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:52.679 a lottery. Or that's the story. It can't exactly reproved. 0:08:53.200 --> 0:08:56.640 Balancine's family rose to a sort of merchant skilled class, 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:01.000 one that required a certain level of wealth. So Balancin's 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:05.679 childhood was privileged. She had a nanny, and then the father, 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:08.199 who didn't have any idea what to do with all 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.080 this money, lost it all because he listened to people. 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:13.640 He gave him bad advice, and which meant that the 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:17.679 Balancians gave up their city apartment and had no more money. 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.680 They moved to the forests of Finland, and they settled 0:09:20.720 --> 0:09:23.720 in a dacha or a summer house. They started to 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:26.320 live in the summer house year round, even through the 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:30.840 harsh winters. In this remote area. Balancin's mother worried about 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:34.400 her kids education. That's when she thought of the Imperial 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:38.440 Theater School, which included the Czar School of Ballet. It 0:09:38.440 --> 0:09:41.320 would be a chance that a free education. The Imperial 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:45.600 Theater School was directly managed as part of the Tsar's household, 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.120 and the students had some contact with the rural family, 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:54.800 you know, with teas, and they would sometimes visit backstage 0:09:54.880 --> 0:09:58.520 or whatever. At the time, being a ballerina often meant 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:01.720 more than just being a dance. Ballet was a very 0:10:01.760 --> 0:10:05.920 strange beast in Imperial St. Petersburg because it was both 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:10.720 an art form and an erotic market for the grandees 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:13.000 and the nobles who attended the show and would pick 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:27.679 out their mistresses from the dancers on the stage. St. Petersburg, 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:33.440 in terms of its social organization, was much like Paris, 0:10:34.120 --> 0:10:38.559 so it had a demi monde, which in Russian is 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:42.760 called half existence are half light, which means that a 0:10:42.880 --> 0:10:48.360 wealthy man or a nobleman well born might have two households, 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:54.400 two lives, two sets of restaurants, two sets of clothing, 0:10:54.840 --> 0:10:59.920 two banks. It was accepted to have another shadow wife. 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.120 Being a shadow wife could give a dancer status or 0:11:04.160 --> 0:11:08.400 financial security. So Balancin's mother wanted her eldest daughter to 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:12.000 become a ballet star. It's funny to think of a 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:15.560 mother wanting her daughter to enter into this illicit other world. 0:11:16.480 --> 0:11:28.480 But this world offered its own rewards. To enter this world, 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:33.000 dancer started training as children. Balancie's sister went into audition, 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:37.040 and Balancine tagged along. When they got there, though, he 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:40.120 was pulled into the audition process, and something about him 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:42.840 stood out to the judges. When he was walking in 0:11:42.840 --> 0:11:45.760 a line of boys, a judge singled him out and 0:11:45.840 --> 0:11:49.920 had him walk alone. The sister did not get accepted 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:54.200 into the school, but balancing did. He was only nine 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:58.360 years old, which was very confusing, no doubt for a 0:11:58.440 --> 0:12:00.760 nine year old, because he knew how much his older 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.280 sister wanted the post and he got it, and he 0:12:03.280 --> 0:12:10.600 didn't want it at all. He hated dancing, and just 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:14.679 like that, George Balancine was dropped into the world of ballet. 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:19.320 His mother dealing with her own disappointment about the daughter, 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:23.040 and the daughter's disappointment left him there because it was 0:12:23.080 --> 0:12:26.000 a week before the school year started and he didn't 0:12:26.000 --> 0:12:28.840 expect to be left, and I think that marked his 0:12:29.000 --> 0:12:46.920 entire life. Balancane wasn't happy. He even ran away to 0:12:46.960 --> 0:12:49.600 his aunt's house during his first weeks at the boarding school, 0:12:50.320 --> 0:12:52.800 but he was returned to the school and all the 0:12:52.840 --> 0:13:01.400 intensity that their ballet training required. The students woke early 0:13:01.520 --> 0:13:04.000 every morning to the sound of a bell. They were 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:06.160 rushed out of bed. They didn't even take the time 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:08.600 to make their beds. That was left for the servants. 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:11.600 They'd have a quick wash and cold water, put on 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:15.000 their uniforms, and add another bell. Line up for inspection. 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.120 They never went out except for one hour a day. 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.840 They walked around the block. They took the walk in 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:26.040 two lines. There one chance to see the outside world. 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:33.480 From ten to eleven thirty, Balanciine started the day with 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:37.120 ballet class. Boys and girls were separated, boys on the 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:39.760 higher floor in front of a long wall of mirrors 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:43.959 opposite the bar. Balanciin said he spent a year learning 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.280 how the foot touches the floor after a jump like 0:13:47.320 --> 0:13:51.960 a bird landing. He said After his spaty lunch, students 0:13:52.000 --> 0:13:55.880 did their academic study, then dinner, followed by evening classes 0:13:56.160 --> 0:13:59.960 ballroom dance, pantomime, posture, and fencing for the older boys, 0:14:00.960 --> 0:14:04.600 and then after that they take music lessons. The students 0:14:04.600 --> 0:14:13.719 could pick violin or piano. Balancine show's piano. With all 0:14:13.760 --> 0:14:18.040 this work and skill building, Balancine's world now revolved around 0:14:18.040 --> 0:14:22.600 the theater. His family had been blotted out in his 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:25.760 own mind. The curtain was closed on the family and 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:28.000 the curtain was open on the world of the theater. 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:31.880 Elizabeth believes he would carry this hurt from being abandoned 0:14:31.920 --> 0:14:35.040 for the rest of his life. He himself said that 0:14:35.120 --> 0:14:38.760 he felt like someone had abandoned a dog. I think 0:14:38.760 --> 0:14:43.840 he was incredibly furious, but a child of nine can't 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:48.640 distinguish grief from anger. I imagine that his psyche shut 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:52.680 down or closed off to his family, and therefore had 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.080 to open itself to his new world, the theater and 0:14:56.160 --> 0:15:02.720 the theater people. And also, in an extraordinary letter, he wrote, 0:15:03.200 --> 0:15:07.440 I hope you understand how alone I am. Ever, since 0:15:07.520 --> 0:15:10.080 my family left me in the school at age nine, 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:16.040 I've been alone. When I found that letter recently, I 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:20.600 realized that that feeling of having only the theater for 0:15:20.680 --> 0:15:24.760 a family and a world and a tribe was deeply 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:28.880 at the center of him. The only connection he had 0:15:28.960 --> 0:15:33.480 left to his family was music. That was the one constant, 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:36.840 that was his link to the past. He couldn't emotionally 0:15:36.880 --> 0:15:40.440 connect anymore. They've done this horrible thing, They'd abandon him. 0:15:40.480 --> 0:15:45.480 But music could somehow connect his whole self. I imagine 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:50.120 that that's why he had this eerie facility with matching 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:52.840 steps to music, because he lived those steps. They were 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:58.800 his language in his innermost dialogue with himself. It was 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:04.680 ballet steps, not words and music. Elizabeth says. Balanchine's teachers 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:08.520 saw him as an independent boy who was courteous, detached, 0:16:08.840 --> 0:16:13.600 and eerily self confident. Although Balancing initially disliked the school, 0:16:14.080 --> 0:16:18.640 he grew to love ballet. He had a revelation on stage, 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:22.480 dancing and sleeping beauty. With all of the music, the lights, 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:25.640 the costumes. He realized he was in the middle of 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:36.560 a thing of beauty. And then, Elizabeth says, Ballet almost 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:44.440 died in nine a bullet burst through the theater school 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:48.760 window and almost hit a student. Days later, a crowd 0:16:48.800 --> 0:16:52.560 in military uniforms rushed through the school halls. It was 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.200 late at night. They were searching for monarchists in the dormitories, 0:16:56.400 --> 0:17:02.800 peering under beds. The Russian Revolution had been gun in October. 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:06.760 The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took control of the country. 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:10.960 The Bolsheviks envisioned a world where workers would hold the power. 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.840 The Czar and his family were murdered, nobility was abolished, 0:17:15.119 --> 0:17:19.680 Aristocrats fled or were killed. The Bolshevik Party would eventually 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:23.640 become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Sarist 0:17:23.760 --> 0:17:27.600 Romanov dynasty was over. The Bolsheviks wanted to wipe out 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:31.280 any whiff of the old aristocracy, and no one knew 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:37.680 what that meant for Ballet. Valancine was thirteen years old. 0:17:38.280 --> 0:17:42.159 His school closed, and life in St. Petersburg changed dramatically. 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:46.359 The city of St. Petersburg suffered after the revolution. St 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:48.960 Petersburg had been the capital of the Russian Empire under 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:52.600 the Tsar. Now, with Lenin in power, the government moved 0:17:52.600 --> 0:17:58.280 to Moscow, essentially abandoning St. Petersburg and the resources, which 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:02.440 were very few after the revel Lucian all flowed to Moscow, 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.920 leaving St. Petersburg to starve and freeze. There was no heat, 0:18:05.960 --> 0:18:10.440 there was no fuel, very little food. All rationed balancing 0:18:10.520 --> 0:18:14.320 school was turned into barracks for guards. That winner in 0:18:14.400 --> 0:18:17.760 nineteen seventeen and nineteen, it was hard to even find 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:21.000 bread in a shop. Thirteen year old Balanciing and his 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:23.960 friends stole fish at night from local barges before he 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.159 could find a job. But then came some hope for ballet. 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:30.880 It had to do with Lennon's Minister of Education, who 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:36.120 also oversaw culture and arts. Lennon's Minister of Culture had 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.159 a vision of all the arts existing simultaneously and the 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.040 people learning all about the high arts that they've been 0:18:42.080 --> 0:18:46.240 deprived of, and Ballet's new meaning was up for grabs. 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:50.280 Balancin's ballet school reopened with a new mission, which is 0:18:50.320 --> 0:18:55.439 to make dances for Utopia, the Bolshevik Utopia. Now, the 0:18:55.440 --> 0:18:58.880 theater would welcome laborers, soldiers and sailors and to the audience. 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:04.880 Workers got free tickets from their factories and labor units. Meanwhile, 0:19:05.480 --> 0:19:09.040 half the city's population was gone. They were dead from 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:13.560 disease or off to villages in search of food. One 0:19:13.640 --> 0:19:16.320 Russian described people who passed each other in the gray, 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:24.600 cold city as phantoms and oblivious silence. In those conditions, 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:29.280 the ballet school started up again with utopian aims and visions, 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.920 utopian excitement, and no heat and no food, which can 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:39.320 sharpen your senses to your art and impact your health. 0:19:39.560 --> 0:19:44.359 And it did both with balanchine. The children at ballet 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:48.160 school had boils for malnutrition and lice that carried typhus. 0:19:50.160 --> 0:19:52.960 On cold nights, the boys and girls moved their beds 0:19:52.960 --> 0:19:57.760 from separate dormitory rooms to the old infirmary to stay warm. 0:19:57.800 --> 0:20:02.520 They suffered, but they bonded and they felt immersed in art. 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:10.760 After the Revolution, all the social meetings of the art 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:15.480 fell away, and they concentrated on the pure art, on ballets, 0:20:15.520 --> 0:20:19.200 just as a pure art. Since the seventeen hundreds under 0:20:19.240 --> 0:20:22.240 the CSAR, ballets performed in Russia had been filled with 0:20:22.359 --> 0:20:26.679 romantic storylines in royal courts or epic tales of castles, 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.359 princes and maidens. But that was going away. Now. They 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.280 had a little trouble making new ballets because what were 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:37.160 they going to be about? It was also new Now 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:43.680 ballet could be both grand and intimate and revealed the 0:20:43.720 --> 0:20:46.520 private emotions of people in a way that it never 0:20:46.560 --> 0:20:50.080 had been before Balancing was a teenager. Now he grew 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:52.440 his hair long and wore eyeliner to make his eyes 0:20:52.480 --> 0:20:56.880 look soulful. He also started to experiment with his own choreography. 0:20:57.200 --> 0:20:59.679 And what it did I think for Balancing was it 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:05.880 broke any lingering narrative associations that the steps held, So 0:21:06.119 --> 0:21:09.719 you know, an Arabist didn't automatically mean a noble shape. 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:13.400 It could mean anything that the choreographer wanted it to mean, 0:21:13.680 --> 0:21:17.640 same with all the other steps. They were severed from 0:21:17.680 --> 0:21:21.479 that art. That was the czar's family's favorite art. So 0:21:21.560 --> 0:21:26.119 it impacted him on an artistic level deeply. It was 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:28.760 making an art knew he was in on the ground floor. 0:21:29.720 --> 0:21:32.439 But there was one tradition Balancing would never do away 0:21:32.440 --> 0:21:37.159 with worshiping the ballerina. Growing up in the school, he 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:39.720 lived in the world of the ballerina, the world of 0:21:39.720 --> 0:21:43.359 these girls and women who men watched with awe. Those 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:47.320 little boys in the school were conditioned to worship the 0:21:47.600 --> 0:21:51.159 presiding ballerinas of the day, just like the nobles and 0:21:51.200 --> 0:21:56.240 the grandees and the businessmen in the front row worshiped them. 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.440 Then Balancing realized when he was an adolescent that there 0:21:59.480 --> 0:22:03.000 were some of his own classmates who were beautiful and 0:22:03.800 --> 0:22:06.880 worth falling in love with, and he fell in love 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:09.480 with a young woman in the class below him, named 0:22:09.480 --> 0:22:14.239 Tamarava also known as Tamara Jeeva. She was thirteen when 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:17.080 they met. At the time, the school had a faction 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:20.200 of traditionalists, and they warned her against balancing and his 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:24.280 weird choreographic ideas. But when Balancine approached her and asked 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:26.919 if she wanted to work with him, she said of course. 0:22:28.040 --> 0:22:30.760 He started to choreograph for Tamaraw and she began to 0:22:30.880 --> 0:22:33.800 dance his pieces. One of the first she danced with 0:22:33.840 --> 0:22:37.639 him was a potada. Potada means step of two in French. 0:22:38.160 --> 0:22:41.080 It means a duet, usually between a man and a woman. 0:22:41.840 --> 0:22:45.080 This duet ended with what Tomorrow called a revolutionary moment. 0:22:51.640 --> 0:22:56.000 Balancie knelt, she stood on one foot on point, She 0:22:56.080 --> 0:22:59.719 held one leg in the air behind her in an arabesque, 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.280 and she balanced herself by pressing her mouth against his. 0:23:10.080 --> 0:23:14.440 Tomorrow later said this moment was considered terribly erotic. She said, 0:23:14.480 --> 0:23:17.240 every time balancing choreographed, he tried to see how much 0:23:17.240 --> 0:23:19.960 he could get away with. He never seemed to doubt himself. 0:23:20.680 --> 0:23:23.040 She wondered if his religious belief made him feel he 0:23:23.080 --> 0:23:31.280 was destined for greatness, like he was channeling God. Balancing 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.959 and Tamaraw decided to get married. They were young. There 0:23:34.960 --> 0:23:37.640 are different reports on exactly when it happened, but Balancing 0:23:37.800 --> 0:23:42.800 was probably eighteen and Tamara fifteen. They performed in little 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:46.400 theaters together. They got paid in food more than money. 0:23:47.720 --> 0:23:53.199 And then when Balancing was just twenty years old, he 0:23:53.320 --> 0:23:57.119 and Tamara had a chance to leave Russia, and it 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:21.520 was ballet that would let them do it. Around tomorrow, 0:24:21.560 --> 0:24:24.720 Jeeva and George Balancing met a croupier, a guy who 0:24:24.760 --> 0:24:27.960 worked the gambling tables at a local casino. His name 0:24:28.000 --> 0:24:31.119 was Vladimir. Vladimir made a lot of money working at 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:34.000 high stakes table and he convinced the government to let 0:24:34.040 --> 0:24:37.480 him finance a European ballet tour. They got out of 0:24:37.560 --> 0:24:41.080 Russia by asking permission to go give a tour in Germany, 0:24:41.920 --> 0:24:44.800 and they got out. Jim steak In is a historian 0:24:44.840 --> 0:24:47.840 who studied balancing. Once they got to Germany, they got 0:24:47.920 --> 0:24:52.199 picked up by Saras Diogolov, the really creative impresaria that 0:24:52.200 --> 0:24:55.880 founded the Bally russ and Paris Diagolov had created one 0:24:55.880 --> 0:25:00.679 of the most influential ballet companies ever, the ballet for 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:04.760 twenty years. The ballet roofs really defined the new face 0:25:04.800 --> 0:25:11.600 of ballet. Diagolev worked with famous composers like ravel Stravinsky, Debutsy, Prokofief, 0:25:11.600 --> 0:25:16.480 and Sati. Painters like Matisse and Picasso made sets. Coco 0:25:16.560 --> 0:25:22.240 Chanelle was one designer who created costumes. Balancine walked into 0:25:22.280 --> 0:25:25.520 all of this as a dancer, but soon Diagolev let 0:25:25.600 --> 0:25:29.480 him choreograph to Balancine started to play with and push 0:25:29.600 --> 0:25:32.000 the old school Russian style he had learned growing up. 0:25:33.119 --> 0:25:38.119 Balancine took that technique and made it new. He would 0:25:38.240 --> 0:25:43.919 introduce more acrobatic moves and loved making giant daisy chains 0:25:43.960 --> 0:25:48.280 out of his dancers, utterly untraditional moments where people look 0:25:48.359 --> 0:25:51.439 like they're swimming in midair, like they're doing somersaults, Like, 0:25:51.440 --> 0:25:53.760 oh my god, what is that. I've never seen that before. 0:25:56.520 --> 0:26:00.760 Balancine was finding his legs as a choreographer, and then 0:26:00.840 --> 0:26:05.160 came diago liv the head of the ballet. Russ died, 0:26:06.000 --> 0:26:10.360 the stock market crashed, World War two began to eventually 0:26:10.359 --> 0:26:13.720 heat up in a very real way, Balancie needed to 0:26:13.760 --> 0:26:16.919 figure out what to do next. The answer came in 0:26:16.960 --> 0:26:21.320 the form of a wealthy American enter Lincoln Kirstin. This 0:26:21.600 --> 0:26:25.440 young American who's really interested in art. Lincoln Kirstein came 0:26:25.480 --> 0:26:28.000 from a family with money. He was in his twenties 0:26:28.280 --> 0:26:31.240 and obsessed with all kinds of art. So when he 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:34.240 met Balancing on a trip to London, he was enamored. 0:26:34.800 --> 0:26:38.040 Balancie had a nickname when he was a youngster. He 0:26:38.280 --> 0:26:40.800 was called the Rat. He kind of had like a 0:26:40.880 --> 0:26:44.439 kind of a snaggle tooth. He wasn't like a movie 0:26:44.480 --> 0:26:48.600 theater actor kind of iconic beauty that way. He was 0:26:48.640 --> 0:26:51.760 on the shorter side, a man of few words. It 0:26:51.800 --> 0:26:56.280 seems he was very social. He loved to cook. Even 0:26:56.280 --> 0:27:00.920 in his twenties. Balancie used creativity, which Link and Kristine loved. 0:27:01.359 --> 0:27:05.320 Because he wanted to do something big, he invited Balancing 0:27:05.440 --> 0:27:08.680 to join him in the US to build a ballet company. 0:27:13.400 --> 0:27:16.639 Lincoln Kirstine decided that he was going to make it 0:27:16.680 --> 0:27:21.600 his next big project to create a dance school and 0:27:21.760 --> 0:27:26.520 company in America that would synthesize the best of the 0:27:26.600 --> 0:27:30.800 Russian ballet traditions. The Italian and French traditions and make 0:27:30.840 --> 0:27:37.240 it a thoroughly American enterprise. They would start a school 0:27:37.280 --> 0:27:40.320 to train American dancers. Tuition would be free so that 0:27:40.359 --> 0:27:43.960 students could be admitted based on quote their perfect possibilities. 0:27:44.760 --> 0:27:48.119 In exchange, students would agree to appear exclusively in school 0:27:48.160 --> 0:27:51.399 performances for five years so they wouldn't get snapped up 0:27:51.400 --> 0:27:55.520 by Broadway or Hollywood. Once they were trained and balancing 0:27:55.600 --> 0:27:59.920 could make his experimental ballets. He arrived in New York 0:28:00.080 --> 0:28:03.440 and started by teaching dancers his previous works or making 0:28:03.520 --> 0:28:08.040 versions of them, but he had to make something original. 0:28:11.119 --> 0:28:14.560 In four it was time to choreograph a new piece, 0:28:15.080 --> 0:28:18.159 his first in the United States. The music would be 0:28:18.200 --> 0:28:22.439 Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Balanchine told Kirstine the day of 0:28:22.440 --> 0:28:26.080 the first rehearsal, his head was a blank. Pray for me, 0:28:26.359 --> 0:28:30.199 he said. They started off with their usual dance class, 0:28:30.840 --> 0:28:33.560 and then Balancine gathered the dancers who were there that day, 0:28:34.280 --> 0:28:38.200 seventeen of them. He lined them up by height, then 0:28:38.240 --> 0:28:41.160 started to arrange them on the floor. It was a 0:28:41.200 --> 0:28:45.520 sunny day, one dancer said. Balanchine started slowly to compose 0:28:45.560 --> 0:28:48.520 a hymn to ward off the Sun. When he was 0:28:48.600 --> 0:28:52.600 done arranging, the dancers were in an unusual pattern, later 0:28:52.680 --> 0:29:00.360 called the orange grove. Two diamonds side by side. Yeah, 0:29:12.840 --> 0:29:19.880 the opening is a magical moment in theater. The music 0:29:19.960 --> 0:29:34.920 starts before the curtain rises. When the curtain does rise, 0:29:35.440 --> 0:29:38.960 you see this orange grove of dancers on stage, but 0:29:39.040 --> 0:29:51.120 they're not dancing. They're completely still, and they each have 0:29:51.880 --> 0:29:55.479 one hand raised up like they're trying to shield their 0:29:55.480 --> 0:30:09.960 eyes from the sun. They hold that position for a 0:30:10.080 --> 0:30:16.160 mysteriously long time. Through eight measures. More than a minute 0:30:16.160 --> 0:30:21.400 has passed. The music sores, but the dancers still haven't moved. 0:30:34.640 --> 0:30:42.920 Then finally they move, but just a little. They start 0:30:43.000 --> 0:30:48.400 to move one hand, almost in slow motion, as Balanchine said, 0:30:48.400 --> 0:30:51.800 the wrist breaks as if the wrist were tired, and 0:30:51.920 --> 0:30:55.840 the hand comes down, and then they move the other arm. 0:30:55.880 --> 0:31:01.040 They bring their arms together in a circle, and that's 0:31:01.040 --> 0:31:05.920 when the feet pop open. To make first position, they 0:31:05.960 --> 0:31:08.920 push their feet to the side into ballet turnout the 0:31:08.960 --> 0:31:12.680