Speaker 1: When Elizabeth Kendall was in her early twenties, she didn't
Speaker 1: think there would be anything for her in a balancing ballet.
Speaker 1: And I thought it would be old fashioned because it
Speaker 1: was ballet in the ballet in my childhood was old fashioned.
Speaker 1: So I resisted going to the New York City Ballet
Speaker 1: for quite some time, a sort of a decent amount
Speaker 1: of time. It was the nineteen seventies. Elizabeth was a
Speaker 1: dance writer in New York. She was young, ballet was old.
Speaker 1: She loved postmodern, avant garde dance. She believed art should
Speaker 1: be challenging, angry, Even good art questioned what came before
Speaker 1: it exposed hypocrisy. She hadn't been in New York long,
Speaker 1: and she was still finding her way as a writer
Speaker 1: and as a person. She was trying to move past
Speaker 1: a family tragedy. Her mother had recently died in a
Speaker 1: car accident. I was the driver of the car that
Speaker 1: killed my mother. There so a lot of stuff to bear,
Speaker 1: a lot of healing that had to go on. But
Speaker 1: I think a healthy psyche hills itself by numbing as
Speaker 1: self as much as possible. Now, two years later, she
Speaker 1: was in New York writing about dance another critic told
Speaker 1: her she had to see balancing, so she finally dragged
Speaker 1: herself to the New York State Theater to see Balancing's
Speaker 1: Raimonda variations. Elizabeth had a press seat and a perfect view.
Speaker 1: The lights went down and the music began. M h
Speaker 1: and I just remember a unique kind of orchestral sound,
Speaker 1: harps and flutes and strings mingling its so it sounds
Speaker 1: a little like Heaven might sound. At first glance, it
Speaker 1: was classic traditional ballet, a man and a woman dancing
Speaker 1: a pot of da many women on point wearing pink
Speaker 1: and blue tuttoos that flounced like clouds as they moved.
Speaker 1: But what I saw on the stage wasn't anything like
Speaker 1: the ballet from my young childhood. This wasn't about old manners.
Speaker 1: There were these people jumping and leaping and whirling around
Speaker 1: in formation that animated the stage as a sort of
Speaker 1: magic box that manufactured volume and excitement. The music and
Speaker 1: the ballet steps gloamed together to make us fear in
Speaker 1: which everything was alive, and the effect it was of
Speaker 1: three D music, music that surrounded you and you were
Speaker 1: inside it. And I remember very distinctly feeling in the
Speaker 1: audience this is a party, and I'm a guest. I've
Speaker 1: been invited, and for some reason that thought was terribly
Speaker 1: moving and terribly inclusive, and the thing came over me.
Speaker 1: This is a gift, this is joy, this is celebration.
Speaker 1: I suddenly realized not only that this was worth returning
Speaker 1: to again and again because something had reached me in
Speaker 1: the soul, but it also let me know that art
Speaker 1: did not have to be stern and challenging. Art could
Speaker 1: be something that was purely nourishing and purely exhilarating, that
Speaker 1: was ecstatic and tragic at the same time. After that night,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth started going to balancing ballets a lot, but I
Speaker 1: would go back and I would experiment a little. I
Speaker 1: would go to the theater and the lights would go down,
Speaker 1: and I would say, Okay, I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: my mood. I'm going to give you all these troubles
Speaker 1: and you do something with it, said I to the stage,
Speaker 1: and then I would walk out and I felt like
Speaker 1: somebody had rinsed me. That sounds suspiciously like baptism talk,
Speaker 1: but it's all to say that I was, in fact
Speaker 1: receiving something that I deeply needed, and I hadn't known
Speaker 1: what form I needed it in some kind of a ceremony,
Speaker 1: some kind of a ritual, kind of healing from my
Speaker 1: heart podcasts and Rocco Punch. This is the Turning Room
Speaker 1: of Mirrors America Lance Part two, Ritual Healing. Balancing was
Speaker 1: not a guy who put on airs. So when I
Speaker 1: began to see the New York City Ballet, I would
Speaker 1: sometimes run into Balancing at a fruit stand on the
Speaker 1: street in the Upper West Side where he lived, and
Speaker 1: I would like to give a little bow, and he
Speaker 1: would give an exaggeratedly courteous bow because he was a
Speaker 1: admirer of women. That was the extent of their interaction
Speaker 1: until she was on assignment for the Ford Foundation. She
Speaker 1: got the chance to interview him one on one. And
Speaker 1: I dressed up to look nice, and there I was
Speaker 1: presenting myself at his office at the New York State Theater,
Speaker 1: and he was very courtly. He was casually but beautifully dressed,
Speaker 1: a gentleman, and you could see that he moved well.
Speaker 1: He was light on his feet. Elizabeth sat down with
Speaker 1: Balancing in his office. He was interested in just having
Speaker 1: a young, attractively dressed, bursting with nerves and vitality, person
Speaker 1: of the female presentation in front of him, and he
Speaker 1: just talked. And the first thing he said was, so,
Speaker 1: what we have to talk about is boring, yes, And
Speaker 1: I said, oh, Mr Balanchin, I agree, it's going to
Speaker 1: be boring. And I don't really want to even take
Speaker 1: your time. I don't need this interview horribly, and I
Speaker 1: can leave. And he said, no, no, no, He said,
Speaker 1: we do interview and then we talk. He really thought
Speaker 1: about questions and answered I'd gotten to the end. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: that's the last question. And he said, do you know
Speaker 1: what I did in the revolution? And I said no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't. And he said what I did to eat?
Speaker 1: He said, I sewed saddles and he showed me the
Speaker 1: sewing gestures. He sewed leather saddles together for horses. Balancine
Speaker 1: started to tell Elizabeth the story of his life. He
Speaker 1: told a tale that felt like folklore from a place
Speaker 1: and time far from the man sitting with her in
Speaker 1: his office in New York. In. This encounter would launch
Speaker 1: Elizabeth down a path of deep exploration into Balancine's life.
Speaker 1: She learned to write fluently in Russian and travel to St.
Speaker 1: Pete Ersburg to piece together a picture of How this
Speaker 1: man came to popularize ballet in America. How he created
Speaker 1: work that would so deeply move her in a theater
Speaker 1: in New York that it helped her heal after trauma.
Speaker 1: This is that story. Balancine was born in nineteen o four.
Speaker 1: His name was Georgie Meltanovich Balancavazza. Georgie lived in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Speaker 1: From the beginning, he was steeped in music. His mom
Speaker 1: played piano, his dad was a Georgian opera singer and composer.
Speaker 1: But they had limited resources. Then the extraordinary event happened
Speaker 1: that they won a lot of money, a fortune in
Speaker 1: a lottery. Or that's the story. It can't exactly reproved.
Speaker 1: Balancine's family rose to a sort of merchant skilled class,
Speaker 1: one that required a certain level of wealth. So Balancin's
Speaker 1: childhood was privileged. She had a nanny, and then the father,
Speaker 1: who didn't have any idea what to do with all
Speaker 1: this money, lost it all because he listened to people.
Speaker 1: He gave him bad advice, and which meant that the
Speaker 1: Balancians gave up their city apartment and had no more money.
Speaker 1: They moved to the forests of Finland, and they settled
Speaker 1: in a dacha or a summer house. They started to
Speaker 1: live in the summer house year round, even through the
Speaker 1: harsh winters. In this remote area. Balancin's mother worried about
Speaker 1: her kids education. That's when she thought of the Imperial
Speaker 1: Theater School, which included the Czar School of Ballet. It
Speaker 1: would be a chance that a free education. The Imperial
Speaker 1: Theater School was directly managed as part of the Tsar's household,
Speaker 1: and the students had some contact with the rural family,
Speaker 1: you know, with teas, and they would sometimes visit backstage
Speaker 1: or whatever. At the time, being a ballerina often meant
Speaker 1: more than just being a dance. Ballet was a very
Speaker 1: strange beast in Imperial St. Petersburg because it was both
Speaker 1: an art form and an erotic market for the grandees
Speaker 1: and the nobles who attended the show and would pick
Speaker 1: out their mistresses from the dancers on the stage. St. Petersburg,
Speaker 1: in terms of its social organization, was much like Paris,
Speaker 1: so it had a demi monde, which in Russian is
Speaker 1: called half existence are half light, which means that a
Speaker 1: wealthy man or a nobleman well born might have two households,
Speaker 1: two lives, two sets of restaurants, two sets of clothing,
Speaker 1: two banks. It was accepted to have another shadow wife.
Speaker 1: Being a shadow wife could give a dancer status or
Speaker 1: financial security. So Balancin's mother wanted her eldest daughter to
Speaker 1: become a ballet star. It's funny to think of a
Speaker 1: mother wanting her daughter to enter into this illicit other world.
Speaker 1: But this world offered its own rewards. To enter this world,
Speaker 1: dancer started training as children. Balancie's sister went into audition,
Speaker 1: and Balancine tagged along. When they got there, though, he
Speaker 1: was pulled into the audition process, and something about him
Speaker 1: stood out to the judges. When he was walking in
Speaker 1: a line of boys, a judge singled him out and
Speaker 1: had him walk alone. The sister did not get accepted
Speaker 1: into the school, but balancing did. He was only nine
Speaker 1: years old, which was very confusing, no doubt for a
Speaker 1: nine year old, because he knew how much his older
Speaker 1: sister wanted the post and he got it, and he
Speaker 1: didn't want it at all. He hated dancing, and just
Speaker 1: like that, George Balancine was dropped into the world of ballet.
Speaker 1: His mother dealing with her own disappointment about the daughter,
Speaker 1: and the daughter's disappointment left him there because it was
Speaker 1: a week before the school year started and he didn't
Speaker 1: expect to be left, and I think that marked his
Speaker 1: entire life. Balancane wasn't happy. He even ran away to
Speaker 1: his aunt's house during his first weeks at the boarding school,
Speaker 1: but he was returned to the school and all the
Speaker 1: intensity that their ballet training required. The students woke early
Speaker 1: every morning to the sound of a bell. They were
Speaker 1: rushed out of bed. They didn't even take the time
Speaker 1: to make their beds. That was left for the servants.
Speaker 1: They'd have a quick wash and cold water, put on
Speaker 1: their uniforms, and add another bell. Line up for inspection.
Speaker 1: They never went out except for one hour a day.
Speaker 1: They walked around the block. They took the walk in
Speaker 1: two lines. There one chance to see the outside world.
Speaker 1: From ten to eleven thirty, Balanciine started the day with
Speaker 1: ballet class. Boys and girls were separated, boys on the
Speaker 1: higher floor in front of a long wall of mirrors
Speaker 1: opposite the bar. Balanciin said he spent a year learning
Speaker 1: how the foot touches the floor after a jump like
Speaker 1: a bird landing. He said After his spaty lunch, students
Speaker 1: did their academic study, then dinner, followed by evening classes
Speaker 1: ballroom dance, pantomime, posture, and fencing for the older boys,
Speaker 1: and then after that they take music lessons. The students
Speaker 1: could pick violin or piano. Balancine show's piano. With all
Speaker 1: this work and skill building, Balancine's world now revolved around
Speaker 1: the theater. His family had been blotted out in his
Speaker 1: own mind. The curtain was closed on the family and
Speaker 1: the curtain was open on the world of the theater.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth believes he would carry this hurt from being abandoned
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. He himself said that
Speaker 1: he felt like someone had abandoned a dog. I think
Speaker 1: he was incredibly furious, but a child of nine can't
Speaker 1: distinguish grief from anger. I imagine that his psyche shut
Speaker 1: down or closed off to his family, and therefore had
Speaker 1: to open itself to his new world, the theater and
Speaker 1: the theater people. And also, in an extraordinary letter, he wrote,
Speaker 1: I hope you understand how alone I am. Ever, since
Speaker 1: my family left me in the school at age nine,
Speaker 1: I've been alone. When I found that letter recently, I
Speaker 1: realized that that feeling of having only the theater for
Speaker 1: a family and a world and a tribe was deeply
Speaker 1: at the center of him. The only connection he had
Speaker 1: left to his family was music. That was the one constant,
Speaker 1: that was his link to the past. He couldn't emotionally
Speaker 1: connect anymore. They've done this horrible thing, They'd abandon him.
Speaker 1: But music could somehow connect his whole self. I imagine
Speaker 1: that that's why he had this eerie facility with matching
Speaker 1: steps to music, because he lived those steps. They were
Speaker 1: his language in his innermost dialogue with himself. It was
Speaker 1: ballet steps, not words and music. Elizabeth says. Balanchine's teachers
Speaker 1: saw him as an independent boy who was courteous, detached,
Speaker 1: and eerily self confident. Although Balancing initially disliked the school,
Speaker 1: he grew to love ballet. He had a revelation on stage,
Speaker 1: dancing and sleeping beauty. With all of the music, the lights,
Speaker 1: the costumes. He realized he was in the middle of
Speaker 1: a thing of beauty. And then, Elizabeth says, Ballet almost
Speaker 1: died in nine a bullet burst through the theater school
Speaker 1: window and almost hit a student. Days later, a crowd
Speaker 1: in military uniforms rushed through the school halls. It was
Speaker 1: late at night. They were searching for monarchists in the dormitories,
Speaker 1: peering under beds. The Russian Revolution had been gun in October.
Speaker 1: The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, took control of the country.
Speaker 1: The Bolsheviks envisioned a world where workers would hold the power.
Speaker 1: The Czar and his family were murdered, nobility was abolished,
Speaker 1: Aristocrats fled or were killed. The Bolshevik Party would eventually
Speaker 1: become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Sarist
Speaker 1: Romanov dynasty was over. The Bolsheviks wanted to wipe out
Speaker 1: any whiff of the old aristocracy, and no one knew
Speaker 1: what that meant for Ballet. Valancine was thirteen years old.
Speaker 1: His school closed, and life in St. Petersburg changed dramatically.
Speaker 1: The city of St. Petersburg suffered after the revolution. St
Speaker 1: Petersburg had been the capital of the Russian Empire under
Speaker 1: the Tsar. Now, with Lenin in power, the government moved
Speaker 1: to Moscow, essentially abandoning St. Petersburg and the resources, which
Speaker 1: were very few after the revel Lucian all flowed to Moscow,
Speaker 1: leaving St. Petersburg to starve and freeze. There was no heat,
Speaker 1: there was no fuel, very little food. All rationed balancing
Speaker 1: school was turned into barracks for guards. That winner in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen and nineteen, it was hard to even find
Speaker 1: bread in a shop. Thirteen year old Balanciing and his
Speaker 1: friends stole fish at night from local barges before he
Speaker 1: could find a job. But then came some hope for ballet.
Speaker 1: It had to do with Lennon's Minister of Education, who
Speaker 1: also oversaw culture and arts. Lennon's Minister of Culture had
Speaker 1: a vision of all the arts existing simultaneously and the
Speaker 1: people learning all about the high arts that they've been
Speaker 1: deprived of, and Ballet's new meaning was up for grabs.
Speaker 1: Balancin's ballet school reopened with a new mission, which is
Speaker 1: to make dances for Utopia, the Bolshevik Utopia. Now, the
Speaker 1: theater would welcome laborers, soldiers and sailors and to the audience.
Speaker 1: Workers got free tickets from their factories and labor units. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: half the city's population was gone. They were dead from
Speaker 1: disease or off to villages in search of food. One
Speaker 1: Russian described people who passed each other in the gray,
Speaker 1: cold city as phantoms and oblivious silence. In those conditions,
Speaker 1: the ballet school started up again with utopian aims and visions,
Speaker 1: utopian excitement, and no heat and no food, which can
Speaker 1: sharpen your senses to your art and impact your health.
Speaker 1: And it did both with balanchine. The children at ballet
Speaker 1: school had boils for malnutrition and lice that carried typhus.
Speaker 1: On cold nights, the boys and girls moved their beds
Speaker 1: from separate dormitory rooms to the old infirmary to stay warm.
Speaker 1: They suffered, but they bonded and they felt immersed in art.
Speaker 1: After the Revolution, all the social meetings of the art
Speaker 1: fell away, and they concentrated on the pure art, on ballets,
Speaker 1: just as a pure art. Since the seventeen hundreds under
Speaker 1: the CSAR, ballets performed in Russia had been filled with
Speaker 1: romantic storylines in royal courts or epic tales of castles,
Speaker 1: princes and maidens. But that was going away. Now. They
Speaker 1: had a little trouble making new ballets because what were
Speaker 1: they going to be about? It was also new Now
Speaker 1: ballet could be both grand and intimate and revealed the
Speaker 1: private emotions of people in a way that it never
Speaker 1: had been before Balancing was a teenager. Now he grew
Speaker 1: his hair long and wore eyeliner to make his eyes
Speaker 1: look soulful. He also started to experiment with his own choreography.
Speaker 1: And what it did I think for Balancing was it
Speaker 1: broke any lingering narrative associations that the steps held, So
Speaker 1: you know, an Arabist didn't automatically mean a noble shape.
Speaker 1: It could mean anything that the choreographer wanted it to mean,
Speaker 1: same with all the other steps. They were severed from
Speaker 1: that art. That was the czar's family's favorite art. So
Speaker 1: it impacted him on an artistic level deeply. It was
Speaker 1: making an art knew he was in on the ground floor.
Speaker 1: But there was one tradition Balancing would never do away
Speaker 1: with worshiping the ballerina. Growing up in the school, he
Speaker 1: lived in the world of the ballerina, the world of
Speaker 1: these girls and women who men watched with awe. Those
Speaker 1: little boys in the school were conditioned to worship the
Speaker 1: presiding ballerinas of the day, just like the nobles and
Speaker 1: the grandees and the businessmen in the front row worshiped them.
Speaker 1: Then Balancing realized when he was an adolescent that there
Speaker 1: were some of his own classmates who were beautiful and
Speaker 1: worth falling in love with, and he fell in love
Speaker 1: with a young woman in the class below him, named
Speaker 1: Tamarava also known as Tamara Jeeva. She was thirteen when
Speaker 1: they met. At the time, the school had a faction
Speaker 1: of traditionalists, and they warned her against balancing and his
Speaker 1: weird choreographic ideas. But when Balancine approached her and asked
Speaker 1: if she wanted to work with him, she said of course.
Speaker 1: He started to choreograph for Tamaraw and she began to
Speaker 1: dance his pieces. One of the first she danced with
Speaker 1: him was a potada. Potada means step of two in French.
Speaker 1: It means a duet, usually between a man and a woman.
Speaker 1: This duet ended with what Tomorrow called a revolutionary moment.
Speaker 1: Balancie knelt, she stood on one foot on point, She
Speaker 1: held one leg in the air behind her in an arabesque,
Speaker 1: and she balanced herself by pressing her mouth against his.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow later said this moment was considered terribly erotic. She said,
Speaker 1: every time balancing choreographed, he tried to see how much
Speaker 1: he could get away with. He never seemed to doubt himself.
Speaker 1: She wondered if his religious belief made him feel he
Speaker 1: was destined for greatness, like he was channeling God. Balancing
Speaker 1: and Tamaraw decided to get married. They were young. There
Speaker 1: are different reports on exactly when it happened, but Balancing
Speaker 1: was probably eighteen and Tamara fifteen. They performed in little
Speaker 1: theaters together. They got paid in food more than money.
Speaker 1: And then when Balancing was just twenty years old, he
Speaker 1: and Tamara had a chance to leave Russia, and it
Speaker 1: was ballet that would let them do it. Around tomorrow,
Speaker 1: Jeeva and George Balancing met a croupier, a guy who
Speaker 1: worked the gambling tables at a local casino. His name
Speaker 1: was Vladimir. Vladimir made a lot of money working at
Speaker 1: high stakes table and he convinced the government to let
Speaker 1: him finance a European ballet tour. They got out of
Speaker 1: Russia by asking permission to go give a tour in Germany,
Speaker 1: and they got out. Jim steak In is a historian
Speaker 1: who studied balancing. Once they got to Germany, they got
Speaker 1: picked up by Saras Diogolov, the really creative impresaria that
Speaker 1: founded the Bally russ and Paris Diagolov had created one
Speaker 1: of the most influential ballet companies ever, the ballet for
Speaker 1: twenty years. The ballet roofs really defined the new face
Speaker 1: of ballet. Diagolev worked with famous composers like ravel Stravinsky, Debutsy, Prokofief,
Speaker 1: and Sati. Painters like Matisse and Picasso made sets. Coco
Speaker 1: Chanelle was one designer who created costumes. Balancine walked into
Speaker 1: all of this as a dancer, but soon Diagolev let
Speaker 1: him choreograph to Balancine started to play with and push
Speaker 1: the old school Russian style he had learned growing up.
Speaker 1: Balancine took that technique and made it new. He would
Speaker 1: introduce more acrobatic moves and loved making giant daisy chains
Speaker 1: out of his dancers, utterly untraditional moments where people look
Speaker 1: like they're swimming in midair, like they're doing somersaults, Like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what is that. I've never seen that before.
Speaker 1: Balancine was finding his legs as a choreographer, and then
Speaker 1: came diago liv the head of the ballet. Russ died,
Speaker 1: the stock market crashed, World War two began to eventually
Speaker 1: heat up in a very real way, Balancie needed to
Speaker 1: figure out what to do next. The answer came in
Speaker 1: the form of a wealthy American enter Lincoln Kirstin. This
Speaker 1: young American who's really interested in art. Lincoln Kirstein came
Speaker 1: from a family with money. He was in his twenties
Speaker 1: and obsessed with all kinds of art. So when he
Speaker 1: met Balancing on a trip to London, he was enamored.
Speaker 1: Balancie had a nickname when he was a youngster. He
Speaker 1: was called the Rat. He kind of had like a
Speaker 1: kind of a snaggle tooth. He wasn't like a movie
Speaker 1: theater actor kind of iconic beauty that way. He was
Speaker 1: on the shorter side, a man of few words. It
Speaker 1: seems he was very social. He loved to cook. Even
Speaker 1: in his twenties. Balancie used creativity, which Link and Kristine loved.
Speaker 1: Because he wanted to do something big, he invited Balancing
Speaker 1: to join him in the US to build a ballet company.
Speaker 1: Lincoln Kirstine decided that he was going to make it
Speaker 1: his next big project to create a dance school and
Speaker 1: company in America that would synthesize the best of the
Speaker 1: Russian ballet traditions. The Italian and French traditions and make
Speaker 1: it a thoroughly American enterprise. They would start a school
Speaker 1: to train American dancers. Tuition would be free so that
Speaker 1: students could be admitted based on quote their perfect possibilities.
Speaker 1: In exchange, students would agree to appear exclusively in school
Speaker 1: performances for five years so they wouldn't get snapped up
Speaker 1: by Broadway or Hollywood. Once they were trained and balancing
Speaker 1: could make his experimental ballets. He arrived in New York
Speaker 1: and started by teaching dancers his previous works or making
Speaker 1: versions of them, but he had to make something original.
Speaker 1: In four it was time to choreograph a new piece,
Speaker 1: his first in the United States. The music would be
Speaker 1: Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, Balanchine told Kirstine the day of
Speaker 1: the first rehearsal, his head was a blank. Pray for me,
Speaker 1: he said. They started off with their usual dance class,
Speaker 1: and then Balancine gathered the dancers who were there that day,
Speaker 1: seventeen of them. He lined them up by height, then
Speaker 1: started to arrange them on the floor. It was a
Speaker 1: sunny day, one dancer said. Balanchine started slowly to compose
Speaker 1: a hymn to ward off the Sun. When he was
Speaker 1: done arranging, the dancers were in an unusual pattern, later
Speaker 1: called the orange grove. Two diamonds side by side. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the opening is a magical moment in theater. The music
Speaker 1: starts before the curtain rises. When the curtain does rise,
Speaker 1: you see this orange grove of dancers on stage, but
Speaker 1: they're not dancing. They're completely still, and they each have
Speaker 1: one hand raised up like they're trying to shield their
Speaker 1: eyes from the sun. They hold that position for a
Speaker 1: mysteriously long time. Through eight measures. More than a minute
Speaker 1: has passed. The music sores, but the dancers still haven't moved.
Speaker 1: Then finally they move, but just a little. They start
Speaker 1: to move one hand, almost in slow motion, as Balanchine said,
Speaker 1: the wrist breaks as if the wrist were tired, and
Speaker 1: the hand comes down, and then they move the other arm.
Speaker 1: They bring their arms together in a circle, and that's
Speaker 1: when the feet pop open. To make first position, they
Speaker 1: push their feet to the side into ballet turnout the
Speaker 1: most basic position of ballet. It's almost like the first
Speaker 1: exercises of a ballet class slowed down. You would think
Speaker 1: it would be boring, but instead it feels profound. It's
Speaker 1: like you see seventeen dancers wake up their bodies to
Speaker 1: dance for the first time, like they're learning in front
Speaker 1: of you that their bodies can hold music. They start
Speaker 1: with the most basic shapes of ballet, a line, a circle,
Speaker 1: a flowing arm that's just beautiful over the daisy choreographed.
Speaker 1: The rehearsal process was ragtag. Balancing. Didn't know how many
Speaker 1: dancers would show up, so he choreographed for whoever was
Speaker 1: there one day, for seven, teen, the next day, nine,
Speaker 1: then six. Historically, when you'd choreograph a ballet, there would
Speaker 1: be a libretto or a description of what would happen
Speaker 1: in the ballet, the plot, and this time there wasn't anything.
Speaker 1: There was just the music the dancers. In balancing, Balancing
Speaker 1: let his dancers inspire him. He created the first pose
Speaker 1: when he saw a dancer who shielded her eyes from
Speaker 1: the sun. When a dancer ran in late, he made
Speaker 1: it a part of the ballet. When a dancer fell,
Speaker 1: he wove that into the ballet, spun off into beautiful, swift,
Speaker 1: wild dance. He has them swooping information in circles, in squares,
Speaker 1: closing opening, rushing around You cannot see this marvelous work
Speaker 1: without falling under a spell, because the music has such
Speaker 1: a sweep and urgency, and so does the dancing. The
Speaker 1: dancers at rehearsal came from such varied styles and backgrounds
Speaker 1: that this was how Balancing could mold them as his dancers,
Speaker 1: making his shapes his unique style. It was a way
Speaker 1: to make dancers with disparate trainings and backgrounds all feel
Speaker 1: like they can be part of a harmonious, beautiful whole.
Speaker 1: He called it Serenad. Serenad would become a pillar for
Speaker 1: Balancing's dancers when they'd returned to again and again, that
Speaker 1: ballet is this important symbol of his arrival in America
Speaker 1: and his starting this new chapter in his artistic life.
Speaker 1: And it is a gorgeous ballet. It's one of his best.
Speaker 1: It's like a desert island ballet, if you could even
Speaker 1: have a desert island. It is this beautiful ritual. It
Speaker 1: does feel like a ritual. And as the ballet unfolds,
Speaker 1: it has images that feel full of meaning, like myths
Speaker 1: layered on top of each other, tropes and narratives you
Speaker 1: can't quite grasp. The story of the ballet doesn't really
Speaker 1: have a story. It has many stories, but I think
Speaker 1: the stories are kind of buried. We have images that
Speaker 1: are very powerful. As a dance historian, len Garifola knows
Speaker 1: that Balancine is famous for making ballets without narratives. His
Speaker 1: ballets are about movement and the music. But she sees
Speaker 1: something more, what you might call a private resonance or
Speaker 1: a personal echo. This is something deeply personal, and she
Speaker 1: sees this in Saranad. There's one moment that always moves
Speaker 1: her in a deep, even terrible way. What happens in
Speaker 1: that moment is that there is a man with two
Speaker 1: women dancing together, and it's clear that there is a
Speaker 1: profound feeling among all of those three people love eroticism,
Speaker 1: but that there's also danger. Someone is going to be
Speaker 1: left behind, and he's going to make a choice. They
Speaker 1: danced furiously, then one of the women falls back into
Speaker 1: his arms, but he doesn't lift her up again. Instead,
Speaker 1: he lowers her, slowly, inching downward until she's flat on
Speaker 1: the floor. She reaches up to him, but he stands
Speaker 1: up and the other dancer leads him away. He has
Speaker 1: made his choice. The moment when the man walks off,
Speaker 1: the other woman is terrible. It never ceases to touch me,
Speaker 1: with the sense that the man is very much a
Speaker 1: stand in for balancing, and also the sense of the
Speaker 1: trail and abandonment. He moves on and leaves the other
Speaker 1: weeping on the floor. Next time, on the Turning, there
Speaker 1: are no windows. We don't need windows because the outside
Speaker 1: world doesn't matter. M He was God in the theater,
Speaker 1: ever observing, ever present. Are you a patriot? Are you
Speaker 1: a citizen? Are you willing to do whatever I ask
Speaker 1: you to do? The Turning is the production of Rococo
Speaker 1: Punch and I Heeart podcasts. It's written and produced by
Speaker 1: Allen Lance, Lesser and Me. Our story editor is Emily Foreman.
Speaker 1: Fixing and sound designed by James Trout. Jessica Carissa is
Speaker 1: our assistant producer. Andrea Swahe is our digital producer. Fact
Speaker 1: checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. Special thanks to Elizabeth Kendall,
Speaker 1: Jim stike In, and Lynn Garafola. Their books on this
Speaker 1: topic are fascinating, so go check out their work. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are John Parratti and Jessica l Part at
Speaker 1: Prococo Punch At, Katrina Norvelle and Nikki Etre at iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 1: For photos and more details on the series, follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Rococo Punch, and you can reach out
Speaker 1: via email The Turning at Rococo punch dot com. I'm
Speaker 1: Erica Lance. Thanks for listening.