North American Ballet Style

NORTH AMERICAN SCHOOL

Balanchine created about a hundred ballets during his long career, from which extracting a single style would be an impossible task.  Balanchine’s choreographic principles and stylistic preferences, however, can be traced more consistently from his earliest neoclassical ballets, particularly from Apollo, choreographed in 1928, to the original score by Igor Stravinsky. First and foremost, Balanchine’s neoclassical interest in the unlimited expressiveness of bodies was paired with the modernist preference for minimalism and abstraction in plots, sets, costumes, and lighting. Another important aspect of the Balanchine style contained in his attitude towards music: his dancers do not move with music, they are the music, which they visualize by movements.

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