Tchaikovsky Pas De Deux (Balanchine)
Canada All Star Ballet Gala
Mind-blowing show! Only in Toronto!
Exquisite. Educational. Enlightening. Transforming.
The Most Prestigious Ballet Gala in the world!
April, 2018
Mind-blowing show! Only in Toronto!
Exquisite. Educational. Enlightening. Transforming.
The Most Prestigious Ballet Gala in the world!
Tchaikovsky Pas De Deux (Balanchine)
George Balanchine (1904-1983), one the greatest choreographers of the twentieth century, found a particular affinity between his vision of dance and Tchaikovsky’s music. Balanchine used both symphonic and balletic music by the Russian composer, which was already familiar to and loved bythe public. The discovery of a previously unpublished fragment of his work was a fortuitous event for the choreographer. Tchaikovsky wrote an additional pas de deux for Act 3 of Swan Lake at the request of Anna Sobeshchanskaya, prima ballerina of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, in 1877. The music, however, remained unpublished and buried in the archives of the Bolshoi Theater until 1953. Balanchine, who solicited permission from the Soviet authorities to use it for his creation, knew of its existence.
The resulting pas de deux, performed for the first time in New York on March 29, 1960 by Violette Verdyand Conrad Ludlow, made no reference to nor evoked the slightest reminiscence of the sinister image of the Black Swan. Balanchine saw in the music (in accordwith his famous statement: “see the music and hear the dance”) a celebration of the youthful spirit of life.The pas de deux, which runs for eight minutes, demonstrates the essential elements of Balanchine’sneo-classical language: musicality, speed, and a dynamic spatial geometry, which the choreographer combined with elegance of forms, lightness ofmovements, and a reckless freedom in executing the most difficult lifts. The gracious vivacity and technique of Violette Verdy (1933-2016) set a loftystandard for future interpreters of the female lead in the pas de deux. Balanchine’s choreography, however, has a remarkable capacity to offer each new generation of dancers a chance to discover something unlimited in their technical and lyrical skills.