Mr. Balanchine

George Balanchine was born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg, Russia, on January 22, 1904. He is the son of Meliton and Maria Balanchivadze. George was surrounded by music and artistic influences from a very early age. His father was a composer. Balanchine studied the piano as a child and considered a career in the military, which his mother encouraged. However, at the age of ten, he entered the Imperial Ballet School, where he learned the precise and athletic Russian dancing style.

George Balanchine

In 1921 he entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music to study piano while continuing work in ballet at the State Academy of Opera and Ballet. He used a group of dancers from the school to present his earliest choreographed works. One of the students was Tamara Gevergeyeva, to which Balanchine married in 1922. She was the first of his four wives, all of whom were dancers.

  The manager of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev, discovered Balanchine in 1925 in Paris, France. When Diaghilev's most famous choreographer, Nijinska, left the group, Balanchine took her place. At the age of 21 he became the main choreographer of the most famous ballet company in the world. Balanchine did 10 ballets for Diaghilev, and it was Diaghilev who changed the Russian's name to Balanchine. When Diaghilev died and the company broke up in 1929, Balanchine moved from one company to another until, in 1933, he formed his own company, Les Ballets.

In 1933 Balanchine met Lincoln Kirstein, a young, rich American, who invited him to head the new School of American Ballet in New York City. With the School of American Ballet and later with the New York City Ballet, Balanchine established himself as one of the world's leading classical choreographers. He brought standards of excellence and quality performance to the American ballet culture, which up to that point had been a sad/weak copy of the greater European companies.

Works that Balanchine created, while working at the Metropolitan, would later revolutionize the American classical ballet style, included: Apollo, The Card Party, and The Fairy's Kiss. Balanchine's style proved a bit too daring for the Metropolitan, leading to a conflict that ended the working relationship in 1938. Over the next several years he worked on Broadway shows, films, and two ballets: Ballet Imperial and Concerto Barocco, which were created in 1941 for the American Ballet Caravan.

George Balanchine taking a curtain call following a performance of New York City Ballet.

In 1946 Balanchine established a new company, The Ballet Society. The performance of Balanchine's Orpheus was so successful that his company was invited to establish permanent residence at the New York City Center. So it did and was renamed the New York City Ballet. Finally Balanchine had a school, a company, and a permanent theater. He developed the New York City Ballet into the leading classical company in America and to some critics, in the world. Here he created some of his most enduring works, including his Nutcracker and Agon.

Balanchine died in New York City on April 30, 1983.