 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
|
||||||||
|
||||||||
 |
|
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
worth repeating |
| Bobby Barnett, who danced many
principal roles for George Balanchine in the New York City Ballet
and was artistic director for the Atlanta Ballet for many years, now
recreates Balanchine ballets for the Balanchine Trust. He gave a Center
for Humanities and Arts lecture about Balanchine, whose centennial
is being celebrated this year. Some excerpts: “A little bit more about Mr. B. He was first and foremost, in my opinion, a musician. In fact he started studying music before he studied dance, and he was a very, very accomplished pianist. After he graduated from the choreographic school, he immediately enrolled in the music school and got a degree in music as well as in dance. In watching him choreograph, he used to sit down at the piano and play, and I think that’s why his ballets are so musical. He was a musician. His whole family were musicians. . . . “He got into dance because his older sister went for an audition at the Mariinsky School. There were about 150 girls and 50 boys, and a woman walked up to his mother and said, ‘Why doesn’t he audition as well as his sister?’ . . . Well, his sister unfortunately didn’t make it, but he did. He was taken into the school, and after the first couple of days he ran away. He was absolutely petrified—his mother just brought him for the audition and left him there and went back home. At eight years old that’s a traumatic experience. But he was brought back, and he stayed, and it was fortunate for all of us that he did, because he’s made an indelible imprint in dance, and, I think, changed the American way of looking at dance.” |
|
|
—Beth Roberts |