| George Balanchine |
 George Balanchine (January 22, 1904–April 30, 1983) is one of the 20th century’s foremost choreographers, and one of the founders of American ballet. His work formed a bridge between classical and modern ballet.Balanchine was born Georgi Melitonovich Balanchivadze in Saint Petersburg, Russia. His father, noted Georgian composer Meliton Balanchivadze (1862-1937), was one of the founders of the Georgian Opera.
In 1913 at the age of nine, Balanchine enrolled in the Imperial Ballet School, principal school of the Imperial Ballet. With the victory of the Bolsheviks in the revolution, the school was disbanded as an offensive symbol of the Tsarist regime.
To survive the privation and Martial Law of this period, Balanchine played the piano–for food, not for money–at cabarets and silent movie regime theatres. Eventually the Imperial Ballet School reopened amid greatly reduced monetary funds. After graduating with honors in 1921, Balanchine enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory in tandem with his corps de ballet duties at The State Academic Theatre for Opera and Ballet In 1922 when Balanchine was eighteen, he married Tamara Geva, a fifteen year old dancer. His studies at the conservatory included advanced piano, music theory, counterpoint, harmony, and composition. Balanchine graduated from the conservatory in 1923, and he was a member of the corps until 1924.
Balanchine, Tamara Geva, Alexandra Danilova, and Nicholas Efimov were granted permission to tour Western Europe in 1924. While performing in London, England, Serge Diaghilev asked the group to join his Ballets Russes, prompting the four to defect.
Ballets Russes
Diaghilev soon promoted Balanchine to ballet master of the company, and allowed him to develop his own choreography. Between 1924 and Diaghilev’s death in 1929, Balanchine created nine ballets, as well as smaller choreographies. Unfortunately, he also suffered a serious knee injury at this time, which limited his dancing and effectively ended his performance career. In 1926, Balanchine and Tamara Geva divorced. Shortly after, Balanchine commenced a relationship with dancer Alexandra Danilova which lasted a few years and was a “common law” marriage. Danilova is considered his second wife.
After Diaghilev’s death, the Ballets Russes fell into disarray. Balanchine began to stage dances for the Cochran Revues in London, and was retained by the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen as guest ballet master. He returned to the Ballets Russes when it settled in Monte Carlo, resuming his post as ballet master for the new Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, and choreographed three ballets: Cotillon, La Concurrence, and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme. His muse in Monte Carlo was the young Tamara Toumanova, one of the original “Baby Ballerinas”.
When René Blum passed control of the company to Colonel W. de Basil, Balanchine again left the Ballets Russes. This time he formed his own company, Les Ballets 1933, with the financial backing of Edward James and Diaghilev’s former secretary and companion Boris Kochno as an advisor. The company lasted only a couple of months in 1933, but in that time several new choreographies were conceived by Balanchine, including artistic collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Pavel Tchelitchew, Darius Milhaud, and Henri Sauget.
It was after a performance by Les Ballets 1933 that Lincoln Kirstein, an American arts patron with a dream of establishing a ballet company in the U.S., met and quickly persuaded Balanchine to move to the United States. By October of that year, Balanchine had landed overseas for the first time and launched his influence on the character of American dance.
America
Upon arriving in the United States, Balanchine insisted that his first project would be to establish a ballet school, and with the support of Lincoln Kirstein and Edward M.M. Warburg, the School of American Ballet opened its doors to students on January 2, 1934, less than 3 months after Balanchine arrived in the U.S. The students premiered Serenade at the Warburg’s summer estate later that year.
In 1935, a professional company was formed - the American Ballet. After failing to mount a tour, the company began performing at the Metropolitan Opera House. After being allowed to stage only two dance performances, Orfeo and Eurydice in 1936, and an evening of dance choreographed to the music of Igor Stravinsky in 1937, Balanchine moved the company to Hollywood in 1938. The company reconvened as the American Ballet Caravan and toured North and South America, although it too folded after several years.
Balanchine served as resident choreographer for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo from 1944 to 1946, but soon formed a new dance company - the Ballet Society -again with the help of Lincoln Kirstein. With the success of several performances, the company was offered the opportunity to work at New York City Center for Music and Drama as the resident company. With that arrangement in place, Ballet Society became the New York City Ballet in 1948.
Balanchine’s 1954 staging of The Nutcracker, performed every year in New York City during the Christmas season, is largely responsible for making the ballet a Christmas tradition in the United States.
In 1983, Balanchine died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease diagnosed only after his death. He first showed symptoms in 1978 when he began losing his balance while dancing. As the disease progressed his equilibrium, eyesight and hearing deteriorated. By 1982 he was incapacitated, and he died the following year at the age of 79.
George Balanchine received the Kennedy Center Honors Award in 1978, the first year the awards were given.
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| George Gershwin |
 GEORGE GERSHWIN - Jacob Gershowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York to Russian Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Morris (Moishe) Gershowitz, changed the family name to Gershwin sometime after immigrating from St. Petersburg, Russia.
George Gershwin was the second of four children. He first displayed interest in music at the age of ten, when he was intrigued by what he heard at a friend, Max Rosen’s, violin recital. Gershwin tried various piano teachers for two years, and then was introduced to Charles Hambitzer by Jack Miller, the pianist in the Beethoven Symphony Orchestra. Hambitzer taught George conventional piano technique, introduced him to music of the European classical tradition, and encouraged him to attend orchestral concerts.
His first job as a performer was as a “song plugger” for Remick’s, a publishing company on New York City’s Tin Pan Alley. His 1917 novelty rag “Rialto Ripples” was a commercial success, and in 1919 he scored his first big national hit with his song “Swanee.” In 1924, George and Ira collaborated on a musical comedy, Lady Be Good which included such future standards as “Fascinating Rhythm” and “Lady Be Good.”
This was followed by Oh, Kay! (1926), Funny Face in (1927), Strike Up the Band (1927 and 1930), Show Girl (1929), Girl Crazy (1930), which introduced the standard “I Got Rhythm,” and Of Thee I Sing (1931), the first musical comedy to win a Pulitzer Prize. In 1924, Gershwin composed his first major classical work, Rhapsody in Blue for orchestra and piano, which was orchestrated by Ferde Grofé and premièred with Paul Whiteman’s concert band in New York. It proved to be his most popular work.
Gershwin stayed in Paris for a short period, where he applied to study composition with Nadia Boulanger. While there, he wrote An American in Paris. Eventually he found the music scene in Paris supercilious, and returned to America. His most ambitious composition was Porgy and Bess (1935). the piece premièred in a Broadway theater and is now widely regarded as the most important American opera of the twentieth century. The action takes place in a black neighborhood in Charleston, South Carolina, and with the exception of several minor speaking roles, all of the characters are black. The music combines elements of popular music of the day, which was strongly influenced by black music, with techniques found in opera, such as recitative and leitmotifs.
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Robert Ashens is a dynamic conductor whose distinguished career as pianist and conductor has brought him to many world capitols. As Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of Eugene Opera he garnered tremendous critical acclaim for his productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia and especially his innovative Hansel and Gretel, creating an unusual realization with Toni Pimble and Eugene Ballet Company. He conducts Eugene Ballet’s The Nutcracker both at home and frequently on tour. The Maestro has appeared with Oregon Festival of American Music’s production of Anything Goes at the Hult Center; in Italy conducting Rigoletto for La Musica Lirica; he also led a cultural tour of Vienna in December of 2007. Maestro Ashens debuted as pianist with Portland Ballet in February and he returns to DaCorneto Opera (Chicago) in March to conduct La forza del destino.
Robert Schumann was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is one of the most famous Romantic composers of the 19th century. He had hoped to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. A hand injury forced him to focus his musical energies on composition. His published compositions were, until 1840, all for the piano; he later composed works for piano and orchestra, many lieder, four symphonies, an opera, and other orchestral, choral and chamber works. His writings about music appeared mostly in Die neue Zeitschrift für Musik, a Leipzig-based publication that he jointly founded.For the last two years of his life, after an attempted suicide, Schumann was confined to a mental institution. German Romantic composer, Robert Schumann
Former company dancer Jennifer McNamara in Courante a tribute to American dance pioneer Loie Fuller.The final performance of the season ends with Silk & Steel. The ballet is an open collaboration between artists. The ballet is about imagination and an atmosphere of celebration and free-association of ideas based on the strength and beauty of silk and steel, matching these mediums with the stamina and grace of dancers as silk and steel.
The ballet opens with a 14th century Istanpitta danced with silk banners of changing colors by the whole company followed by a lively Passo for four couples. The second movement has a Spanish flavor with various Folias introducing 3 men carrying precious bowls of oil in a ritual dance and two women with long silks trailing.
The third movement opens with a martial arts dance to a 13th century harp solo by six women with steel fans. Ms. Pimble read a description of an Italian renaissance festival in which dancers jumped from the parapets of a castle wall holding huge umbrellas which acted like parachutes. This inspired Dum pater with large silk covered steel umbrellas partnered by the men in the company. Recorders were a popular instrument of the medieval period and in Sancta Mater Graciae two dancers with steel rings perform followed by a pas de deux to an old English melody Robin is to the Greenwood gone.The fourth movement opens with a tribute to American modern dance pioneer, Loie Fuller, An early free dance practitioner; Fuller developed her own natural movement and improvisation techniques and was noted for her work with large silk costumes and pioneering lighting effects. La Sarabande is a pas de deux of courtly formality off-setting the extravagant visual effects of Courante. The final movement of the ballet references English Morris dancing, a form of folk dancing performed by groups of men with long poles and returns full circle to the silk banners of the opening movement danced by the full company.