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3 Introduction to Part 1 As a young dancer, I had the need to notate Balanchine’s classes and corrections in order to better assimilate, remember, and understand what he wanted us to achieve. I have collected these lessons into a manuscript because I believe that these notes should not be lost but could be used as one more voice attesting to how Balanchine enriched and changed the world of dance. I write what I experienced. Mr. Balanchine gave different corrections to different dancers depending on what he wanted to accomplish with them. It seems to me that there are few absolutes. Balanchine was famous for changing his choreography depending on the dancers he was working with. Some of his concepts, however, remain unchanged over the years. In 1949 and 1950, when I first attempted to write down Balanchine’s classes , I had no idea that Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine had opened the School of American Ballet in 1934 and had created the American Ballet in 1936 and Ballet Caravan in 1941. Nor did I know that Balanchine had worked in Hollywood and on Broadway, let alone what he had done in Europe. I danced in the first Ballet Society performance of the Spellbound Child, on November 20, 1946, and in several other Ballet Society performances. However, at this time the students rarely saw Balanchine at the school and knew little about him. I remember being in the advanced class, which was held, as it is today , at 10:30 am. The students heard that Balanchine was to teach a week of master classes, to be scheduled at the same time as ours. This gave us the opportunity to observe who was in the class, and since Balanchine did not teach very often at this time, this was truly a special occasion. It seemed that the whole Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo was there. Alexandra Danilova, its ballerina, was wearing a lovely flowered tunic and matching head scarf. Tamara Toumanova arrived with her mother, both all in black. Vera Nemtchinova, Anatole Oboukhoff’s wife, was taking class dressed all in white, and the wonderful Marie Jeanne, on whom Balanchine had set the original Concerto Barocco, was there as well. The room was filled with dancers from all over the world. To us as young dancers this was a great inspiration and certainly ample proof that this quiet, elusive man had a remarkable magnetism which lured all these dancers to him. 4 / Balanchine the Teacher, Part 1 I believe that every dancer who studied under Balanchine perceived his work from his or her own perspective. I certainly did. Nonetheless, I have made every effort to present these classes as clearly and objectively as possible . In going over my notes it became apparent to me that we all came to Balanchine with our own “baggage,” so to speak. We all had family, heritage, ballet teachers, and many influences, as well as our individual body types. Consequently, we each heard what he had to say in a slightly different way. I did not have a perfect instrument, so I tried to absorb as much as I could of what Balanchine taught. However, I did have a love and passion for dance that was shared by many of my generation. Mr. Balanchine, especially in those years, never raised his voice. He never showed any great emotion or lost his temper. His main tool was his mischievous humor and sarcasm. All he had to do was level me with his eyes and say, “No, dear, wrong!” for me to wish that a trapdoor would open and make me disappear. So we students really listened when Balanchine’s voice took on an edge of anger or disdain as he talked about style. He would be specific: “Style is not something you put on like a costume over technique.” Style was dancing the given movement to a given count, fully and absolutely correctly. By fully, I mean totally. All we seemed to hear was “bigger,” “fuller,” “pow,” “explode.” He did not want us to even consider personalizing our response to the music to which we were dancing. He said, “No, dear, don’t listen. Just count!” Years later he said, “Don’t count. Listen to the music !” He knew that by then he had finally broken the old-fashioned form of dancing from pose to pose. He had eliminated the static, picture-perfect romantic look of dance. The more his dancers danced bigger and faster, the...

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