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Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient George Balanchine
GEORGE BALANCHINE
Awarded by
President Ronald Reagan
February 23, 1983
The genius of George Balanchine has enriched the lives of all Americans who love the dance. Since he arrived in America as a young man in 1933, he has entertained and inspired millions with his stage and film choreography. Major among his greatest contributions as a ballet master are the founding of the first American classical ballet company, the great New York City Ballet, and the School of American Ballet. Throughout his career Mr. Balanchine has entertained, captivated and amazed our diverse population, lifting our spirits and broadening our horizons through his talent and art.
(1904-1983)
Choreographer and founder-director of the New York City Ballet. Born in St. Petersburg and a graduate of the former Imperial Theatrical School, Balanchine (originally Georgi Balanchivadze) created his first dances in the experimentalist era that followed the Russian Revolution. From the first, he was recognized as a major talent, provocative and avant-garde in his reworking of classical movement. In 1924, he left Russia permanently and in the next decade choreographed for émigré companies, including Diaghilev's famed Ballets Russes and his own Les Ballets 1933.
In 1934, at the invitation of Lincoln Kirstein, the department store heir and jack-of-all-arts who now became his indefatigable patron, Balanchine settled in the United States. Initially, their efforts to establish a permanent American company met with little success, although the School of American Ballet, founded soon after Balanchine's arrival, survived to become the country's most influential training academy, which it remains today. The organization of the Ballet Society in 1946 and, two years later, of the New York City Ballet brought a happy reversal of fortune. With a permanent company at his disposal, Balanchine now embarked on the adventure that secured his position as the foremost choreographer of twentieth-century ballet.
The Balanchine style that emerged in the 1940s and 1950s rested firmly on classical technique, even as it wed this technique to distinctly modernist concerns. Although Balanchine choreographed a number of story ballets (his 1954 Nutcracker started the rage for this Christmas entertainment), his greatest works dispensed with narrative and scenery. Abstract, embedding their themes in daring and original images, they insisted on the primacy of movement in the creation of dance meaning. Thus, in Theme and Variations (1947), Symphony in C (1948), and Gounod Symphony (1958), he honored classical style by transforming it: speeding it up, complicating it, ridding it of inessentials. Balanchine's "leotard" ballets, so-called because the dancers wore practice clothes, proved even more revolutionary. Stark, anguished, set to music by Hindemith, Stravinsky, and Webern, they charted new territory in their exploration of sexuality. Created in the postwar years, The Four Temperaments (1946), Agon (1957), and Episodes (1959) remain powerful statements of modernity.
Balanchine's influence over American ballet has been immense. Under his direction, the New York City Ballet became a great international company. He gave his works freely to American regional companies, especially those directed by former NYCB dancers, thereby creating a body of work analogous to a national repertory. He left a definitive mark on ballet technique, stressing speed and definition, especially in the use of the legs and feet, characteristics now associated with American ballet generally. "Ballet is woman," he was fond of saying, and in countless roles, he displayed his mastery of the female dance and his ability to develop female talent, above all the slim, musical, technically accomplished "Balanchine ballerina." He formed many outstanding dancers, including Lew Christensen, Maria Tallchief, Tanaquil LeClerq, Melissa Hayden, Edward Villella, Allegra Kent, Jacques D'Amboise, Gelsey Kirkland, Merrill Ashley, and Suzanne Farrell, regarded by many as his last and greatest muse.
Bibliography:
Lincoln Kirstein, The New York City Ballet (1973); Bernard Taper, Balanchine: A Biography, rev. ed. (1984).
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Medal History
