Living Legacies

New to the repertoire at the start of the season: Living Legacies brings together not only two pioneering choreographers—George Balanchine and Frederick Ashton— whose works remain “state-of-the-art” for every ballet company to this day and who had a decisive influence on the art and development of classical dance in the 20th century, but also extends into the present with Christopher Wheeldon, clearly drawing lines and building bridges to today.

George Balanchine intended his Divertimento No. 15 to be a tribute to the great composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Inspired by the clarity, versatility, and elegance that characterize the Austrian composer’s oeuvre, one of the choreographer’s most graceful ballets was born: “This unique Divertimento is probably the greatest of its kind. It shows Mozart at his best, endowing a familiar form of court music with warm dignity, playfulness, and delicate, lyrical beauty,” says Balanchine, allowing the movements in his choreography to follow the composition entirely in keeping with his credo, “See the music, hear the dance.” “In Balanchine’s interpretation of Mozart’s music, a genuine ‘kindred spirit’ between two great minds becomes palpable,” writes ballet critic Richard Buckle about the work, which premiered in 1956 with the New York City Ballet and Balanchine’s “favorite dancers.”

Christopher Wheeldon's Within the Golden Hour, which premiered in 2008 with the San Francisco Ballet, was originally inspired by the light and golden hues in Gustav Klimt’s paintings. Wheeldon also discovered the sensuality and shimmering quality that define Klimt’s art in the music of Ezio Bosso, which was supplemented for his creation with the Andante from Vivaldi’s Violin Concerto in B-flat major, and thus embarked on a choreographic journey, in which moments of fleeting beauty are placed at the center. Thus, the seven movements of the ballet “can be viewed as a series of small paintings or sketches inspired by the music”, Wheeldon describes his creation, which expands the classical repertoire of movements to include other dance forms, thereby evoking “a new, interesting perspective on a ballet step.”

Rhapsody is one of Frederick Ashton’s last works and was premiered in 1980 to mark the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth, “The Queen Mother,” in 1980. Ashton created it for the legendary dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, who performed as a guest dancer with the Royal Ballet in London alongside Principal Dancer Lesley Collier. Rhapsody combines the brilliance of Russian technique with the lyricism of the English style—entirely in the spirit of Ashton. Set to Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, a non-narrative yet powerfully expressive ballet unfolds. The dancer’s explosive leaps and whirling turns meet the ballerina’s feather-light precision and gracefulof the ballerina. This ballet is a brilliant tribute to Ashton’s incomparable and influential style as well as his extraordinary career­ry: “A timeless masterpiece of classicism and radiant artistic virtuosity.”

With Living Legacies, another production is being added to the repertoire, which brings ballet director Alessandra Ferri’s vision to life and anchors classical dance in the present: “It belongs to us. I understand its depth, much like classical music: It never goes out of style because it is an extraordinary art form. Of course, new works and new forms are emerging today—and that is important and wonderful— but classical music is our identity.”

“And I stand by this identity. The audience that comes to our performances expect ballet, and the dancers—who have trained their whole lives for this—want to dance exactly that. It’s in their DNA. We are a classical company and, at the same time, often open to multifaceted approaches to this art form. We have the oppo­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther de­vel­op clas­sical bal­let, to find new ways of nar­rati­ng and forms of ex­pres­sion, without denying its origins.”