Balanchine on Haieff Divertimento: “The piece was composed originally for piano, which was the form in which I first heard Haieff play it, though it had already been performed as an orchestral suite. I liked it very much when I heard it the first time, but I didn’t at first think of it as music for a ballet. I soon found I couldn’t get the piece out of my head; within a week Divertimento became a ballet.”
—Balanchine s New Complete Stories of the Great Ballets (affiliate link)
Maria Tallchief and Francisco Moncion. Photo by George Platt Lynes, 1947.
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