Oct 7, 20232 min read

NYCB Vol. 8 No. 17 - Piano Concerto No. 2

'Ballet Imperial' was choreographed in 1941 for American Ballet Caravan's South American tour. It was thought that a classical ballet needed to be presented in addition to the modern works. However, Balanchine "was not interested in reviving the old classical tradition, but in revitalizing it (and how could he bring from America a ballet with kings and queens?). Hence, his homage to the old by means of the new."

—Nancy Reynolds in Repertory in Review (affiliate link)

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Ballet Imperial [now called Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2] is a contemporary tribute to Petipa, 'the father of the classic ballet,' and to Tchaikovsky, his greatest composer.

"Great ballets of the past are directly associated with great composer of the past. The Sleeping Beauty, the masterwork of the great nineteenth-century choreographer Marius Petipa, survives not only for its dancing, but also for its music. Petipa created more than sixty full-length ballets during a half century of work as ballet master at the Imperial Russian Theatre. Few of these works are performed today. This is not because the dancing in these ballets was not good; it is because their music was not good enough to inspire the dancing to new heights. Audiences have wished to forget the bad music and, consequently, the dances that went with it."

—Balanchine's New Complete Stories of the Great Ballets edited by Francis Mason (affiliate link)

(top left) Mary Ellen Moylan and Nicholas Magallanes for Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.

Photo by Baron, 1945

(top right) Marie-Jeanne and William Dollar. Photo by Baron, 1941

(bottom left) Marie-Jeanne with American Ballet Caravan in South America. Photo by Schulman, 1941.

(bottom right) Margot Fonteyn and Balanchine at the Sadler's Wells Ballet. Photo by Baron, 1950.

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"Mr. B thought I had a good head for crowns [...] A revival of Ballet Imperial (now called Piano Concerto no. 2), a big Balanchine ballet originally made in 1941 for Ballet Caravan, a predecessor of the New York City Ballet, was scheduled to be danced for the first time by the company in October of 1964. Our move into the State Theater enabled Balanchine to do what he had always wanted to do--big productions of ballets that would have looked cramped on the stage at City Center. [...]

"It was being restaged by Frederic Franklin, who had danced it in the Ballet Russe, and it required many hours of arduous rehearsal; it was the most technically difficult ballet I had ever learned as well as the longest."

—Holding on to the Air by Suzanne Farrell (affiliate link)