NYCB Vol. 8 No. 7 - Western Symphony

Balanchine’s Western Symphony was choreographed with 4 movements—Allegro, Adagio, Scherzo, and Rondo—but Balanchine cut the 3rd movement around 1960. The 3rd movement, choreographed for Patricia Wilde, André Eglevsky is shown here in this footage which was filmed in Paris, 1956, during NYCB’s third European tour. Allegra and Robert Barnett are the principal dancers here.

Beginn at 18:00

Allegra Kent and Robert Barnett. Footage by the US Information Agency, 1956 via John Clifford’s YouTube channel.


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Balanchine on Western Symphony: “My idea in this ballet was to make a formal work that would derive its flavor from the informal America West, a ballet that would move within the framework of the classic school but in a new atmosphere. […] I wanted to do a ballet without a story in an unmistakably native American idiom. […] I told [Hershy] Kay that I wanted to try a symphonic American dance work which, by the impetus of indigenous melodies, would help me to use the universal language of the classic ballet in a fresh way. […] I arranged a series of dance ensembles that I hope have some of the sentiment and candor of the time and places where those tunes were first sung.” — Balanchine’s New Complete Stories of the Great Ballets, edited by Francis Mason

Melissa Hayden & Nicholas Magallanes. Photo by Fred Fehl, 1954. Harry Ransom Center