Edwin Denby: "The Ballet Society, New York's new subscription organization for producing ballet and opera, opened with startling brilliance on November 20, presenting to its subscribers Ravel's one-act opera The Spellbound Child, and a new Balanchine ballet, The Four Temperaments. "The audience, an experienced one, welcomed the executants and welcomed The Four Temperaments in particular as a novelty of extraordinary fascination and power. In its flavor The Four Temperaments

Wilhelmina Frankfurt & David Richardson. Photo by Martha Swope, 1976. NYPL In 1976 at the Maurice Ravel Festival, Balanchine premiered the ballet, “Le Tombeau de Couperin.” Anna Kisselgoff declared, this ballet was, “was the masterpiece of the [Ravel] Festival, a ballet that deserves to endure with the best of the Balanchine repertory and one whose creative and intellectual underpinnings are first-rate. “In ‘Le Tombeau de Couperin,’ Mr. Balanchine has used the 18th-century c

Photo by Martha Swope [44/50] Counting down 50 NYCB Nutcrackers this year with stories from NYCB dancers past and present! Today we hear...

[46/50] “Little Miss Bethune, incidentally, gave up a good job in Broadway’s ‘The Most Happy Fella’ in order to appear as Clara. Her...

[3/50] Marian Horosko on being Frau Stahlbaum in the early years of the Nutcracker: “In the first or second Nutcracker season at City...

(1/2) For the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, Balanchine and Robbins co-choreographed a production of Pulcinella which was admittedly...