Elisha C. Keeler Square dance calling was in Elisha’s blood. His father, Thaddeus Keeler, farmer, carpenter and sawyer, was a well known...

Nicholas Magallanes and Patricia Wilde. Photo by Martha Swope, 1957. "Last night at the City Center the New York City Ballet presented its first new work, and the hitherto sluggish young season came to life with a bang. The work in question was George Balanchine's "Square Dance" and it is a gem. "The set is just a bare hall such as usually houses square dancing, and on a dais sits a band of fiddlers in shirt-sleeves. Below them is caller (a famous one he is, named Elisha C. K

Counting down 50 NYCB Nutcrackers this year with stories from NYCB dancers past and present! If you recall earlier this season I met an...

For a ballet that turns 90 this Monday (June 10th), Serenade has endured it fair share of audiences and critics hypothesizing and...

“On closing night, August 19, the company had a full house despite the heat, and an enthusiastic and demonstrative audience. It was a...

“From the sophisticated audience of London balletomanes, accustomed to the polished perfection of the famous Sadler’s Wells troupe, the...

(4/50) You may (or may not) know that Janet Reed danced lead Marzipan in 1954 when Balanchine's Nutcracker premiered...but she wasn't the...

On October 11, 1948, New York City Ballet gave its first official performance at the City Center Theater. The program was all Balanchine....

When Square Dance was choreographed in 1957, the cast included popular square dance caller, Elisha Keeler. The ballet featured his whitty...

(3/6) Balanchine on the idea that his ballets are abstract: “No piece of music, no dance can in itself be abstract. You hear a physical...

(1/6) “Ballet began when Terpsichore touched Apollo’s finger, as on the Sistine ceiling God touches Adam’s, and inspired a pas de deux in...

Tonight we begin again where it all began: Serenade, Balanchine’s first work in America (1934). With tonight’s performance of Serenade,...