Photo by Radford Bascome, 1954. From Allegra Kent's autobiography Once A Dancer: "'Did you hear that?' Mr. B. imitated a trumpet and repeated a voice we just heard in the piano score. I nodded my head. 'Allegra, when that starts, open your arms slowly and start to sit.' Now the men received their instructions. 'Make a chair for her with your hands.' Mr. B. continued to surprise us. "I was to be like an elastic icon, ever unattainable, standing on the shoulders of two of the m

Jacques d'Amboise: "To this day, I consider Todd Bolender among the greatest dance artists I've ever seen on the stage, not just for The Four Temperaments, but in every role I saw him perform. His genius was in giving full value to every gesture of the dance, as if it were the only movement he would ever make, the beginning and end of the universe. Each movement, Todd imbued with drama and theater, as if the music and gestures contained dialogue, silent words holding secrets

The original costumes for The Four Temperaments did not last long. The ballet premiered in 1946 and the costumes were discarded in 1951. Today the ballet is performed in black leotard and skin-toned tights. In this post I have gathered all of the photos I can find of the original costumes in order of appearance in the ballet, listed with the original principals dancers of each section. "Tchelitchev suggested Kurt Seligmann, an erudite painter with a big library of alchemy and

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

“Out of the darkness a beautiful young girl in white appears aloft, carried by a team of four men and a shadowy fifth precedes the...

The New York City Ballet's debut season in the fall of 1948 (held at New York City Center) was somewhat of an experiment. The first...