About the Author: Suzanne Wagner
Balanchine – His Gifts to Dance and Music
Balanchine saw his dancers and his ballets as butterflies. I find that to be an accurate metaphor for the lives of ballet dancers and the lives of the many ballets in this world that have been created.
Just like dancers, some butterflies last for a short time and some for a much longer period.
In the Hopi tradition the sacred Butterfly Dance is always danced by the oldest women in the tribe. It is the metaphor that as we age, we can become like a butterfly, more beautiful and graceful.
Very often, the dancers trained in the Balanchine style, were released into the light of the world stages with an explosion of passion, power, speed and quickness that have electrified audiences for the past 70 plus years.
Some of those dancers have lasted only a short time. A butterfly attracted to the flame of the Balanchine style. A life short, brilliant, and beyond compare. Others have lasted longer than one season. Much like some of his ballets … as well.
Some souls carry the energy of a cultural time and place. Those dancers become the cornerstones of companies, just as certain classical ballets become the bread and butter for Ballet Companies budgets for a season. The best example is Nutcracker as a seasonal staple of almost all American Ballet Companies.
Specific dancers hold a special place in time for cities, ballet companies, and they can hold the emotional and spiritual expressions of the culture in which they have evolved. They become the archetype of a time and place. They become the celebrated spiritual identity of a city and a time.
I have seen dancers come onto the stage and electrify audiences with a fire and a passion that has taken my breath away. Only to then witness them … burn out like a beautiful butterfly to a flame in a short period of time.
But their time in that limelight was spectacular and their movements and moments on stage still electrify my mind and they continue to live on in the memories of many and I believe the etheric realms of other dimensions.
I have seen dancers who had the power to last the tests of time, they managed to recover from injuries, the onslaught of powerful changes in directorships, and the temperamental challenges of choreographers. Through it all, they somehow manage to shine a very bright light through the moments where they became the powerful beacon of hope to audiences, the constant artistic light of hope in a world in constant change, and the embodiment of some very dark moments when it seemed as if their fragile artistic light might go out.
Certain ballets require a type of artistic devotion to a style and a specific type of training. There are requirements that allow for some types of ballets to remain viable in the ever-changing artistic world of dance.
The Russians have been the cornerstones to the classical and romantic ballets, as their training and teaching keeps these styles alive and allow them to continue to mature as the skills of dancers have also advanced.
America has generated many new forms of ballets with styles that have moved from Broadway to Modern, Balanchine to Caniparoli.
Every dancer knows the names of the powerful Classical Ballets that make up the international repertoire of the large ballet companies for the last hundred plus years.
It is easy to use the butterfly metaphor as the ephemeral archetype of a ballet dancer.
Ballet dancers are forever reaching for the elusive illusion of flight, and our leaps are designed to appear as if we do not touch the ground but merely skim over the earth. We seek to become the qualities of water, light, air, fire, earth, and … flowers. We are the embodiment of all these elements without the need to actually touch them.
We are asked to move light like a feather and to land as softly as a snowflake in the silence of a dark winter night.
The Romantic Ballets were all about women magically being turned into Swans, Sylphs, Willis, Fairy’s, and of course Butterflies.
Balanchine came from the very classical Russian Imperial tradition that shaped these great ballets into the classics that continue to exist today.
But once he came to America, he was fascinated by the 20th century’s lures for all things … fresh and new.
His powerful connection to music and the new and modern sounds that were coming out because of powerful new composers, combined within his genius, and he became the choreographer that was going to shape the modernism movement in ballet in America.
He saw the body as something to be stretched and molded by the shapes and forms of this new music. His choreography was daring in how dynamic it was and he was interested in exploring the full ranges of music and emotions as it moved through a dancer’s body.
Just as Aleister Crowley added depth and substance to the “Spiritual movement in the 20th Century, Balanchine gave dancers those same opportunities through dance.
To dance Balanchine ballets was a spiritual experience that came from a very different source. His movements were exhilarating and exciting. They were wild and unusual. His style demanded things of a dancer that had previously been untouched.
While classical ballets moved from the theme of a happy ending and the metaphor where love could conquer all. Balanchine expressed through movement the tortured emotions of humanity and the explosive raptures of passions that (until then) had been kept subdued. Instead of the caricature of facial expression and pantomime showing the emotional content in a moment. Balanchine used the entire body to show the emotion and feeling that was striving to be expressed through the choreography.
He exaggerated the pushing and pulling of bodies through time, space, and karma. And his movements celebrated those struggles.
Balanchine seemed to use dancers as a laboratory and a library for the next evolution of dance and movement. They tested the body, mind, and spirit of a dancer. His choreography unleashed those places within that desired expression in the modern world.
He seemed inspired by specific dancers and liked to use their look and qualities to create innovations in movement inspired by the connection between the dancer and the music. To him, the dancer was an extension of that music and he embraced that the movement of bodies gave those musical sounds a form of amplification to those styles and expressions that those bodies were capable of at those times.
Within me, I was a dancer that felt caught between the innocence that needed expression through the classical ballets and the passionate desire to be unleashed and allowed to find freedom in these new forms of movement.
In my heart, I longed for the energy and qualities of expressive movement that the Neo-Classical style was inspiring within by being. And yet, I was to find much solace and self-awareness in the exploration of movement that the classical styles would require from my body.
I see the School of American Ballet as a process to develop dancers and artists that were to become the seeds that spread out from the sunflower of Balanchine’s heart and his legacy and intention to transform dance into something very new, innovative, and exciting for the dancers.
What many do not know was that his dancers became teachers in many companies, who also became directors of many companies throughout the world. When he was alive, he trusted … that those dancers would only ask for the ballets from him that they believed their dancers could do well and do justice too.
Most do know that (while he was alive) he never asked a penny for his ballets. He understood the power that these ballets had over the hearts and education of classical dance. In my mind it was his gift to all dancers.
Because of him and his methods, America has joined the ranks of being a cornerstone for Neo-classical ballet, and Balanchine’s influence now impacts all the great ballet companies of the world.
Those seeds continue to spread in powerful ways throughout the world, generating new breeds of dancers, artists, and choreographers.
His butterflies continue to inspire and reach new heights through his School. SAB continues in this tradition, and through the many dancers that have learned and loved his ballets.
They say a legacy never dies.
Balanchine clearly was one.
But I do not believe that this was his agenda.
I believe he simply was inspired by music, dance, dancers, and movement to discover what might be the next evolutionary steps that can spark passionate expressions and move humanity into bigger and vaster manifestations of emotional interpretation.
I am grateful to be one of those seeds, one of his butterflies, and a part of his legacy, in my own way.
~Suzanne Wagner~
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