Program Notes

World Premiere

Music: Joby Talbot
Choreography: Christopher Wheeldon
Costume Design: Holly Hynes

Agon

Music: Igor Stravinsky (1953–1956)
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust
Staging: Francia Russell
Lighting Design: Randall G. Chiarelli
Duration: 28 minutes
Premiere: December 1, 1957; New York City Ballet
Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere: March 30, 1993

According to Igor Stravinsky, his starting point for Agon was a 17th-century manual of French court dances, a fact that is reflected in the headings to various sections of the score—sarabande, gaillard, bransle—and in a scattering of baroque steps and arm movements that Balanchine worked into his choreography. But, as the great critic Edwin Denby commented aptly after attending the premiere in 1957, the work “recalls court dance as much as a cubist still life recalls a pipe or guitar.”

For Agon is, in Balanchine’s own words, “the quintessential contemporary ballet.” In it, the great collaboration between himself and Stravinsky that had begun in 1928 with Apollo entered a breathtakingly new phase. Stravinsky’s music, especially the neo-classicism of his middle years, had always appealed to Balanchine, whose affinity for its rhythmic ingenuity, inspired orchestral color and flawless architecture was that of a kindred spirit. But in Agon, which Balanchine commissioned for New York City Ballet in the 1950s, Stravinsky, who was then more than seventy years old, made clear the recent and radical influence on his work of Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone, serial method. Declaring that “music like this has not been heard before,” Balanchine took up the challenge of this fiendishly—and to him, delectably—difficult score and choreographed a work that, matching the music in complexity and inventiveness, redefined ballet for our time.

Recommended Listening:
A Balanchine Album, New York City Ballet Orchestra/Robert Irving, Nonesuch 79135

Notes by Jeanie Thomas; edited by Doug Fullington, 2008.

Diamonds

Music: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Symphony No. 3 in D major, Op. 29, 1875, first movement omitted)
Choreography: George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust
Staging: Elyse Borne
Costume Design: Karinska
Lighting Design: Mark Stanley
Duration: 31 minutes
Premiere: April 13, 1967; New York City Ballet
Pacific Northwest Ballet Premiere: June 1, 2006

Diamonds is George Balanchine’s homage to his native St. Petersburg, Russia. The ballet pays homage to Balanchine’s youth: the grandeur of St. Petersburg, the Maryinsky Theater, and the Imperial Ballet, where Balanchine trained. Echoes of Petipa’s Swan Lake and Raymonda abound, and the centerpiece of the ballet is an intimate pas de deux, potent in its chivalrous reserve, for the ballerina and her cavalier. At its end, the entire cast joins the principal couple for a gloriously spirited polonaise.

Diamonds is the third and final ballet of Balanchine’s Jewels. At its New York City Ballet premiere in 1967, Jewels was touted as the first “plotless full-length ballet.” The story goes that Balanchine was inspired to create the ballet after a visit to the New York jeweler Claude Arpels of Van Cleef and Arpels. While each of its three ballets—Emeralds, Rubies, and Diamonds—may not follow any definitive narrative, like real gems themselves, each can be viewed in multiple ways and from a variety of angles. The great American dance critic, Arlene Croce, described Jewels as “unsurpassed as a Balanchine primer, incorporating in a single evening every important article of faith to which this choreographer subscribed and a burst of heresy, too.” Balanchine himself, in his typical noncommittal way, stated, “Of course, I have always liked jewels; after all, I am an Oriental, from Georgia in the Caucasus. I like the color of gems, the beauty of stones, and it was wonderful to see how our costume workshop, under Karinska’s direction, came so close to the quality of real stones (which were of course too heavy for the dancers to wear!).”

Recommended Listening: 
Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 3, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra/Mariss Jansons, Chandos

Notes by Doug Fullington.