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Allegro Brillante

Music

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 75, 1892 [unfinished])

Choreography

George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust

Staging

Peter Boal (2022)
Francia Russell (1979)
Melissa Hayden (1977)

Costume Design

Mark Zappone (1979)
Karinska (1977)

Lighting Design

Randall G. Chiarelli

Duration

18 minutes

Cast

10 dancers

Premiere

March 1, 1956
New York City Ballet

PNB Premiere

February 10, 1977; restaged February 28, 1979 (Everett, Washington)

The works of George Balanchine performed by Pacific Northwest Ballet are made possible in part by The Louise Nadeau Endowed Fund.

George Balanchine’s Allegro Brillante is danced to Tchaikovsky’s unfinished third piano concerto, the last music he composed before his death. In the sweeping style of the music, the choreography alternates between fast-moving ensemble passages and contrasting sections of peaceful lyricism. Although Allegro Brillante was choreographed as a last-minute replacement for a canceled work, Balanchine claimed the ballet “contains everything I know about classical ballet—in thirteen minutes.” (The ballet’s current running time is slightly longer, but it certainly reflects the breadth and wealth of Balanchine’s encyclopedic knowledge of the art form.)

Allegro Brillante was first presented by Pacific Northwest Dance Ballet Company in 1977 in a staging by Melissa Hayden. The ballet was restaged for the Company by Francia Russell in 1979 and by Peter Boal, to open Pacific Northwest Ballet’s 50th anniversary season, in 2022.

Notes by Jeanie Thomas; edited/updated by Doug Fullington.

Artist Biographies

George Balanchine

Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, George Balanchine (1904-1983) is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. He came to the United States in late 1933, at the age of 29, accepting the invitation of the young American arts patron Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996), whose great passions included the dream of creating a ballet company in America. At Balanchine’s behest, the School of American Ballet was founded in 1934, the first product of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration. Several ballet companies directed by the two were created and dissolved in the years that followed, while Balanchine found other outlets for his choreography. Eventually, with a performance on October 11, 1948, New York City Ballet was born. Balanchine served as its ballet master and principal choreographer from 1948 until his death in 1983.

Balanchine’s more than 400 dance works include Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), Le Palais de Cristal, later renamed Symphony in C (1947), Orpheus (1948), The Nutcracker (1954), Agon (1957), Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972), Vienna Waltzes (1977), Ballo della Regina (1978), and Mozartiana (1981). His final ballet, a new version of Stravinsky’s Variations for Orchestra, was created in 1982. He also choreographed for films, operas, revues, and musicals. Among his best-known dances for the stage is Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, originally created for Broadway’s On Your Toes (1936). The musical was later made into a movie.

A major artistic figure of the twentieth century, Balanchine revolutionized the look of classical ballet. Taking classicism as his base, he heightened, quickened, expanded, streamlined, and even inverted the fundamentals of the 400-year-old language of academic dance. This had an inestimable influence on the growth of dance in America. Although at first his style seemed particularly suited to the energy and speed of American dancers, especially those he trained, his ballets are now performed by all the major classical ballet companies throughout the world.

Reprinted by permission of The George Balanchine Foundation.

Mark Zappone

Mark Zappone served Pacific Northwest Ballet from 1983 to 1988 as costume designer, shop supervisor, and wardrobe master. He then moved to Monte Carlo, where he managed costume shops for Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo and Le Cabaret de Monte-Carlo, continuing on to Switzerland and Amsterdam with Holiday on Ice. Mr. Zappone has collaborated with many renowned choreographers and designers, including Twyla Tharp, Christopher Wheeldon, and Yuri Possokhov, among others. In addition to his many ballets for PNB, Mr. Zappone has designed costumes for numerous dance companies worldwide.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) studied at the Conservatory in St. Petersburg, where George Balanchine later studied piano in addition to his studies in dance. Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular and influential of all romantic composers. His work is expressive, melodic, and grand in scale, characterized by rich orchestrations. His output was prodigious and included chamber works, symphonies, concerti for various instruments, operas, and works for the piano. His works for the ballet include Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker, the latter two composed in close collaboration with choreographer Marius Petipa.

Balanchine had a special affinity for Tchaikovsky. “In everything that I did to Tchaikovsky’s music,” he told an interviewer, “I sensed his help. It wasn’t real conversation. But when I was working and saw that something was coming of it, I felt that it was Tchaikovsky who had helped me.”

Randall G. Chiarelli

Randall G. Chiarelli (1949-2024) devoted his career to lighting for dance, much of it at Pacific Northwest Ballet, and also for American Ballet Theatre, Royal New Zealand Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Houston Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, among others. His many collaborators included choreographers Donald Byrd, Mark Dendy, Ronald Hynd, Kent Stowell, Susan Stroman, and Christopher Wheeldon. Chiarelli graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in painting and sculpture.