Serenade

Music

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(Serenade in C for string orchestra, Op. 48, 1880)

Choreography

George Balanchine © The George Balanchine Trust

Staging

Francia Russell

Costume Design

Karinska

Lighting Design

Randall G. Chiarelli

Duration

35 minutes

Cast

26 dancers

Premiere

June 10, 1934
School of American Ballet (White Plains, New York)

March 1, 1935
American Ballet (New York, New York)

PNB Premiere

September 29, 1978

calligraphic border by ProSymbols from Noun Project (CC BY 3.0)

Choreographed originally in 1934 for students at the recently founded School of American Ballet, Serenade is the very first work George Balanchine created for American dancers. The remarkable story of its composition has often been told. Deciding after class one day that “the best way to make students aware of stage technique was to give them something new to dance,” Balanchine began to choreograph a new work, to Tchaikovsky’s lush Serenade in C for string orchestra, improvising with whatever students were available—seventeen that first day, varying numbers on succeeding days, eventually a few men; and incorporating chance happenings, such as a dancer’s fall or late arrival, into the overall design of the piece. Making a virtue of his students’ technical limitations and lack of finesse, he also contrived to build simple movements into consequential stage events, to give unprecedented importance to the ensemble rather than to individuals, and to infuse the whole with a freshness and candor that have struck many viewers as the first expression of a distinctively American style.

Although Balanchine continued to revise Serenade for many years as he adapted it to the developing abilities of his dancers, the ballet has always retained the unique—even idiosyncratic—character that was determined by those early circumstances. Romantic in form and feeling, it also has always tantalized audiences with its hints of a mysterious narrative, though Balanchine consistently refused to define what that narrative might be. Instead, he insisted that because Tchaikovsky’s score “has in its danceable four movements different qualities suggestive of different emotions and human situations,” a “plot” seems to emerge that is “many things to many listeners to the music, and many things to many people who see the ballet.”

Long considered the “signature piece” of New York City Ballet, Serenade now belongs to the repertory of companies around the world. In PNB’s repertory since 1978, it was one of the first Balanchine ballets that Francia Russell staged for the young Company. Now decades old, Serenade still retains what dance writer Doris Hering once called “the dew of discovery…glistening upon it.” Not surprisingly, it is loved by audiences and dancers alike.

Notes by Jeanie Thomas, edited by Doug Fullington, 2009.

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.

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.