George Balanchine's Passion For Ballet

George Balanchine born at St. Petersburg, Russia in 1904 as Giorgi Balanchivadze to a Georgian father and a Russian mother who largely influenced the direction he took in life because they played a crucial role in helping him realize his passion for ballet. His father was a prominent Georgian composer, Meliton Balanchivadze who was one of the creators of the famous Georgian Opera whereas his mother was a Russian ballet professional.

In his childhood, George Balanchine had no interest in ballet, but his mother had a strong passion for the arts and made the young Giorgi audition with his sister, who had a passion for ballet. Based on that audition in 1913 at the tender age of nine, Balanchine got into the Imperial Ballet School, best school
Diaghilev encouraged to a considerable extent his choreography. Between 1924 and the time of Diaghilev's death in 1929, Balanchine came up with nine ballets, as well as some other lesser works. During these years, he worked with cardinal composers, such as Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Claude Debussy, Erik Satie and Ravel, and Famous artists who were in charge of designing sets and costumes, such as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, creating new works that integrated all the arts. Among his new works, in Paris, 1928, Balanchine staged the premiere Apollon musagète (Apollo and the muses) in a successful collaboration with Stravinsky. It turned out to be one of the most innovative ballets combining a classical ballet and a classical Greek myth and images with jazz movement incorporated. He described this as the turning point of his
With the primary goal of setting up a ballet company in the United States, he met with and convinced Balanchine to relocate there with his assistance. Kirstein had brought Balanchine to New York by October that year, where he would begin influencing the character, coaching and skill of American ballet and dance. Clearly Balanchine was well on his way to curving out a thrilling destiny for himself.

Despite Balanchine having been persuaded to move to the United States, he had a mindset of his own. He insisted that his first project would be to set up a ballet school, because he wanted to mould dancers who had the strong skill and style he wanted. Compared to his classical training, he thought they were incapable of dancing as well as expected. With assistance from Lincoln Kirstein and Edward M.M. Warburg, the prestigious School of American Ballet opened its doors to students on January 2, 1934 which was less than three months after his arrival in the