Photo by Paul Kolnik
I know, that title sounds like a Lana Del Rey spoof! But I am bummed because the NYCB winter season opened this week with Balanchine’s Serenade, one of my favorite ballets, and I could not participate. My injury took a little longer than anticipated (ugh, when doesn’t that happen?) and I do not return to the stage until next week when I debut as the Theme couple in Robbins’s Goldberg Variations. At least there is the comfort that Serenade will be back. Like death and taxes, Balanchine’s signature works--Serenade, Symphony in C, Agon, Concerto Barocco and some others—are perennials in our rep. In fact, all of those ballets are being performed in the first few weeks of the season, and three of them were grouped together opening night! The first few weeks of programming for this season are incredible, and I would have been on every night. I’m sad to miss all of it, of course, but especially Serenade. It is the first ballet that Balanchine made in America, and it feels a priori in every way. I wouldn’t mind if it opened every season!
Serenade begins in a calming blue darkness with seventeen women standing still, their right arms raised to shield their faces from what feels like moonlight. When Tchaikovsky’s opening musical phrase repeats they slowly move their arms in unison until their parallel feet snap to first position. Then, with their arms opened wide they arch backwards to the sky as the last chord trails off into silence. It is a balletic hosanna. From there the music picks up and the women begin to bend and shape themselves into little floral-patterned quartets (your math is correct, one girl simply runs off into the wings for much of the piece) and the stage becomes a swirling sea of blue tulle. But that tranquil, evanescent opening is so spiritually charged that it never fails to awe me.
It is roughly two minutes long and it summarizes the whole ballet—and also the entirety of human experience! The women’s arms float effortlessly, but the path they trace is heavy with meaning:
Serenade begins in a calming blue darkness with seventeen women standing still, their right arms raised to shield their faces from what feels like moonlight. When Tchaikovsky’s opening musical phrase repeats they slowly move their arms in unison until their parallel feet snap to first position. Then, with their arms opened wide they arch backwards to the sky as the last chord trails off into silence. It is a balletic hosanna. From there the music picks up and the women begin to bend and shape themselves into little floral-patterned quartets (your math is correct, one girl simply runs off into the wings for much of the piece) and the stage becomes a swirling sea of blue tulle. But that tranquil, evanescent opening is so spiritually charged that it never fails to awe me.
It is roughly two minutes long and it summarizes the whole ballet—and also the entirety of human experience! The women’s arms float effortlessly, but the path they trace is heavy with meaning:
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