George Balanchine is regarded as the foremost contemporary choreographer in the world of ballet. St Petersburg-born Balanchine had both the music and dance of Russia in his blood. He began studying the piano at the age of five, and after graduation from the Imperial Ballet School in 1921, he studied music at Conservatory of Music for another three years. Extensive musical training put him on equal grounds in communicating with great composers and enabled him to reduce orchestral scores on the piano, which is an invaluable aid in translating music into dance.
Balanchine’s style has been described as neo-classical, de-emphasizing plot in ballets and preferring to let “dance be the star of the show”. In his lifetime, he created 465 works, including such renowned pieces as Allegro Brillante, Theme and Variations, Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux and Serenade.
In 1970, U.S. News and World Report described Balanchine’s achievement as “The greatest choreographer of our time…responsible for the successful fusion of modern concepts with older ideas of classical ballet… altered the thinking of the world of dance”.