George Balanchine

George Balanchine (1904–1983), born Georgi Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St Petersburg, was a Georgian-American choreographer widely regarded as the pre-eminent ballet choreographer of the twentieth century. He trained at the Imperial Ballet School and danced with the Ballets Russes from 1924, for which he choreographed several major works including Apollo (1928) and The Prodigal Son (1929). After periods working in Europe, he emigrated to the United States in 1934 at the invitation of Lincoln Kirstein, and together they founded the School of American Ballet and, eventually, the New York City Ballet (1948), which Balanchine directed until his death. He created over 400 works, encompassing everything from pure-dance plotless ballets — of which Agon (1957), Symphony in C (1947), and Jewels (1967) are among the finest — to full-length story ballets and Broadway shows. His aesthetic, often described as 'neoclassical', stripped ballet to its essentials while pushing its technical and musical possibilities to new extremes.