Every few months, a copy of News from the Jerome Robbins Foundation drops through my mailbox. The size of a tabloid newspaper, printed in color, it contains feature articles, interviews and photographs that document the ongoing renewal of Robbins’ choreography. On the back page, the paper lists a selection of the ballets’ performances scheduled by companies around the world.
Choreographers whose creations outlast changing tastes and artistic trends are not exactly a dime a dozen. The dances that at one time defined a company for the public often don’t survive that company’s development, if the company itself survives.
Inevitably based on their founder’s output, modern dance troupes maintain their identity by keeping those dances alive even as new ones appear beside them. The ensembles established by Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey still train their dancers to realize the formative pieces as their creators imagined them, trusting that the audience will return to see what it cannot enjoy anywhere else.
By adopting the same policy, never losing sight of their foundation repertory or style or both, ballet companies also retain their individuality. When they step beyond The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, which apparently guarantee an audience, you discover their values and priorities.
Between 1909 and 1929, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes provided a spectacular stream of original choreography that upended the public’s expectations of classical ballet. But the works that everyone once wanted to see, and dancers wanted to dance, are history now. Fokine’s Petrouchka and The Firebird have nearly disappeared, along with Massine’s The Three-Cornered Hat and Nijinska’s Les Biches. How many people have even heard of these ballets?
The dramatic pieces made in the 1930s and ‘40s—Antony Tudor’s Lilac Garden, Ninette de Valois’ Checkmate, Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, Kurt Jooss’s The Green Table—have gone too. So major players like American Ballet Theatre and English National Ballet, which used to bank on them, now generate new pieces, hoping to make fresh history from living dancemakers’ efforts. Unable to fill their ranks from their own schools, these companies seek talented dancers everywhere, forging a unified style, if they can, to suit each work.
Hanging onto its heritage proudly, the Royal Danish Ballet trains its future artists in the gentle style that characterizes August Bournonville’s buoyant ballets—La Sylphide last season, A Folk Tale coming up. By staging authoritative revivals of these charming nineteenth-century tales among premières and proven masterworks, this company preserves a unique identity.
Producing traditional and contemporary ballets in two theatres simultaneously, the Paris Opera Ballet draws its artists from the school created by Louis XIV in 1713. To bolster the students’ rigorous preparation for their profession and display their immaculate mastery of its technique, the organization has just conceived “an incubator for young talent.” The Junior Ballet, for dancers age 17 to 23 from the school and elsewhere, will appear onstage with the resident troupe and tour independently.
Though Britain’s Royal Ballet and New York City Ballet both developed from their founders’ schools, their paths have diverged radically. The former has moved away from Frederick Ashton’s choreography and its stylistic signature to focus on abstract compositions and a harsher vocabulary. In June, the company revived four Ashton ballets plus two party pieces to celebrate his achievements; it has scheduled only his Cinderella for 2024-25. Visiting London for the same celebratory event, the Sarasota Ballet presented five further Ashton works—its repertory holds more than 25—and different divertissements.
Gradually the Royal Ballet has become another large successful troupe that makes bold choreographic choices but has given up its distinctive character. New York City Ballet, on the other hand, remains the heart of George Balanchine’s life’s work. His creations anchor the repertory—the four-week fall season contains seven, the six-week spring season will show twelve—and the school continues to hone the precise instruments for which he created those ballets.
Will these choices matter in the long run? What do you think?
Thank you for your sweeping historical perspective on the dance world today, bringing to bear your deep expertise, giving us tools for understanding where ballet is today.
Thank you for this overview of where we are now. As you know, classics never die. They may go into hibernation for a while so that new work can be developed and shown, but they return, often fresher than ever, because an individual or collective appreciation for them surfaces and allows us to see them once again.