Word: agonize
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Balanchine's musical acumen paid off, spectacularly, in an almost lifelong partnership with Composer Igor Stravinsky, resulting in such landmarks as Apollo (1928), Orpheus (1947) and Agon (1957). The first dance Balanchine ever made to Stravinsky's music in the West was a segment of The Song of the Nightingale in 1925, and the last major project he worked on, the City Ballet's 1982 Stravinsky centennial celebration, included a new version of Noah and the Flood...
...Taras' observation suggests why the all-Stravinsky marathon was a success anyway. The troupe gathered and displayed its grand heritage, the modern classics (among them Apollo, Orpheus, Agon, Symphony in Three Movements) that Balanchine has set to Stravinsky over a period of 50 years. Balanchine worked out key elements of his style-bold, intricate, whip-fast-to this music. Stravinsky's rhythms and punctuation are the idiom of City Ballet dancers, so that their stab-kicking, hip-swiveling, long-leaping display is a unique ballet chronicle...
...accustomed to the large, open movements of the older traditions and to repeated patterns of steps, however difficult. Balanchine's style is a continuum of endlessly varied movement. It requires high, sustained power and top speed. Kirstein, the best historian of his own company, has written about Agon: "Clock time has no reference to visual duration; there is more concentrated movement in Agon than in most 19th century full-length ballets." A similar claim could be made for many Balanchine works, and some created by his less active co-choreographer, Jerome Robbins. So, if nothing else, Misha will need...
...Week of Ballet, culminating in a performance at MIT's Kresge Auditorium at 8 on Saturday, January 28. The evening will feature special guest artists Lydia Abarca and Ronald Perry of the Dance Theater of Harlem in pas de deux from the virtuoso "Le Corsaire" and the Balanchine-Stravinsky "Agon," as well as the Repertory company in Antony Tudor's "Soiree Musicale," Director Samuel Kurkjian's snappy "Speed Zone", and the world premiere of a new Kurkjian work, "A Cole Porter Suite." The week preceding offers lecture-demonstrations and master classes by members of the Company. For ticket and general...
...Giselle. The company's repertory combines the classical tradition and ethnic dance styles. Balanchine's neoclassic ballet Agon floats serenely alongside Geoffrey Holder's mysterious, pulsating Dougla and the virtuoso Russian display pas de deux from Le Corsaire. There is, however, no Giselle. "You'd be surprised how many people feel that because we're not doing Swan Lake that we are not a classical company," Mitchell told TIME'S Rosemarie Tauris. "We don't have enough people or finances to do big 19th century ballets. D.T.H. is not about...