The performances pay homage to George Balanchine, one of the most influential 20th-century choreographers, considered the founder of neoclassical ballet. The production features his Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet and Who Cares?, both created for the New York City Ballet.
Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (1966) is Balanchine’s very first abstract work. The choreographer used to say that chamber music was not suitable for large-scale ballets, since chamber pieces are usually “too long, with too many repeats, and are meant for small rooms”. Back in the 1930s, Arnold Schoenberg orchestrated Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, voicing similar dissatisfaction. In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle music critic Alfred Frankenstein, he explained the reasons for having done so: “1. I like the piece. 2. It is seldom played. 3. It is always very badly played, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays, and you hear nothing from the strings. I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved.” Balanchine opted for Schoenberg’s version. His Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet is a dynamic one-act ballet for 55 dancers in four parts (in line with the four movements of Brahms’s quartet), each possessing a particular mood, style and charge.
Choreographed to George Gershwin’s music, the 40-minute neoclassical ballet Who Cares? is one of George Balanchine’s most joyous works. Its title is identical with that of one of the featured songs, written by George and Ira Gershwin for their 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing. “The best of Gershwin songs maintain their classic freshness, like an eternal martini – dry, frank, refreshing, tailor-made, with an invisible kick from its slightest hint of citron,” wrote Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet. Robert Sealy of Ballet Review said: “This fast-stepping, cheeky ballet evokes the lively spirit of Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers and the 1930s, and portrays an exuberance that is broadly American and charged with a distinctive energy. Who Cares? is wonderful. Never in a theatre have I wanted so much to jump the moat and join in. It is pure, unmitigated, uncut joy.”
