Serenade
Balanchine / Tchaikovsky
The first ballet George Balanchine made in America, in 1934, Serenade is one of his most famous and cherished works. Seventeen girls form and reform in kaleidoscopic patterns. A girl enters, late. A boy joins her. After she falls to the ground, another boy approaches her, guided by a “Dark Angel,” and then leaves her behind, to be carried off to a kind of transfiguration.
Endlessly suggestive though essentially plotless, Serenade is impelled forward by Tchaikovsky’s rushing, deeply affecting score.
CHOREOGRAPHY
George Balanchine
© The George Balanchine Trust
MUSIC
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Serenade in C Major for String Orchestra
COSTUME DESIGN
Karinska
LIGHTING DESIGN
John Hall
Carousel Pas De Deux
MacMillan / Rodgers
COMPANY PREMIERE
When London’s Royal National Theatre’s revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel moved to Lincoln Center in 1994, it ran for almost a year, winning five Tony Awards, including one for Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s choreography. His deeply touching duet for the central couple is a quintessential expression of ecstatic – and dangerous – young love.
CHOREOGRAPHY
Sir Kenneth MacMillan
MUSIC
Richard Rodgers
COSTUME DESIGN
Bob Crowley
LIGHTING DESIGN
John Hall
Calcium Light Night
Martins / Ives
COMPANY PREMIERE
Peter Martins’ first ballet, from 1978 – raw, witty, combative – pits a modern young couple against each other in provocative seduction and collision. The assertive and challenging score by America’s greatest composer, Charles Ives, is complemented by the electric colors of the ultra-sleek costumes. Calcium Light Night was the first step toward George Balanchine’s choosing Martins to be his successor at New York City Ballet.
CHOREOGRAPHY
Peter Martins
MUSIC
Charles Ives
The See’r, The New River, Incantation, Ann Street, Calcium Light Night, At Sea, “Gyp the Blood” or Hearst!? Which is Worst!?, and Hallowe’en
SET DESIGN
Steven Rubin
ORIGINAL LIGHTING
Ronald Bates
RECREATED BY
Mark Stanley
Glass Pieces
Robbins / Glass
COMPANY PREMIERE
When Jerome Robbins premiered Glass Pieces in 1983 (with Lourdes Lopez in the original cast), The New York Times hailed it as “a picture of our times – the electronic age, the computer age.”
Because its Philip Glass score is so resonant; because it is so brilliantly structured; because its images, beginning with its huge graph-paper backdrop, are so indelible, it continues to grip and thrill audiences everywhere.
MCB is proud to add Glass Pieces to its expanding Robbins repertory, following Fancy Free, Afternoon of a Faun, Dances at a Gathering, In the Night, The Concert, Fanfare and West Side Story Suite.
CHOREOGRAPHY
Jerome Robbins
MUSIC
Philip Glass
Rubric, Façades, excerpts from Akhnaten
COSTUME DESIGN
Ben Benson
SET DESIGN
Jerome Robbins and Ronald Bates (Production Design)
LIGHTING DESIGN
Ronald Bates
RECREATED BY
Les Dickert