Apollo (ballet) - The Ballet

The Ballet

The first ballet version of Stravinsky's Apollon musagète, commissioned especially for the Washington festival, premiered on Friday, 27 April 1928, with choreography by Adolph Bolm, who also danced the role of Apollo. It was Adolph Bolm who put together a company of dancers, in dance-impoverished US for the premiere. Ruth Page, Berenice Holmes (Gene Kelly's ballet teacher), and Elise Reiman were the three Muses, while Hans Kindler conducted.

Unfortunately for Bolm, Stravinsky himself had no interest in the US project. He had reserved the European rights to the score for Serge Diaghilev, whose Ballets Russes production, choreographed by the 24-year-old Balanchine, opened at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris, on Tuesday, June 12, of that same year. This performance was conducted by the composer himself; the violinist was Marcel Darrieux. Balanchine's version for Diaghilev, which is now hailed as a landmark work, quickly superseded Bolm's effort, now practically forgotten.

As the composer had wished, the style of dancing was essentially classical, and Stravinsky thought of "Apollon Musagète" as a ballet blanc. Balanchine, too, later said that when he heard Stravinsky's music, all he could see was this pristine white. Certainly it is the clarity, calm, even serenity of the music which makes it seem almost infinitely remote from the excitements of the earlier ballets. The avoidance of any conflict in the scenario, indeed of any narrative, psychological or expressive intent, was further matched by monochrome costumes for the dancers and the absence of elaborate scenery on stage. In Apollo, Balanchine found the way to unite the traditions of classical Russian ballet and the spare austerity of modernism, which led to the evolution of the new classicism that is the hallmark of New York City Ballet.

Scenery and costumes for Balanchine's production were by French artist Andre Bauchant, with new costumes designed by Coco Chanel in 1929. Apollo wore a reworked toga with a diagonal cut, a belt, and laced up. The Muses wore a traditional tutu. The decoration was baroque: two large sets (some rocks, and Apollo's chariot). One senses in the dance a reappearance of academicism (in the stretching out and upward leaping of the body). But the choreographer George Balanchine bent the angles of the arms and hands. It is therefore a neoclassical ballet. The scenario involved the birth of Apollo, his interactions with the three muses, Terpsichore (dance), Polyhymnia (mime) and Calliope (poetry), and his ascent as a god to Mount Parnassus. The original cast included Serge Lifar as Apollo, Alice Nikitina as Terpsichore (alternating with Alexandra Danilova), Lubov Tchernicheva as Calliope, Felia Doubrovska as Polyhymnia and Sophie Orlova as Leto, mother of Apollo.

Balanchine staged Apollon Musagète for the Royal Danish Ballet in 1931. Following his move to the United States two years later, the work was performed by his American Ballet in 1937 with Lew Christensen in the title rôle and subsequently became a feature of Balanchine's New York company and of many other companies around the world. In 1978 Balanchine made major changes to the piece, discarding the ballet's prologue which depicts Apollo's birth.

For a revival with Mikhail Baryshnikov as Apollo in 1979, he also omitted Apollo's first variation and rechoreographed the ending of the ballet. This revision saw the piece concluding not with Apollo's ascent to Mount Parnassus but rather with the earlier memorable tableau of the muses posing in ascending arabesques beside Apollo. In the 1980 staging for the New York City Ballet, Apollo's first variation was restored. Suzanne Farrell restored the birth scene for her company in 2001, as did Arthur Mitchell for his Dance Theatre of Harlem performance at Symphony Space's Wall to Wall Balanchine in conjunction with City Ballet's Balanchine centennial.