ALLEGRO BRILLANTE

Choreography: George Balanchine
Premiere 1 March 1956 by New York City Ballet

One of the great, definitive neo-classical ballets of the great George Balanchine, this work is set to Tchaikovsky's 3rd Piano Concerto (1892), which the composer originally conceived as an orchestral symphony and then, dissatisfied, reworked as a Piano Concerto. The music retains its expressive, melodic grandeur and lush orchestration, typical of the composer's style, and it comes as no surprise that it was selected by the highly musically-trained choreographer, as the inspiration for one of his most successful ballets.

Balanchine famously declared that Allegro Brillante "contains everything I know about the classical ballet in 13 minutes" - and the ballet certainly encapsulates everything we associate with his brilliant fusion of the Russian classical tradition with an energising modernism that is entirely American in its sensibility. (Although at 13 minutes, one wonders how much faster Balanchine may have originally worked his dancers!)

His then wife, Maria Tallchief, on whom the principal female role was originally created and who danced the New York premiere, described Allegro Brillante as expressing "an expansive Russian romanticism".

Suffice it to say, that an allegro is a fast, technically difficult piece of music, to be executed at top speed and with a brilliant confidence… which describes the choreographic intention pretty comprehensively as well!

This is one of Balanchine's most admired and frequently performed ballets, an object lesson in everything his sparklingly technical approach stands for, and a constant challenge to every dancer who takes it on.

©Tim Tubbs