GEORGE BALANCHINE

Probably the most important and influential ballet figure in America, he was born Georgi Balanchivadze in St Petersburg (1904), and two decades after his death in New York (1983), we can appreciate fully the huge impact of a choreographer whose creative life spanned 60 years, who carried the grand Russian classical style triumphantly into the modernist era, established one of the world's leading companies (New York City Ballet) and gave America its own classical ballet tradition.

Graduating from the Petrograd Imperial School of Ballet in 1921 aged 17, Balanchine joined what is now the Kirov Ballet, where his first choreographies shocked the company's traditionally-minded establishment. In 1924, he toured Germany with his own group of Soviet State Dancers, where an audition for Diaghilev led to the Ballets Russes acquiring the talents of Balanchine, Tamara Geva (the first of his four ballerina wives) and Alexandra Danilova.

After Diaghilev's death in 1929, Balanchine worked in Copenhagen, Paris and for René Blum's Monte Carlo Ballet. It was during his directorship of Les Ballets 1933 in London that the wealthy writer Lincoln Kirstein persuaded him to found the American School of Ballet in New York (1934), out of which emerged the New York City Ballet (1948). During the 1930s and 1940s, Balanchine also choreographed extensively for Broadway and the movies, including Rodgers & Hart's The Boys From Syracuse and On Your Toes .

Among his best known, most frequently performed ballets, one might list: Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), The Four Temperaments (1946), Western Symphony (1954), Agon (1957), Jewels (1967) or Who Cares? (1970).

One of the world's greatest choreographers, Balanchine created a neoclassical aesthetic that connected the vigour of American modernism with the Russian ballet tradition Balanchine inherited; and he now stands as a ballet colossus between America and Europe, his rich repertoire of ballets constantly performed and appreciated around the world.

©Tim Tubbs