Balanchine Lost and Found

NEW YORK — On a Monday in October, while the other members of New York City Ballet are enjoying their day off, three principals are hard at work in a Lincoln Center studio, making an important connection with the past. Nichol Hlinka, Lourdes Lopez and Nikolaj Hubbe are helping restore life to sections of “Le Baiser de la Fee,” a 1937 ballet by George Balanchine not seen since the early 1950s.

Taking turns as teachers, coaches and demonstrators are three older but remarkably vibrant former dancers who once knew this ballet intimately and are now trying to summon their memories from across the decades.

Maria Tallchief, Frederic Franklin and Vida Brown all performed its leading roles when “Baiser” was in the repertory of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo during the 1940s. Half a century later, they are animatedly explaining and illustrating the tricky rhythms, syncopated accents and jazzy hip movements Balanchine created for the Stravinsky score.

This exchange between the generations is the most recent of an ongoing series of videotaped sessions under the auspices of the George Balanchine Foundation. The two-pronged research project was launched in 1994, when Nancy Reynolds, a dance writer, historian and former City Ballet dancer, established a $1.75-million endowment for the foundation.

The Interpreters Archive includes videotaped sessions of major Balanchine dancers discussing and demonstrating well-known roles that were created for them, recalling as much as possible Balanchine’s intentions at the time he was choreographing the ballets. The related Archive of Lost Choreography makes possible similar sessions that focus on repertory--such as “Baiser”--that has not been performed for many years.

So far, videotaped sessions, shot with broadcast-quality equipment, have taken place in London, Pittsburgh and Winston-Salem, N.C., as well as New York. Such eminent former ballerinas as Alicia Markova, Patricia Wilde, Marie-Jeanne and Tallchief have worked with current City Ballet dancers (as well as students from the affiliated School of American Ballet) on roles in such repertory standards as “Concerto Barocco,” “The Four Temperaments” and “Square Dance.”

The “lost” choreography that has been reconstructed includes a 1925 solo made for Markova in Balanchine’s “Le Chant du Rossignol” and significant portions of his 1945 version of “Mozartiana.”

Once edited into their final versions, the videotapes are made available for research study in libraries around the country and in Europe (including the Library for the Performing Arts in New York City, the Harvard Theater Collection, Library of Congress and the San Francisco Performing Arts Library). Four tapes are finished; they vary in length between an hour and slightly more than two hours, at a total production cost of between $25,000 and $35,000 per tape. (In a separate project, the foundation also sponsors tapes that concentrate on Balanchine technique and are commercially available as part of the Nonesuch Balanchine Library.)

‘There’s so much talk about shifting Balanchine standards these days,” notes Reynolds, author of “Repertory in Review” and research director for “Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works.” “I wanted [the endowment projects] to capture as closely as possible the atmosphere of his original time of creation.

“Balanchine was famous for not explaining anything; every dancer will tell you that he said practically nothing, but that he showed; that was his strength. We’ve got an awful lot of interviews about Balanchine, but dancers aren’t always at their best in verbal interviews. I thought that if they could lose themselves in the teaching process, they would be able to convey much more than if they sat in a chair and tried to articulate exactly what he wanted.”

“I think what Nancy Reynolds has instigated is just wonderful and invaluable,” Tallchief says. Considered the first major American Balanchine ballerina, Tallchief first encountered Balanchine in 1944 and married him in 1946 (the marriage was annulled in 1951). During the groundbreaking early years of City Ballet, which was founded in 1948, she was its de facto prima ballerina. She has so far participated in three taping sessions for the Interpreter’s Archive.

The list of important roles she created is a lengthy one; as Arlene Croce recently wrote, “Tallchief and American ballet came of age in the same moment.” Now 71, still lithe and elegant, Tallchief was one of the recipients of this year’s Kennedy Center Honors, awarded last month.

Tallchief is enthusiastic about the opportunity to transmit Balanchine’s intentions in the hands-on format made possible by Reynolds’ project. “There was a magic that came about when we danced the way Balanchine wanted, because of how he taught us. He gave daily classes, and he had such patience. While I worked with him, I did everything I could to watch and remember.”

During the reconstruction of “Baiser,” Tallchief at first observes, as Franklin, remembering his role of the Bridegroom, takes the lead in guiding Hlinka in the part of the Bride. Though the choreography is 50 years old, it still has elements that can surprise a contemporary dancer.

“I know this is peculiar,” Franklin says almost apologetically as he guides Hlinka into an off-center position in which she stands on pointe with her leg bent, while the other is raised in the attitude position. A moment later, as Franklin requests a slight torso shimmy, Tallchief springs up to clarify the arc in Hlinka’s upper body for this point in the dance.

A bit later, Tallchief, still glamorous, even in her ready-for-work outfit of black T-shirt and pants, takes over. Working with Lopez, who is learning the role of the Fairy, which Tallchief used to dance, she pays close attention to the position of every part of Lopez’s body; no detail is too small.

“Show us that foot!” she exhorts at one point, and Lopez immediately makes a step look bolder and much clearer. Tallchief stresses the importance of how the head is held at all times. “What everyone forgets about is the glory of Balanchine’s ports de bras, the movement of the arms and upper body,” she says. “That was so important.”

At one point, Tallchief reaches for some notes in her purse; “I can see there’s getting to be some confusion,” she remarks. (“I never took notes on anything,” she says later, “but I happened to find some notes I took on ‘Baiser’; they were at the bottom of a box!”)

Such remembrances, say Reynolds and Balanchine Foundation President Barbara Horgan, get precisely at the point of the archival projects. In recent years, there has been considerable dissension among dance critics about the ways Balanchine’s choreography is currently performed by various companies, with different keepers of the flame being alternately challenged or held up as shining exemplars.

Reynolds, who selects and organizes the specific projects undertaken for these archives, and Horgan, are quick to emphasize that their intention is to create a research resource, not to make claims to absolute truth.

Horgan, once Balanchine’s longtime personal assistant, says, “We’ve been very careful about making [the project] noncontroversial. It’s archival; it’s Maria’s or Patricia’s point of view--take it or leave it. This is not gospel; it’s a research tool.”

Reynolds, who as a dancer was present when Balanchine choreographed such masterworks as “Episodes” and “Stars and Stripes,” is committed to producing as many of these firsthand video documents as time and personnel will allow.

“Some of the participants have been incredibly articulate,” she says. “Working with Balanchine was a very special episode in their lives, and all of them have a tremendous amount of passion about what they accomplished with him.”