Dancing beyond personality

A committed Balanchine dancer (with a small “d”) comes to realize that Personality (with an enormous “P”) is a bundle of haphazard characteristics frozen in a pleasing mask for immediate identification and negotiable prestige. No matter what is danced—and it makes little difference—stardom dims the dancing. What is danced is perforce secondary. There are two types of ballet companies: those interested in selling stars and those occupied in demonstrating and extending the dance, as such…

Physicality in the tense relationships of Balanchine’s dancers kept under so strict a discipline in so free an exercise pushes the spectacle to a high pressure point. Everything is so focused, compressed, packed, playful that it is as if the entire design were patterned on coiled steel or explosive fuels. Combinations of music in motion approach a fourth dimension that cannot be verbally defined.

—Lincoln Kirstein, “Balanchine’s Fourth Dimension,” in Vogue

Peter Martins on managing one’s time

The very first thing I do before I start to choreograph is to figure out how many hours I have before the premiere. I compare that number with the number of minutes it takes to perform the music. Then I know how many hours I have to choreograph so many minutes. It is very well known in the choreography world that only Balanchine can choreograph one minute of ballet in one hour.

—Peter Martins