Serenade (ballet)

Serenade
Choreographer	George Balanchine
Music	Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Premiere	March 1, 1935 Adelphi Theatre New York City, United States
Original ballet company	American Ballet

Serenade is a ballet by George Balanchine to Tschaikovsky's 1880 Serenade for Strings in C, Op. 48. Students of the School of American Ballet gave the first performance on Sunday, 10 June 1934 on the Felix M. Warburg estate in White Plains, N.Y., where Mozartiana had been danced the previous day. This was the first ballet that Balanchine choreographed in America. It was then presented by the Producing Company of the School of American Ballet on 6 December at the Avery Memorial Theatre of the Wadsworth Atheneum, to return the favor of sponsoring Balanchine's immigration to America. The official premiere took place on 1 March 1935 with the American Ballet at the Adelphi Theatre, New York, conducted by Sandor Harmati.

NYCB principal dancer Philip Neal chose to include Serenade in his farewell performance on Sunday, 13 June 2010.

The blue tutus used in Serenade inspired the naming of the Balanchine crater on the planet Mercury.

The work can be considered a bridge between his two early works for Sergei Diaghilev and his later, less episodic American works. The dance is characterized by two falls, a choreographic allusion to Giselle, but also an element in the Khorumi, a Georgian folk dance which influenced Balanchine.

...
Wikipedia