Danses Concertantes

Music Danses Concertantes for Chamber Orchestra (1941-1942) by Igor Stravinsky

Choreography by George Balanchine (1944) Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo

Re-Choreographed by Fred Franklin (1972)

Balanchine first choreographed this music in the war-weary year of 1944 for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. The backdrop of this work would have been the recent ending of the Battle of Leningrad (January, 1944), considered to have been the most destructive urban conflict of all time.

Perhaps Balanchine made reference to the influence of context, when, in 1977, he said of the re-choreographing, “I wanted … to do something different … writers think with words; I think with bodies and the ballets I work on, necessarily, have a great deal to do with the here and now.”

This piece is the probably the oldest in the collection that I had the privilege to photograph. While the costume is in an advanced state of disrepair, so much of the garment and its vivid dyes had endured. The blend of the two elements is otherworldly.