#balanchine

[staticsnowfall]

the nutcracker (1993)

*ੈ‧₊˚ ❆ .ೃ࿔*

corps de ballet of the new york city ballet performing “waltz of the snowflakes”

dir. by emile ardolino, choreo. by george balanchine

#posting bc i saw daniel ulbricht and emma von enck in the nutcracker pas de deux today (i cried so hard) #staticsnowfall #art #dance #ballet #photography #film #fashion #the nutcracker #nutcracker #nutcracker ballet #new york city ballet #george balanchine #balanchine #balletcore #ballet aesthetic #tchaikovsky #pyotr ilyich tchaikovsky #snow #winter #wintercore #winter aesthetic #coquette #90s #90s films #gif #my gifs #aesthetic #coquette aesthetic #girl blogging

[balanchine-ballet-master]

The Story of the Original "Tea" Dancer

There was a delightful story in the Times on February 4th about George Lee, on whom Balanchine created the Tea variation in The Nutcracker. Here it is.

From Ballet to Blackjack, a Dance Pioneer’s Amazing Odyssey

George Lee was the original Tea in “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.” A documentary filmmaker found him and a lost part of ballet history in Las Vegas.

By Siobhan Burke Feb. 4, 2024

Among the blaring lights and all-hours amusements of downtown Las Vegas, in a sea of slot machines at the Four Queens Hotel and Casino, George Lee sits quietly at a blackjack table, dealing cards eight hours a day, five days a week, a job he’s been doing for more than 40 years.

Lee, 88, was likely in his usual spot when the filmmaker Jennifer Lin was sifting through old photos at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2022, wondering what had become of a dancer with a notable place in ballet history. Pictured in a publicity shot for the original production of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” in the role known as Tea, was a young Asian dancer identified as George Li.

For Lin, a veteran newspaper reporter turned documentarian, the picture raised intriguing questions. In 1954, when the photo was taken, it was rare to see dancers of color on the stage of New York City Ballet, the company Balanchine co-founded. Who was this young man, this breaker of racial barriers, this pioneer? Was he still alive? And if so, what was he up to? “I became absolutely obsessed with trying to find out what happened to George Li,” Lin said in a video interview.

In just over a year, that obsession has blossomed into a short film, “Ten Times Better,” that chronicles the unexpected story of Lee’s life: from his childhood in 1940s Shanghai, where his performing career began; to a refugee camp in the Philippines, where he fled with his mother, a Polish ballet dancer, in 1949; to New York City and the School of American Ballet, where Balanchine cast him in “The Nutcracker” to “Flower Drum Song” on Broadway, his first of many musical theater gigs; and ultimately, to Las Vegas, where he left dance for blackjack dealing in 1980. (He changed the spelling of his last name in 1959, when he became a United States citizen.)

The film will have its premiere on Feb. 10 as part of the Dance on Camera Festival at Film at Lincoln Center. Lee, who last visited New York in 1993, will be in town for the occasion, an opportunity for long-overdue recognition.

“So many years I haven’t done ballet,” Lee said over coffee at the Four Queens on a recent Sunday, after his shift. “And then suddenly Jennifer comes and tries to bring everything up. To me, it was like a shock.”

George Lee today. He has been a blackjack dealer in Las Vegas for more than 40 years. Photo: Saeed Rahbaran for The New York Times

But Lin’s interest has been welcome. “Jennifer is so perfect, she knows exactly everything,” he said. “She knows my background more than I do.”

Lin was not the only one who had been searching for Lee. In 2017, while organizing an exhibition on “The Nutcracker,” Arlene Yu, who worked for the New York Public Library at the time and is now Lincoln Center’s head archivist, was puzzled by the relatively few traces of him in the library’s vast dance collection.

“I think I’d tracked him down to 1961, but after that, it was really hard to find anything,” she said. “Whereas if you look at some of his peers in ‘The Nutcracker’ in 1954, they went on to careers where there was a lot more documentation.”

Lin’s fascination with Lee emerged through her work on another film, about Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin, the founders of Final Bow for Yellowface, an initiative focused on ending offensive depictions of Asians in ballet. The role of Tea, a divertissement historically rife with such stereotypes—in Balanchine’s canonical version of “The Nutcracker” and others—has been a flashpoint in those efforts. Chan, too, had been struck by the 1954 images of “The Nutcracker,” which he came across during a library fellowship in 2020.

“I’m like, wait, there’s actually a Chinese guy,” he said — as opposed to a non-Chinese dancer with the saffron makeup or heavily painted eyes or even the artificial buck teeth worn in some old productions. “Who is this guy? And why do I not know about him?”

The "Tea" variation in The Nutcracker at City Ballet in 2015. The dancers are Ralph Ippolito, Claire Von Enck, and Baily Jones. Photo: Andrea Mohin for The New York Times

Lee, in his heyday, was a dancer to know. At just 12, he was already winning public praise. In a preview of a recital of the King-Yanover School in Shanghai, the North China Daily News called him an “extremely promising young Chinese boy, whose technique is of a very high standard.” A reviewer wrote that he “already may be said to be the best Chinese interpreter of Western ballet.” (Lee saved these newspaper clippings and shared them with Lin when they eventually met.)

Born in Hong Kong in 1935, Lee moved to Shanghai with his mother in 1941, when Shanghai was under Japanese occupation. During World War II, his father, a Chinese acrobat, was in Kunming in western China; he died in an accident on his way to visit Lee in 1945.

Lee’s mother, Stanislawa Lee, who had danced with the Warsaw Opera, was his first ballet teacher; as a child, he would follow along with her daily barre exercises. Shanghai had a significant Russian population, and with that a robust ballet scene. To earn money, Stanislawa arranged for her son to perform in nightclubs—“like a polka dance, or Russian dance, or sailor dance,” Lee said. The clubs would pay them in rice.

Little George Li in his Shanghai days. Photo: George Lee private collection via the NY Times

Fearing the Chinese Communist Party’s takeover in 1949, the two evacuated to the Philippines. An expected four months as refugees turned into two years. In 1951, an American friend of Lee’s father sponsored them to come to New York, where he introduced Lee to the School of American Ballet, City Ballet’s affiliated school.

As Lee narrates these twists and turns in the film, one memory anchors his recollections. Before they immigrated, his mother issued a warning. “You are going to America, it’s all white people, and you better be 10 times better,” he recalls her saying. “Remember that: 10 times better!”

The footage of Lee in his 20s suggests he took that advice to heart. In television appearances — with the company of the ballet star André Eglevsky, and in a number from “Flower Drum Song” on the Ed Sullivan Show — his power and precision dazzle.

“He was good; he was really good,” Chan said. “Clean fifth, high jump, polished turns, stick the landing—the training is all there. He’s already 10 times better than everybody else.”

In a 1979 interview heard in the film, the former City Ballet soloist Richard Thomas, who took over the role of Tea, raves about Lee’s peerless acrobatic jumps: “He was wonderful! Balanchine choreographed a variation for him that none of us have ever been able to equal.”

As Lee remembers it, Balanchine spent 15 minutes with him in the studio. “He said, ‘What can you do good? Show me what you can do good,’ so I show him something,” Lee said. “I did things like splits and double turns, down and up, turn again like a ball, and that’s it. He picked up some things and put them together.”

George Li as a student at the School of American Ballet. Photo: George Lee private collection via the NY Times

He recalled that during a “Nutcracker” dress rehearsal, the City Ballet makeup artist put him in full yellowface, and Balanchine insisted he take off the makeup. “He is Asian enough! Why do you make him more?” he remembers Balanchine saying. Lee was costumed in the Fu Manchu mustache, queue ponytail and rice paddy hat often associated with the role, now widely critiqued as racist caricatures. But he said he didn’t take offense. “Dancing is dancing,” he said.

Lee performed in “The Nutcracker” as a student; he was never invited to join City Ballet. But he clearly excelled in his classes and onstage. For that, he credits his strong foundation of Russian training in China — and his mother’s exacting standards. He can still see her standing in the studio doorway at the School of American Ballet, observing closely.

“She was watching the class and then would go home and tell me, ‘You did this wrong or that wrong, you got to do it this way,’” he said. “So I really worked hard, and I was good.” (His favorite teacher at the school was the demanding Anatole Oboukhoff: “He always wanted more, and that’s why I liked him very much.”)

To make a living Lee turned to musical theater, performing in shows like “Baker Street” on Broadway and the cabaret “Carol Channing with her 10 Stout-Hearted Men,” which opened in London. He pieced together jobs for more than 20 years, often unsure of what would come next.

Lee in flight in a production of “Flower Drum Song” in Las Vegas in the early 1960s. Photo: George Lee personal collection via the NY Times

He was dancing in a Vegas revue, “Alcazar de Paris,” now in his 40s, when a blackjack dealer friend suggested he go to dealer school. “I can’t dance all my life,” he remembers thinking. He decided to give dealing a try and soon landed a job at the Four Queens. Aside from four years at another casino, he has worked there ever since.

In December 2022, he got a voice mail message from Lin. With her reporting skills and some crucial assists from Yu, she had determined that he lived in Las Vegas. Of the five phone numbers she found for George Lees, four led nowhere; his was the last she tried.

When they finally connected, she put her other project on hold to focus on his story; she and her small creative team had a final cut by November. “George is 88, and I wanted him to be able to enjoy this moment, where people recognize him for his dancing,” she said.

As he prepares to return to New York, Lee said he felt gratified, most of all, for his mother.

“I’m proud for her that I didn’t let her down,” he said. “It makes me feel better to look up at her and say: ‘Look, mother, now you see what’s happening, what you did for me. You gave me all the good foundation, everything. Through you, I’m here now.’”

George Lee today. Photo: Saeed Rahbaran for The New York Times

#Balanchine #George Lee #George Li #Nutcracker ballet #Balanchine's Nutcracker #Asian stereotypes #Nutcracker Chinese Dance #New York City Ballet #NYCB #Ten Times Better #ballet film #Saeed Rahbaran #Andrea Mohin

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policemen, always alert, always tense, but see, policemen don't have to be beautiful at the same time.

- George Balanchine

#balanchine #george balanchine #quote #ballet #ballerina #dancer #dance #beauty #femme #athlete #movement #grace #culture #arts

[tikitania]

ABT Fall Season!

I'm doing a thing! I'm headed to NYC with my daughter to catch two performances of ABT's Fall Season. I'm am so very excited because they are dancing one of my favorite ballets, Etudes. I'm overjoyed to see this on a grand stage instead of on YouTube. Program 1: Classics Old & New Piano Concerto No. 1 (ch: Ratmansky, m: Shostakovich) Petit Mort (ch: Jiri Kylian, m: Mozart) Etudes (ch: Harald Lander, m: Czerny) Program 2: 20th Century Works Ballet Imperial (ch: Balanchine, m: Tchaikovsky) The Dream (ch: Ashton, m: Mendelsohn) I just love these two programs. If I had time and money, would have stayed for the 3rd program of 21st Century works…le sigh. A new discovery for me is Jiri Kylian's Petit Mort. I've only recently looked up videos. It is stunning. Absolutely gorgeous. I think this is NDT (Netherlands Dance Theater) based on the comments, but not sure.

Here's a link to Etudes, too! I absolutely LOVE this piece.

#ballet #abt #american ballet theater #Petit Mort #Jiri Kylian #balanchine #alexei ratmansky #Frederick Ashton #Harald Landar #a stellar lineup #Youtube

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Four WACs of the Month, having demonstrated outstanding traits of leadership, initiative, and alertness in the performance of their duties, were treated to a three-day "Special Monday" in New York, December 11, 1952. They attended a performance of The Nutcracker by the New York City Ballet and afterwards went backstage to meet the Sugar Plum Fairy, Maria Tallchief.

Photo: Sgt. Wallace via the National Archives

#New York #NYC #vintage New York #1950s #WACs #New York City Ballet #NYCB #The Nutcracker #Maria Tallchief #Nutcracker ballet #December 11 #Dec. 11 #Balanchine

[lemon-snickety]

My top 5 ballet dream roles

#5- Rubies Soloist (Jewels)

I love the energy of the role and all the petite allegro

#4- The Firebird (Firebird)

So much drama in this role, I’m also dying to wear the costume

#3- Dark Angel (Serenade)

Even though this role is generally for taller dancers (I’m only 5’5), but I love adagio. Also, serenade for strings makes me cry

#2- Gamzatti (La Bayadère)

I just love a good diva, and that’s exactly what Gamzatti is. Her wedding variation is my absolute favorite classical variation

#1- Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

This would be my dream lead role. The Rose Adagio is probably my favorite section from any classical ballet and I would kill to do it. She also doesn’t have to do the big 32, which makes me so happy because I hate fouettés with a burning passion

#ballet #ballerina #ballet dancer #dancer #top 5 #dream roles #ballerinas of tumblr #sleeping beauty #aurora #rose adagio #gamzatti #la bayadère #serenade #dark angel #tchaikovsky #balanchine #firebird #rubies #jewels #classical ballet #ballet variations

[ma-ar]

serenade

#guys i read the saddest book last week #serenade #balanchine #ballet #artists on tumblr #procreate #mine

[travsd]

Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq

You just THINK I don’t write about ballet dancers here; in point of fact, I’ve written about at least a dozen and a half of them, mostly due to their connections to vaudeville or silent film. But as I’ve begun to write much more about television and TV variety, more modern figures will begin to find their way to Travalanche. And so we treat of the tragic figure of Tanaquil “Tanny” Le Clercq…

View On WordPress

#Afternoon of a Faun #Balanchine #dancer #New York City Ballet #paralyzed #polio #Tanaquil Le Clercq #Tanny Le Clercq #vaccination

[hotcinnamonsunset]

Emeralds from Balanchine's Jewels - the tutu (x)

#ballet #tutu #jewels #royal ballet #emeralds #literally one of my all time fav costumes and ballets #i'll never make enough gifsets of this ballet istg #ballerina #dancer #dance #SBedits #balanchine

[preppyandpreppy]

Diana Vishneva. The Rubies.

#youtube #ballet #the rubies #balanchine #george balanchine #stravinsky #igor stravinsky #diana vishneva #vishneva #ballerina #classical music #classical dance #jewells

[dasboligrafo]

Balanchine II at NYCB

Saw this September 29, 2023. The ballets were Bourree Fantasque, Agon and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.

I didn't like it! I think i might be sick of Balanchine...and so far I'm not sure I like any of the new NYCB principals....I think we're going to be seeing a lot of opera this season what with the theatre dead and the ballet in turmoil...

Counterpoint NYCB has done a really great job of turning ballet into a lively, young, fun scene. It's fucking fun to get dressed up and go there and see and be seen. Actually I accidentally lined up in the Koch theatre when we were tying to go into Dead Man Walking and I noticed it because the crowd was too cool to be the opera. Keep that coming!

#NYCB #balanchine #ballet #new york city ballet

[ballet-symphonie]

On your previous ask... The thing that I personally LOVE in Balanchine's Nutcracker is flowers. Especially the role of Dewdrop... I find it magical.

Yes, yes YES to Balanchine. Flowers can sometimes be a bit of a drag but Balanchine's choreography really keeps it moving.

One of my favorite moments is the big double rond de jambe + pique attitude entrance Dewdrop does at 3:20. Bold, musical and also a very sneaky reference from Balanchine, subtly quoting Petipa, albeit with slight changes.

Where is he referencing? Take a look :)

#ballet #balanchine #ballerina #ballet ask #nutcracker #sleeping beauty

[balanchine-ballet-master]

The Diamonds section of Jewels, with Alena Kovaleva and Artemy Belyakov leading the Bolshoi Ballet.

From natashik_b/Instagram

#Balanchine #Jewels ballet #Diamonds ballet #Alena Kovaleva #Artemy Belyakov #Bolshoi Ballet #Instagram

[blackswaneuroparedux]

The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener.

- George Balanchine

#balanchine #george balachine #quote #choreography #ballerina #dancers #dance #dancing #artist #art #movement #athlete #physical #culture #femme

[tikitania]

Mariinsky Observations...

I was looking over the playbill and noticed that the company is going to present Anyuta in early December. It seems to be the same one that the Bolshoi performs. I've never seen it but will look for clips online. The cast has not been announced, but there is a list of dancers rehearing lead roles. I was happy to see Alexandra Khiteeva's name in there. I also noticed that David Zaleyev is rehearsing…I don't think he's returned to the stage since his horrible accident, so I hope this is a sign that he will soon return to the stage.

Coming up…the Mariinsky's last performance of Jewels in the foreseeable future. I've read that their license expires soon, so the 11/28 performance is their last. Tereshkina & Shklyarov will lead in Diamonds. The are the dream couple here, but I would have loved to see more performances just to see how other dancers handle the choreography. My pairings would be: Skorik & Capitaine, Iliushkina & Korneyev, Batoeva & Stepin. Khiteeva in Emeralds. Alas… I hope that there are lots of recordings of this last performance. Maria Bulanova seems to be underutilized these days. I haven't read anything about an injury, so I hope she's rehearsing and preparing new roles. Anyone have news about what she's working on?

#mariinsky ballet #prima ballerina #russian ballet #Anyuta #alexander pushkin #alexandra khiteeva #maria bulanova #David Zaleyev #balanchine #jewels #dream pairings #Pas de Deux

[newyorkthegoldenage]

“It’s almost like you’re actually floating. When you see it, you’re going to be like, wow, amazing.” Ksenia Ilyusha, 8, center, with Scarlett Cepler, 9, left, and Lynn Sakagawa, 10.

From the NY Times

#Balanchine #Nutcracker ballet #Balanchine's Nutcracker #The Nutcracker #Nutcracker angels #video #NYCB #New York City Ballet #Ksenia Ilyusha #Scarlett Cepler #Lynn Skagawa