The women’s groups of George Balanchine’s “Serenade”: Women’s History Month in Dance, 2021

Women’s History Month in Dance 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74. Although ballet has indeed been “woman as seen by men”, as Pam Tanowitz once out it, it’s remarkable to study the all-female scenes in ballets by a number of male choreographers. Even where the male choreographer was or is famously heterosexual, some of them have been able to give their women interiority, vulnerability, mutual supportiveness, independence and/or the aspiration for it: to show the sides of women that it’s often supposed men never see. We have to understand that the male choreographer often portrays the women who reflect the feminine sides of himself - that the male animus seeks out and honours the female anima.

Amid George Balanchine’s many absorbing portrayals of women, the world of “Serenade” is singular. (65 is a rare photograph of the opening Sonatina at the 1934 open-air premiere.) “Serenade” abounds in scenes where women are joined, supported, consoled by other women, sometimes at moments of apparent heartbreak or even the departure from one phase of life into another. This wasn’t new in dance drama: it connects both to the plotless world of Fokine’s “Les Sylphides” (1908/1909) and the intensely narrative world of Lev Ivanov’s choreography for the lakeside scenes of “Swan Lake”. (It’s sad how few people today think they have seen “Swan Lake” but do not know Ivanov’s feminine community of swan-maidens in its final act, who console Odette’s heartbreak and keep her from hurling herself to death in the lake.) Balanchine builds on these to provide some of the most piercing images of female community and mutual supportiveness in all dance.

In the first movement of “Serenade”, one woman is dancing her heart out when suddenly she falls to the floor. (I have recently argued that Balanchine saw her as Eurydice at the moment of death.) At this very moment, fifteen women enter at this, taking up the semi-circular formation of a Greek theatre around her (66). Their formal ports de bras (67) act on her as if hailing Lazarus from the dead: she rises (68) and dances a series of explosive jumps and arabesques (69). (I like to think Eurydice here is seen to transition into the new life of the Elysian Fields.)

In the next movement, another woman has been dancing blithely with a man to the Waltz music. Inexplicably, he departs. (That’s men for you.) She’s not alone for more than an instant, though: two lines of women join her, an an image that’s always touching (70).

The third movement begins with a seated chain of five women joining hands that’s among the tenderest moments in Balanchine (71). In the final Elegy, she is deserted by another man but - lying there just at the same seeming image of fatal collapse we saw in the first movement - is joined by a community of six consoling women (72). (Again I believe that Balanchine saw her as Eurydice - but, unlike other dramatists of the Orpheus legend, he here imagined how it is for Eurydice after Orpheus has lost her the second time and forever.) She rises from the floor as if waking from a dream; and amid the women who have arrived to join her, she sees one (73) whom she embraces (74). (The woman she embraces is known at New York City Ballet as “the mother”.) In what follows as the ballet ends, she is borne aloft and away as if into a new plane of existence, accompanied by this female cortège, who may be angels or may be companions.

Since Balanchine choreographed “Serenade”, it must be a man’s view of women. And yet I don’t feel that’s how we feel about it: we see it as a view of how women are when men aren’t there. Generations of women around the world have now danced this ballet; I always smile as I recall rang my first two performances of “Serenade” were led by Georgina Parkinson (who became ballet mistress at American Ballet Theatre two years later), Monica Mason (who, twenty-six years later, became director of the Royal Ballet for ten years), and Merle Park (who seven years later became director of the Royal Ballet School). In photographs 66-69 and 71, the central dancer, known as “Russian”, is Sara Leland, who died last November; in photographs 70 and 72-74, the heroine is Kay Mazzo, who has been co-director of the School of American Ballet for many years. There are many women’s histories in dance; and many of them pass through George Balanchine’s “Serenade”.

Sunday 21 March

65: The premiere performance of George Balanchine’s “Serenade” in the open air at the Warburg Estate, White Plains, New York, 1934.

66: In “Serenade”, the “woman who falls over” (the Russian dancer - here Sara Leland in the 1973 film) in the first movement of “Serenade” and the corps’s semi-circular Greek-theatre formation around her.

67: the “Serenade” corps doing staccato ports de bras around the “woman who falls over” (Sara Leland)

68: In “Serenade”, the “woman who falls over” (Sara Leland) rises as if from the dead, as if revived by the incantation of the corps’s ports de Brad.

69: The dancer who died rises again: Sara Leland as the “Russian dancer” in the opening movement of “Serenade”, taking relevé en arabesque after two explosive sissonnes.

70: In the Waltz second movement of Balanchine’s “Serenade”, the heroine (Kay Mazzo), suddenly left alone by her male partner, is joined by two lines of the corps de ballet, becoming again one of a sorority, arms around one another’s waists.

71: At the opening of the Tema Russo (“Russian dance”) of George Balanchine’s “Serenade”, five women link hands one by one along the row. Sara Leland is at the centre.

72: Near the end of the final movement (the Elegy) of Balanchine’s “Serenade”, the heroine (Kay Mazzo) lies as if dead, in the same position we saw with another dancer in the first movement, like Eurydice after Orpheus has lost her a second time. A group of six women enter as if to console her in her moment of need.

73: The heroine of “Serenade” (here Kay Mazzo) rises and sees a single figure (known in New York City Ballet as “the mother”), who opens her arms to summon her for an embrace.

74: Near the end of the final Elegy of “Serenade”, the heroine (Kay Mazzo) embraces “the mother”.