浪花直播

BY NATALIE ROULAND

George Balanchine鈥檚 Easter Sunday suppers were legendary. White lilies, white candles, and white linens set the stage for his famous paskha, kulich, pirozhki, and sturgeon in aspic. At the height of his celebrity as of the New York City Ballet, Balanchine of his West Sixty-seventh Street apartment preparing the traditional Russian Orthodox feast for guests, including his inner circle of Russian 茅migr茅 artists and intellectuals, company members, and prominent New York physicians.

Onstage, Balanchine transported America to a world of movement and music that showcased the gems of the tradition alongside the neoclassical abstraction of his ballets. Offstage, Balanchine introduced the complex palate of Russian cuisine and the liturgical beauty of Orthodox customs into the lives of his American public.

A pioneering choreographer in an art form not often associated with haute cuisine, Balanchine stood out as a lover of good food, fine wines, and lavish entertaining. Invitations were coveted and rarely, if ever, refused. Former New York City Ballet recalled yearning, in vain, for an invitation. In 1980 the and then-director of American Ballet Theatre, Mikhail Baryshnikov, even attended the Easter f锚te on the heels of his departure from Balanchine鈥檚 company.

Described by his first wife, , as 鈥渁 mixture of poet and general,鈥� Balanchine defied expectations and embodied dichotomies. A sensualist and a spiritualist, Balanchine was as much at home in the on Madison Avenue, Broadway, and finally Lincoln Center as he was in the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of our Lady of the Sign on the Upper East Side, where Balanchine attended Easter services and where his was attended by over 1,000 mourners.

The same choreographic innovator who envisioned the long, lean ballet body immediately recognizable as the 鈥淏alanchine ballerina鈥� relished serving up paskha, Russian Easter cheese cake made, according to his recipe, with ten pounds of tvorog, two pounds of butter, ten cups of sugar, and two dozen egg yolks. Balanchine inherited his love of cooking from his mother, Maria Vasilieva, a Russian woman of unknown origins who was not yet married to Balanchine鈥檚 father, Georgian composer Meliton Balanchivadze, at the time of his birth in 1904.

Balanchine鈥檚 Georgian relatives included the archbishop of Tbilisi, whose ritual conversion he witnessed as a child in St. Petersburg鈥檚 imposing Kazan Cathedral. According to , Balanchine embraced the memory of his uncle, first prostrate on the stone floor and covered with a black cloth to symbolize his 鈥渨orldly death,鈥� then resurrected as a Russian Orthodox monk, as part of his 鈥減rivate mythology.鈥� Dancers rising up in rebirth feature often in his oeuvre. And the very pyramidal structure of Balanchine鈥檚 annual paskha symbolized the .

As he revealed to during a series of interviews in the 1980s, Balanchine associated 鈥渢he pealing of the church bells on High Easter鈥� with imperial St. Petersburg, the lost city of his childhood. Balanchine recalled standing for four hours at the Easter service of , the church of Fyodor Dostoevsky, located near his Aunt Nadia鈥檚 apartment on Bolshaya Moskovskaya.

As a nine-year-old boarder at the Imperial Theatre School, Balanchine ran away to this very apartment, nestled in the shadow of the yellow and gold domes. Balanchine鈥檚 recollections of school vacillated between culinary pleasures鈥斺�渢he borscht was a work of genius鈥濃�攁nd spartan punishment; the penalty for a poorly executed lesson entailed .

Hunger defined Balanchine鈥檚 experiences during World War I and the Russian revolution. On the eve of their graduation from the Theatre School, Geva described Balanchine鈥檚 first choreographic forays: dances performed in exchange for rations such as flour and coffee, which they mixed together to make little cakes. recounts Balanchine鈥檚 tales of surviving on pilfered fish and stray cats. And his second partner and schoolmate, , suggested that the same deprivation that forced the boy Balanchine to steal from Red Army barges fomented the adult choreographer鈥檚 love of luxury and epicurean excess.

As a host and as a husband, Balanchine remained indefatigable. During Balanchine鈥檚 stint with the Ballets Russes in interwar Europe, Danilova recounted moveable feasts ranging from early days in Paris, where Balanchine sold his suit to procure a proper spread, to glamorous soir茅es in Monte Carlo, where Balanchine hosted dinners for the impresario Sergei Diaghilev.

Balanchine serendipitously met his second wife, the German dancer and actress Vera Zorina, at a Russian Easter celebration in New York in 1936. Balanchine courted her with five-pound caviar tins and vodka, and, on tour in 1939, prepared an entire Easter banquet in the kitchenette of their Chicago hotel. Zorina wrote in her , 鈥淚 was as awed by his culinary talents (working in so cramped a space) as I was by his ability to choreograph under trying circumstances.鈥�

Balanchine鈥檚 third wife, the American dancer Maria Tallchief, in the words of Villella, memorialized Balanchine鈥檚 equal passions for cooking and for composer Igor Stravinsky, with whom the couple often shared elaborate Christmas dinners.

Following Stravinsky鈥檚 death in 1971, Balanchine honored their career-spanning collaboration in a held during the week of the composer鈥檚 birth. On closing night, were distributed free of charge, and Balanchine gave a toast in which he reassured the audience that Stravinsky was not gone, but happily flying around the theatre.

Yet the solace that Balanchine offered to his fourth wife, the , whose ascendant career abruptly ended after she contracted polio on the 1956 European tour, was cooking. Just as surely as he molded the bodies of his muses, Balanchine honed the culinary skills of Le Clercq, whose creative outlet, , preserved the foody anecdotes and recipes not only of Balanchine but also of the international ballet circuit.

Balanchine entered New York鈥檚 Roosevelt Hospital in November 1982 and passed his final days in the company of friends and food. Former principal dancer delivered borscht from the famed , Balanchine鈥檚 favorite nitery. Baryshnikov procured Georgian delicacies from a Brooklyn eatery. On his seventy-ninth birthday, , his last muse, cooked Balanchine鈥檚 beef kotletki with mushrooms and cream.

Balanchine died on April 30, just nine days before Russian Orthodox Easter. To the cherished members of his company, Balanchine bequeathed the royalties to the canonic ballets, which remain on the menu of the international repertory today. As Balanchine , 鈥淢y ballet is like [a] great restaurant. I must prepare new, absolutely excellent food for our guests. Everybody is waiting.鈥�

The opinions expressed in this article are those solely of the authors and do not reflect the views of the Kennan Institute.