About Serenade —

 Serenade is the first original ballet Balanchine created in America and is one of the signature works of New York City Ballet’s repertory. Originating it as a lesson in stage technique, Balanchine worked unexpected rehearsal events into the choreography. Serenade, an ode to the female ballerina, is a ballet of beauty, elegance, yearning and freedom. Within four enrapturing musical movements of Sonatina, Waltz, Russian Dance, and Elegy, George Balanchine breathtakingly encapsulates the ballerina’s labour, vulnerability, love and sacrifices. Alongside these themes, Balanchine wittily pays homage to three eminent romantic ballet heroines from ballets Giselle (1841), Swan Lake (1877) and The Sleeping Beauty (1890), rewriting their accounts of suffering to unapologetically transcend need for their betrothed. In this iconic work, Balanchine streamlined the technique of classical ballet into poetic geometry, awash with beauty and diaphanous moonlight.