The Symphony of a Palace

Le Palais de cristal, one of the most famous ballets of the 20th century, was presented in June, 1947, at the Paris Opera, and in March, 1948, it was performed in New York, by Balanchine’s own company, as Symphony in C, the title under which it is danced to this day by companies around the globe.

The story of the creation of this Balanchine masterpiece is remarkable and comes close to being improbable. In l947, the Paris Opera Ballet was left without a choreographer. So George Balanchine was invited to transfer to the Opera three ballets from his New York repertoire. Having fulfilled his obligations in this respect, Balanchine became so enamoured of the artistic charm of the Paris dancers that he decided to present them with an unplanned work - and this was to be Le Palais cristal. The metaphorical title, an image of the Paris school of clas­sical dance, was not accidental. In addition to which, Le Palais cristal, is a choreographic portrait of the Paris Opera Ballet: its hierarchical structure (which, in his company, Balanchine did away with) is preserved and secured in the structure of each movement. At the cen­ter are the etoile and the premier danseur, slightly fur­ther off are the two soloist couples, while closer to the backdrop is the corps de ballet. All this is a reflec­tion of the entrenched, spatial and professional laws of the Paris Academic Company. Balanchine had no intention of infringing these laws, he admired them and brought out their artistic wisdom.

The seventeen-year-old Georges Bizet had written his 1st (Youthful) Symphony as a diploma work in the year - 1855 - that he had completed his studies at the Conservatoire. Having won the Grand Prix de Rome, Bizet went off to Italy and was to write no more symphonies, while the score of Symphony in С gathered dust in the Conservatoire library until 1935, when it was given its first public performance - which, incidentally, was not a great success. Balanchine heard about this from Stravinsky. The former read the score, adapted it for the stage, and only after this did he begin to appreci­ate the musical world of the symphonic Bizet as much as he did that of the operatic Bizet.

By giving each of the four movements its own contingent of dancers and bringing all the partici­pants together in an exultant finale, Balanchine too achieved an exemplary ’reading’ of the music. Balanchine’s text follows that of Bizet, repeating the flow of the music and the pattern of the musical form in a skilful design and exquisite configurations. Theme, elaboration, recapitulation, general intonation, dynam­ic play and, finally, the very sound of the orchestra, its instrumental color, its agility - all this is translated into the language of choreography with a truly hypnot­ic skill.

Balanchine has made a ballet about ballet. If one was to attempt to answer the question, what is its signifi­cance, in a single word, this word would be genius. The genius of the ensemble, the structural genius of the grand classical pas, each of the four sections of which - entree, adagio, variations, coda - Balanchine embellished choreographically and developed symphonically, deploying them in space and uniting them in time - into the flow of the dance. Le Palais de cristal is an ode to the dance logic of the grand classi­cal pas and, at the same time, an ode to the dance genius of the classical ballet company.

Vadim Gaevsky (text from the handbook, abridged)