ALLEGRA KENT COACHES SYMPHONY IN C’S SECOND MOVEMENT PAS DE DEUX AND ITS FINALE FOR THE GEORGE BALANCHINE FOUNDATION VIDEO ARCHIVES
New York City: On February 10, 2025, in the New York City Ballet studios at the Rose Building, Lincoln Center, New York, former NYCB principal dancer Allegra Kent coached NYCB artists Mira Nadon and Gilbert Bolden III in the stirring and sublime pas de deux and finale of the ballet, retitled in 1948 for its first performances in America as Symphony in C.
Choreographed on early Balanchine favorite (and fellow Georgian) Tamara Toumanova in 1945 for the Paris Opera Ballet's world premiere, the second movement of the ballet now known as Symphony in C (original title Le Palais de Cristal) has long been considered the lyrical and emotional heart of the four-movement work. Generations of ballerinas have treasured the role, which Kent performed in NYCB for sixteen years.
Paul Boos, Director of the Video Archives, oversaw the filming with Founding Director Nancy Reynolds. NYCB solo pianist Elaine Chelton accompanied the session, which concluded with Kent being interviewed by writer Claudia Roth Pierpont.
The GBF Video Archives document the insights of dancers, often principals from original casts or those who worked closely with Balanchine. The Archives mission is to preserve this knowledge and pass it on to today's dancers, scholars, and audiences. The Archives are available world-wide through public and university libraries, and digitally through the George Balanchine Foundation website for those working in the dance field and using these resources in their work. In addition, the interview components can be accessed on the Balanchine Foundation's YouTube channel.
ALLEGRA KENT studied ballet with Bronislava Nijinska and Carmelita Maracci in Los Angeles. She joined the NYCB as an apprentice in 1952, and soon thereafter George Balanchine created a principal role for her in the "Unanswered Question" section of Ivesiana. In 1957 she was promoted to principal dancer, performing a varied repertory of ballets. In addition to Ivesiana, Balanchine created roles for her in Stars and Stripes, The Seven Deadly Sins, Episodes, Bugaku, and Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet. She was also in the original casts of Robbins's Dances at a Gathering and Dumbarton Oaks. For the GBF Video Archives she has coached leading roles in Bugaku, La Sonnambula, Stars and Stripes, Ivesiana and Episodes with Bart Cook. Kent is the author of Allegra Kent's Water Beauty Book (1976), her autobiography Once a Dancer... (1997), and her most recent children’s book Grand Jeté and Me (2021).
MIRA NADON, a NYCB principal, began her ballet training in Montclair, California and in 2017, Ms. Nadon became an apprentice with NYCB, rising through the ranks to corps de ballet in 2018, soloist in 2022, and principal in 2023. She has been featured in Balanchine’s Apollo, Errante, Monumentum/Movements, Scotch Symphony, Raymonda Variations and Liebeslieder Walzer as well as ballets by Robbins, Martins and Ratmansky. For the Interpreters Archive video series, she has been coached by Allegra Kent and Bart Cook in Agon pas de deux, Colleen Neary in Kammermusik No. 2, and Kay Mazzo in Swan Lake.
GILBERT BOLDEN III is a New York City Ballet soloist and favored partner. Born in San Diego, California, he began dancing at the age of nine in Las Vegas and continued his studies at The Rock School for Dance Education in Philadelphia, PA. In 2014, Mr. Bolden enrolled at the School of American Ballet. He became an apprentice with the NYCB in August 2017, a member of the corps de ballet in August 2018 and he was promoted to soloist in 2023. As a danseur noble, his repertory includes George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker cavalier, Intermezzo Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, and Concerto Barocco.
CLAUDIA ROTH PIERPONT is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she has written about the arts for more than twenty years. She is the author of three books: Passionate Minds (2000), a collection of essays about women writers ranging from Hannah Arendt to Mae West; Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books (2013), an exploration of the life and work of Philip Roth; and American Rhapsody (2016), a collection of essays on American subjects including George Gershwin, Nina Simone, and the Chrysler Building. She is currently working on a history of New York culture that will include a chapter on New York City Ballet.
NANCY REYNOLDS is the founding director of the George Balanchine Video Archives. She is a former dancer with New York City Ballet and has been Director of Research for The George Balanchine Foundation since 1994, when she conceived the Video Archives program. Among her books are Repertory in Review: Forty Years of the New York City Ballet; No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (with Malcolm McCormick); and Remembering Lincoln. In 2013 she received a “Bessie” award for “outstanding service to the field of dance.”
PAUL BOOS, Director of the Video Archives since 2021, is a former dancer with NYCB and répétiteur for the George Balanchine Trust. His work for the Trust has been presented at several theaters, including the Maryinsky, Bolshoi, Paris Opera, La Scala, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and Boston Ballet. He is the director of Rye Ballet Conservatory’s pre-pro division as well as a guest teacher abroad and locally.
The George Balanchine Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation established in 1983 with the goal of creating programs that educate the public and further Balanchine’s work and aesthetic. Among the GBF’s major initiatives are the Video Archives, in which dancers who worked closely with Balanchine teach and coach their roles with the dancers of today (Interpreters Archive) or recreate sections of ballets that are rarely performed or in danger of disappearing (Archive of Lost Choreography). Legendary dancers who have taken part in this project include Alicia Alonso, Jacques d’Amboise, Suzanne Farrell, Frederic Franklin, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, Alicia Markova, Patricia McBride, Maria Tallchief, Violette Verdy, Patricia Wilde, Edward Villella, and others, working with dancers from such companies as New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, and San Francisco, Boston, Pacific Northwest and Suzanne Farrell ballets.
In 2007 the Foundation announced a major initiative, the online publication of the Balanchine Catalogue, a fully searchable database giving first-performance details of all known dances created by Balanchine and supplemented by lists of companies staging his ballets, a bibliography, a videography, reference resources, a database of roles Balanchine performed, and related information. The project was made possible by a leadership grant from The Jerome Robbins Foundation. An expanded and updated version, enhanced by visuals, was introduced in June 2022 (www.balanchine.org).
The George Balanchine Foundation expresses its profound gratitude to the following donors: Agnes Gund, Barbara D. Horgan, The New York State Council on the Arts, the Pettit Foundation, Nancy R. Reynolds and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and to Robert Brenner, Leslie Tonner Curtis, The National Endowment for the Arts, Meryl Rosofsky and Stuart H. Coleman, The Evelyn Sharp Foundation, Denise Littlefield Sobel, Resa and Heiner Sussner, and I. Peter Wolff.
