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PATRICIA McBRIDE AND IB ANDERSEN, FORMER NYCB PRINCIPAL DANCERS, COACH DONIZETTI VARIATIONS
New York City — New York City — On May 11th in the New York City Ballet Studios, Lincoln Center, NYCB principal dancers Indiana Woodward and Anthony Huxley will be coached in Donizetti Variations by Patricia McBride and Ib Andersen. Leigh Witchel interviews McBride and Andersen at the conclusion of the coaching session. Solo pianist Elaine Chelton of the New York City Ballet Orchestra will accompany the coaching, and the taping will be supervised by Video Archives director Paul Boos.
Anyone seeking a celebratory Balanchine ballet of charm and cheer with technically difficult moments need look no further. Melissa Hayden, on whom Balanchine created the ballerina role, remembered that her tricky solo variation "never stopped." The demanding male solo required not only that he partner the ballerina but perform series of beaten movements twice -- a true virtuoso demand. Some observers saw in these steps echoes of the renowned Danish male Bournonville technique, which Balanchine was known to admire; he had staged some of his own ballets in Copenhagen in the thirties.
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.
PATRICIA MCBRIDE, in a long and illustrious career with NYCB, had an extraordinarily large number of works choreographed on her by George Balanchine, including “Rubies” (Jewels), Tarantella, Who Cares?, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hermia), Harlequinade (Columbine), Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet (Intermezzo), Union Jack, Coppélia (Swanhilda), and Divertimento from Le Baiser de la Fée, among several others. McBride was also favored by Jerome Robbins, who created principal roles for her in Dances at a Gathering, The Goldberg Variations, The Four Seasons, and Opus 19/The Dreamer. With her frequent partner Edward Villella she performed on concert stages around the world. Among her other partners were some of the most noted dancers of her generation, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, Helgi Tómasson, and Peter Martins. McBride danced for five presidents. She is the recipient of a Dance Magazine Award and the Kennedy Center Honors. After her retirement from performing in 1989, she joined the faculties of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the Chautauqua Institute, before taking up a senior position at the Charlotte Ballet in 1996, where she continues to teach and set excerpts of Balanchine ballets. For the GBF Video Archives she has been recorded coaching her created roles in “Rubies,” Tarantella, Who Cares?, Harlequinade, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, The Steadfast Tin Soldier, and Le Baiser de la Fée.
IB ANDERSEN, born in Copenhagen and accepted into the Royal Danish Ballet School at 7, he studied with Kirsten Ralov, Hans Brenaa, Flemming Ryberg, and Vera Volkova. In 1972, at the age 18, he was accepted by the Royal Danish Ballet as an apprentice and was promoted to principal dancer at the age of 20, which made him the youngest principal in the company's history. At the Royal Danish Ballet, Andersen appeared in leading roles in ballets of August Bournonville, such as Napoli, Flower Festival in Genzano, Far from Denmark, The Kermesse in Bruges, and A Folk Tale, as well as in classic ballets such as The Nutcracker, Coppélia and Giselle. In 1980, George Balanchine invited him to join the NYCB. Roles that were created for him by Balanchine included Ballade (1980), Robert Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze (1980), and Mozartiana (1981). Altogether, Andersen appeared in some sixty ballets during his ten years with the company. In 2000, after a brief period as ballet master for Pittsburgh Ballet Theater, Andersen was appointed artistic director of Ballet Arizona, where he, for more than 24 years, oversaw a repertory of classical and contemporary ballets and also staged many works by Balanchine. He also created a number of original works for the company. In 2024 he stepped down from the role as artistic director and was appointed Artistic Director Emeritus for the company. He is currently a guest teacher and coach. For the GBF Video Archives he has coached his role in Mozartiana.
INDIANA WOODWARD, born in Paris, France, began her dance training in Venice, California, and continued her studies at SAB. In 2012 she joined NYCB and was promoted to soloist in 2017 and principal in 2021. Her repertory includes works of Balanchine: George Balanchine's The Nutcracker® (Sugar Plum, Dewdrop); Apollo (Calliope); Liebeslieder Walzer; Ratmansky: Solitude; Robbins: Four Seasons (Spring), Dances at a Gathering; and Martins: Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and La Sylphide. For the Video Archives, has been coached by several luminaries, Patricia Wilde in her roles from George Balanchine's The Nutcracker® (Marzipan), Caracole, Western Symphony and Swan Lake (pas de trois); in addition, Allegra Kent coached Woodward in Stars and Stripes (Corcoran Cadets) and Patricia McBride in the Tanaquil Le Clercq role from La Valse.
ANTHONY HUXLEY joined NYCB in 2007 and was promoted to soloist in 2011 and principal in 2015. He has danced leading roles in Balanchine’s Duo Concertant, “Emeralds” and “Rubies” from Jewels, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oberon), and Symphony in C (3rd Movement), among others, as well as in Robbins’s Goldberg Variations and Bournonville’s La Sylphide (James). For the GBF Video Archives, he was coached by Jacques d’Amboise in the little-known Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux solo Balanchine first staged for him.
LEIGH WITCHEL is the founder and editor of dancelog.nyc. He was also the dance writer for the New York Post, as well as a Guggenheim Fellow in choreography for his work as the Artistic Director of Dance as Ever, a chamber ballet company based in Manhattan.
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, the estate of Suzanne Youngerman, Nancy R. Reynolds and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and to Robert Brenner, Leslie Tonner Curtis, Maureen Footer, Russell Vaille Lee, 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.
