A year or so before Lincoln Kirstein’s seventieth birthday, Leslie Katz, president of the Eakins Press Foundation, began work on a bibliography of Kirstein ’s voluminous writings in his many fields of endeavor. On the seventieth itself–May 4, 1977– Kirstein was presented with a bound copy of the as-yet-unfinished manuscript, packed in an ingenious box that included a sharpened pencil. The idea was to enlist the assistance of Kirstein himself. This presentation took place at a surprise birthday party at the School of American Ballet, with Balanchine among the guests.

     After the party, as he walked across Lincoln Center Plaza to the New York State Theater with his assistant Barbara Horgan, Balanchine said as a sort of aside, ‘I wish someone would do that for me.’ Barbara Horgan’s telephone call to Leslie Katz the following morning set in motion the work that engaged dozens of researchers across the world over the next five years.

     Katz invited Nancy Norman Lassalle and Harvey Simmonds to join him as directors of the project, and Simmonds was also to be the editor of the manuscript. The book would be a chronological listing of every work by the choreographer from his beginnings in Russia to the most recent ballet he had completed at the time of publication, with first-performance details and a few special notes. It would be printed by the master printer Martino Mardersteig at his Stamperia Valdonega in Verona, which had also been responsible for printing Elie Nadelman, the book that marked the first collaboration between Kirstein and the Eakins Press.

     Simmonds established an initial chronology and records of premiere performances in the United States through published sources and materials housed in the Dance Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, uncovering such obscurities as Balanchine’s 1943 staging of the Saint Matthew Passion with Stokowski conducting. In the winter of 1978-1979 he widened the search to London, Paris, and Monte Carlo. Richard Buckle’s enthusiastic support led to meetings with Dame Marie Rambert (who demonstrated at the barre), Anton Dolin, and Irina Baronova. The London collections of the Garrick Club, the Theatre Museum (then a part of the Victoria and Albert Museum), the Mander and Mitchenson Collection, and the archives of the London Coliseum were mined, and there were interviews with Dame Ninette Valois, Dame Alicia Markova, and Lydia Lopokova.

     In Paris, consultations at the Collection Rondel of the Bibliothèque de l’ Arsenal uncovered some invaluable Diaghilev programs, and in Monte Carlo, where Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes spent the summers, the archives of the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the Societé des Bains de Mer, and the Centre Presse de la Principauté de Monaco were consulted. Boris Kochno, at one time Balanchine’s collaborator, spoke at length about Les Ballets 1933 and told of an impromptu dance he performed at a costume ball in the south of France with Balanchine and Mme. Georges Auric at three o’clock in the morning. He also corrected the widespread misapprehension that he took his inspiration for the libretto of Prodigal Son from Pushkin–rather, he said, it came from the Bible.

     This European research brought numbers of new works to light, and on his name day, April 23, 1979, Balanchine was presented with a model of the book-to-be, including printed sample pages. When, later in the spring, Nancy Reynolds accepted the position of research director for the project , the preliminary notes filled a foot-square file and a 5 x 8” index-card box. After a further three years, materials she gathered had expanded to some nine feet of files and a myriad of boxes and notebooks.

     The timing of the endeavor could hardly have been more propitious. Balanchine, after a lifetime of indifference to anything in print about himself or his work, influenced by Reynolds’s Repertory in Review as well as the completed Kirstein bibliography, had begun to see the value of leaving a written record of his achievements. His active involvement in the project was not only an inspiration; it provided information and clues to further discoveries that could not have come from any other source.

     For Reynolds, no lead was too small, no hint too obscure or unpromising, to be pursued. Under her direction, research was undertaken in the Soviet Union, in Denmark, where Balanchine spent the winter of 1930-1931, and in resorts on the Rhine, where the tiny group calling itself the Principal Dancers of the Russian State Ballet (Balanchine, Alexandra Danilova, Tamara Geva, and Nicholas Efimov) toured in 1924.

     London publications, especially Era and Dancing Times, were consulted at length for information about Balanchine’s music-hall creations between 1929 and 1931. Two dancers from his company, “16 Delightful Girls 16 ” (which actually included one man), Doris Sonne and Natasha Gregorova, remembered wisps of things–a Chopin étude, a ‘statue ’ ballet – – and particularly recalled Balanchine’s musicality, unflappability, and financial generosity. (He also taught them to drink vodka ‘Russian style.’) The most fruitful contact was another of the ‘girls,’ Betty Scorer, who later danced with de Basil and became a journalist under the name Elizabeth Barron. Of Sir Oswald Stoll’s 1931 variety shows at the Alhambra and Coliseum, at Reynold’s she wrote, ‘[Balanchine’s] audition was a revelation. Instead of allowing us to do our prepared party pieces, he . . . gave us a protracted enchaînement which he demonstrated himself and which we had to reproduce as clearly as possible, a far better way for him to judge than from the stereotyped solos carefully chosen, diligently worked upon, and safely within our individual powers. ’

     It was no secret that Sir Oswald’s orchestra (sometimes conducted by his son Dennis) was unable to play Balanchine’s selections: Stravinsky and Auric. As Barron described it,

     ‘George approached the footlights and addressed the top-hatted figure in the empty stalls. “Sir Stoll,” he asked politely, “what pieces does your little boy know?” Sheaves of music were passed up. George looked through them: Liszt’s Liebestraum, the 1812 Overture, Offenbach’s can-can from Orpheus in the Underworld. “Right,” said George, “we will do our ballets to these, since you know how to play them.”‘

     The most amusing result must surely have been the Liebestraum, in which the huge stage of the Coliseum became a revolving phonograph record, complete with ‘His Master’s Voice’ dog and trumpet-tube; the girls were needles. ‘I may say getting on and off stage was a challenge,’ Barron recalled; ‘I had the good luck to be one of the four girls who, dressed in Train Bleu– type beach pajamas, performed in a fascinating quartet with convoluted head movements [that] I have never forgotten. ’ She added, ‘As a personal note, I would like to mention that such was Balanchine’s prestige that, after he had departed for Denmark, the distinguished director of musicals John Murray Anderson hired me for his coming production in London . . . without an audition.’

     All the ‘girls ’ spoke of the admirable accompanist Balanchine brought with him–a Mrs. Fox, probably of Russian origin, who had married an Englishman and perhaps had played for Diaghilev. She had been with Balanchine in Monte Carlo when Grigoriev, Diaghilev’ s régisseur, was distributing the final payment of a season. Marching into the Casino, Balanchine threw it all–his entire capital–on Number 32 and, after watching the game for a few moments, dejectedly left the hall. Mrs. Fox lingered, then rushed out, and finding him sunk upon the beach, delivered the news that his number had come up: his original sum had multiplied by at least ten. When Les Ballets 1933 played London, Balanchine saw to it that all the Coliseum girls had tickets.

     Researching Balanchine’s Russian years presented enormous obstacles, particularly since there was no word from the Leningrad researcher for more than a year. Eventually Reynolds established an informative correspondence with the Moscow-based dance historian Elizabeth Souritz, author of Soviet Choreography in the 1920s, but it seemed clear that in order to find exactly what was required it would be necessary to send a researcher with whom we could communicate freely. Thanks to Professor John Malmstad of Columbia University, Susan Summer of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center’s Dance Division, and the Slavonic Reference Service at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a reasonably clear understanding had developed of the probable sources for Balanchine material not available in Bernard Taper’s Balanchine: A Biography, and Yuri Slonimsky’ s ‘Balanchine: The Early Years.’ Dr. Gunhild Schüller of the University of Vienna was sent to investigate.

     Souritz and Schüller consulted the newspapers Krasnaya gazeta and Zhizn ’ iskusstva and several periodicals. The weekly publication of the Petrograd/Leningrad Academic Theaters gave news of Balanchine’s appearances at the State Theater of Opera and Ballet (formerly Maryinsky), of which he became a member in June 1921, and also recounted school activities. Balanchine’s April 1921 diploma was signed by Vaganova, Gerdt, Leontiev, Ponomariev, Chekreguin, and Shiraev, among others, and possibly as early as 1922 his choreography was danced at school graduation performances. At the State Theater his most celebrated role was as soloist in the Trepak from The Nutcracker (perhaps first danced on March 26, 1922); Balanchine reproduced Ivanov’s choreography exactly for this dance in his 1954 version of the ballet for the New York City Ballet. He was considered a member of the company until September 1, 1924, when he was fired, although he had sailed for the East Prussian port of Stettin three months earlier, never to return. The Soviet press tracked the Russian State Ballet during its travels through Germany, often featuring Danilova, who was the most accomplished of the four dancers–and it was even reported, long after its dancers had officially been ‘released ’ by the State Theater, that the group’s success had resulted in an invitation to London.

     No programs were found for Balanchine ’s experimental company the Young Ballet (ca. 1923-1924), but research in newspapers brought to light several concert numbers not mentioned either by Taper or Slonimsky, set to the music of Kreisler, Anton Rubinstein, and Rachmaninoff, among others. These were often performed in nightclubs and outdoor theaters, or sometimes on platforms in public gardens. Balanchine was occasionally the pianist.

     According to Pëtr Gusev, a member of the Young Ballet, who was interviewed by Poel Karp in Leningrad in 1981, Balanchine and Geva danced at the Hôtel de l’ Europe on the same program with Nikolai Foregger and several other acts. Gusev said Balanchine’s early pas de deux should really be referred to as duets, and that he was already using bridges and ‘ non-classical’ formations. Lopukhov was a great champion of Balanchine’s work: ‘To his face,’ said Gusev, ‘Lopukhov spoke very sternly with Balanchine; not seldom he reproached him for incoherence, lack of selectiveness, and for putting in too much. But behind his back he said, ‘Keep quiet; such a choreographer has not been seen since Fokine.’ Although Balanchine admired Lopukhov’s movement vocabulary, he did not like his complicated philosophical symbolism. And while at the time it was fashionable to criticize Petipa, Balanchine had a different opinion. He always said ‘We cannot reach Petipa.’ Foregger, with his machine dances and agit-prop presentations, they considered nonsense; they were also horrified by Isadora Duncan.

     Neither Balanchine at this young age nor his little company went unremarked by the critics. An unsigned article in Krasnaya gazeta (Leningrad, May 20, 1924), notes that Fokine is not the only one ‘searching for new paths and styles in ballet ’; it mentions Goleizovsky, Lukin, Lopukhov, and Balanchivadze, who was twenty years old at the time. In the same article, Balanchine’s foxtrot is characterized as ‘close to Suprematism. ’ Souritz commented, ‘Foxtrots were used very often–by Meyerhold, by choreographers–as a satire against the bourgeois society.’ It is probable that Balanchine choreographed more than one. In Zhizn’iskusstva (May 27, 1924), A. Voyesev welcomes the Young Ballet as ‘a new touch to classical ballet, ’ then warns Balanchine against ‘Moscow ’s decadence’ (presumably a reference to Foregger’s homosexuality).

     The Catalogue of Works presented much of this material in English for the first time. When Gunhild Schüller and Nancy Reynolds interviewed Balanchine using Schüller’s notes from Russia, he was most responsive and seemed very excited that things long forgotten had been dredged up from the past. The two then talked to Danilova, posing the same questions: thus, the early Russian information came not only from combing the written sources, but also from talking with three of the people who had been part of that world. Danilova, who was associated with Balanchine off and on from their childhood until his death, also spoke of his unrealized idea while still in Russia for a major work to Scriabin, which Gusev confirmed.

     Published information about individual works was augmented by discussions with dancers and scholars. Tatiana Leskova was interviewed about Balustrade, Marie-Jeanne about Sentimental Colloquy (a ballet featuring a bicycle and turtle, with Dalí décor). Documentation of the South American tour of 1941, Balanchine’s Concierto de Mozart for the Colón (1942), and various stagings of his works in South America came from the Dance Division, the cooperation of many local theaters, and through the assistance of Antonio José Faró, a former dancer living in Rio de Janeiro. From Maria Tallchief we learned of her first Balanchine assignment: understudy to Anitra ’s Dance in Song of Norway. She recalled Balanchine’s gloominess about his future on their 1947 trip to Paris, where he was guest ballet master and she the first American ballerina to perform since Augusta Maywood more than a century before. Later, for Ballet Theatre, he refurbished the Don Quixote and Black Swan pas de deux for the ballerina who would soon attract international acclaim as his Firebird. Tanaquil Le Clercq remembered (by humming) which movements of the Mozart Quintet in G Minor were used for Resurgence (1946) for a March of Dimes benefit — in which, with tragic irony, she danced a young girl stricken by polio.

     Aspects of de Basil’s Ballets Russes, with which Balanchine was associated for a year, were clarified by Kathrine Sorley Walker, and Annabelle Lyon revealed that in the early performances of Serenade she danced the Waltz alone: the male partner–William Dollar–was not added until 1936. Lew Christensen and Ruthanna Boris talked about the Metropolitan Opera years (1935-1938).

     Patricia McBride spoke of a ‘vision’ solo Balanchine had choreographed for her in a regional production of Sleeping Beauty and said he often helped with her concert appearances. From Geneva came news of a complete Swan Lake (1967), the first and third acts in good measure rechoreographed by Balanchine in a week. The collection of Nathalie Branitzka, then in the possession of her son André Hoyer of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, yielded many programs of the Diaghilev years, which were especially useful for the roles Balanchine danced. This treasure trove contained, among many mementos, candid films of the de Basil dancers on a boat, probably bound for Australia.

     From the beginning, significant revisions in choreography, costumes, and scenery were noted. Information of this kind is rarely reflected in programs or reviews–the source is usually conversations with the performers. For the repertory as it stood in the 1980s Rosemary Dunleavy, Ballet Mistress of New York City Ballet, was essential. For earlier works, Reynolds discussed the Ballet Russe Raymonda (1946) with Frederic Franklin, Nikita Talin, and Maria Tallchief; the La Source / Sylvia ballets with Suki Schorer, Melissa Hayden, and Jacques d’Amboise; Swan Lake (ca. 1927; Balanchine removed the mime) with Balanchine, information corroborated by Kochno, Dolin, and Markova.

     Balanchine’s help, of course, was crucial: each of the three versions of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, he said, was completely different; the many incarnations of Chaconne, in and out of opera, were essentially the same. Of Mozartiana, three productions were similar, one completely new. What were the permutations of Ballet Imperial? Since these works were created over a span of fifty years, only Balanchine could deal with them all–although many people, especially such long-term stagers as Una Kai and Francia Russell– confirmed his memories.

      Stagings by non-Balanchine companies were included in the Catalogue as an important part of the works’ theatrical history, documenting the number of companies that have taken a particular ballet into repertory, and in what parts of the world it has been seen. Itineraries of New York City Ballet tours were also provided. Material of this nature gives some idea of the durability of a dance, something mere premiere listings do not reflect.

     In purely musical matters, Balanchine provided a great deal of information– about Cotillon, Chaconne, the orchestration of Serenade, and Divertimento No. 15 with its specially-composed cadenza, to name several instances. Kochno, Auric, and Vittorio Rieti helped with the pre-American days; Robert Irving and Gordon Boelzner with the repertory of Balanchine’s later period. Boelzner was especially helpful on choreographic revisions of some of Balanchine’s musically difficult ballets–late Stravinsky, for example: as rehearsal pianist he had been involved with these scores by the hour. He also pointed out that the beautiful violin cadenza in Act I of The Nutcracker was actually from The Sleeping Beauty, but as it had the same musical theme and key as The Nutcracker ‘tree-growing’ music, Balanchine inserted it just before that passage to extend the mime. Swan Lake was hummed over the telephone with Roland John Wiley, a professor specializing in Tschaikovsky, and with Arlene Croce, who also sang parts of Sylvia / La Source / Coppélia to discover their musically overlapping moments.

     One musical matter may never be settled: there is some question as to who conducted the premiere of Prodigal Son. According to the program it was Prokofiev (‘l’ auteur), and Prokofiev claims this in his autobiography, an assertion Stravinsky repeats. In his essential source book, Grigoriev names Désormière, which Balanchine believed to be correct. According to Richard Buckle, Stravinsky was in the theater that night for the premiere of Renard–but Balanchine said that Prokofiev wasn’t there at all: he hated the production. Contemporary reviews are not clear on the subject, and Kochno did not remember, although he remarked that the dancers far preferred professional conductors to composers in the pit, no matter how eminent the latter might be.

     Balanchine was proud of the advanced camera techniques used under his direction in his abbreviated Swan Lake for the film I Was an Adventuress. The Walt Disney company provided the information that although Balanchine was not formally involved with the animated film Fantasia, his Water Nymph Ballet from the Goldwyn Follies of 1938 inspired the Fantasia Dance of the Ostriches and Hippos. Independently of Balanchine’s participation, Baronova was used as a model for some sequences in the film.

     Tracking down original television work presented particular challenges, since there were no programs or indexes for the earliest years (late 1940s and early 1950s). Dredging uncovered a Coppélia story called One, Yuletide Square, with Tanaquil Le Clercq and Robert Helpmann; and a Cinderella with the comedian Jimmy Savo as a Fairy. It was already known that Balanchine created several dances for André Eglevsky to perform on the Kate Smith Hour.

     American musical comedies presented a different kind of problem: dances were often by many hands, unspecified, and some dance sequences were not listed on programs. Close examination of newspapers, including Variety, helped, but often it was Balanchine or one of the dancers who held the final clues: Fred Danieli on Where ’s Charley? and Edward Bigelow on Rosalinda (his first job) were particularly informative. Tamara Geva, of course, was a source for On Your Toes; Katherine Dunham wrote of her collaboration with Balanchine on Cabin in the Sky.

      After scrutiny of the printed sources, followed by the querying, pondering, piecing, and deducing made possible by the contributions of others, Reynolds brought her conclusions to Balanchine. While his usual wry wit was very much in evidence during interviews, it was his memory that was so invaluable. The kinds of things that came to him were extraordinary; for example, who was the composer of the Polka Mélancolique he choreographed for Ruth Page in 1925, long forgotten by Page herself? At first, Mr. B. hadn’t a notion; then he reflected, hummed a little, and– inspired–went to the piano and started to play a truly melancholy polka. Composer? Anton Rubinstein.

     Although he mainly kept his mind on the business at hand, occasionally a remark caused Balanchine to think of other matters–for instance, that he had applied for an exit visa from the Soviet Union to the Far East as early as 1923. This was refused, and the following year he tried for Germany, hoping that because some German actors had recently come to the Soviet on exchange (encouraged by Lenin, who wanted foreign currency), he stood a chance of getting out. As we know, this strategy was successful. However, it might have seemed an empty victory in the short run since, said Balanchine, the heat in Berlin that summer was excessive, leading to very low attendance for the Principal Dancers of the Russian State Ballet. He also confirmed what others have said about attendance at Diaghilev ’s Ballets Russes: a crowd of trendsetters appeared on first nights and for premieres; at other times, this most famous ballet troupe in the world played before sparse audiences indeed.

     He spoke of how hard it was to think of things that had happened as long as sixty years before, but seemed to enjoy talking of the 1930s and 1940s musicals, fondly remembering an airplane number (Night Flight) for Harriet Hoctor in the 1936 Ziegfeld Follies, for which he also did his innovative ‘shadow ’ ballet and a Conga for Josephine Baker. Balanchine remembered Hoctor as well trained, although from his description it seems he produced a version of one of her standards: endless bourrées in an enormous backbend. At the time of Reynolds’s last conversations with him in the spring of 1982, Balanchine was planning another foray into the world of musicals, to help in the revival of On Your Toes . His serious illness began before rehearsals started, but the show went on anyway, with Peter Martins patching the choreography where needed. Natalia Makarova won raves in the role created by Tamara Geva in 1936.

     Occasionally, Balanchine was truly surprised by something the researchers had discovered–his own performance in Le Spectre de la Rose in Copenhagen (with a picture to prove it), or his staging of The Dying Swan for Toumanova in Holland in 1949. In Copenhagen, where he was guest ballet master for the season 1930-1931, he completely rechoreographed four old chestnuts: Three-Cornered Hat, Schéhérazade, La Boutique Fantasque, and The Legend of Joseph, and he also performed as a substitute for Peter Martins ’s uncle in Les Sylphides. The more one reads and sees of Balanchine, the more one recognizes his extensive background in the standard repertory, despite his many departures from it. From the Maryinsky he inserted an episode from Giselle in the 1946 Ballet Theatre production (to which Antony Tudor also contributed): in Act II, Albrecht lays Giselle on a bed of flowers, but she sinks away, and only the flowers remain. Also from the Maryinsky–he didn ’t remember from which ballet–he got the idea for the mechanical device in The Nutcracker by which the ballerina is led across the floor by her partner, balancing on a single pointe.

     Balanchine never really said anything bad about anybody, but he did reveal that his Concierto de Mozart was created for a company that could not dance–‘just could not dance!’–and thus was choreographed to show off Tchelitchew ’s ornamental costumes. He also spoke of his dissatisfaction with his finale for Four Temperaments, and how he finally got a chance to put it right when the New York City Ballet was rehearsing for a television taping in 1977, some thirty years after its first performance. He was known to have carried things around in his head for years, waiting for a chance to act on them. La Valse is a case in point: Balanchine told Francisco Moncion of a change he had in mind–an earlier appearance for the Death figure–that he did not implement for several seasons. And who knows how long he had thought about truncating Apollo? One section was dropped in 1978, another–since restored–in 1979; in 1972, he said the ballet would never again be performed by a company of his, seeming to indicate that he had permanently lost interest in it. But, of course, the work remained a staple of the New York City Ballet repertory during his lifetime and beyond.

     Aware that his reputation was primarily that of a character dancer, Reynolds questioned him about a picture of The Sleeping Beauty taken in 1926, in which he appears as Prince Charming to Vera Nemtchinova’ s Aurora. Well, said Balanchine, he was just filling in, a frequent practice in the Diaghilev company. He was there simply for the partnering: the Prince’ s variation was omitted, and even the coda was performed by others, the Three Ivans. Along these lines, he confided that he was also often asked to rechoreograph numbers on the spot to accommodate the absence of essential dancers. Sometimes these creations lasted one night and, of course, they were not recorded anywhere. ‘So,’ said Mr. B.with a twinkle, ‘you ’ll never get everything on paper!’ Balanchine confirmed Baronova’s double fouettées in the Paris production of Orphée aux Enfers (1931), the vehicle for her stage debut; he confirmed as well his discussions with Pavlova about creating a Scarlatti piece for her. Dandré, he thought, vetoed that project, but Balanchine did produce two miniatures for the company, Aleko and Polka Grotesque, and he also attended Pavlova’s funeral accompanied by Betty Scorer. It seemed extraordinary that he would entertain the idea of working with a ballerina approaching fifty, and one with a reputation for the retardataire at that. But it should be noted that Pavlova was one of the few steady employers in the dance field throughout the twenties. The Diaghilev company was subjected to many layoffs, and dancers, virtually stranded and with little money, could use extra work; Balanchine mentioned that he created opera dances for provincial houses in France during these periods and, according to A.E. Twysden, Danilova’s biographer, the two spent their ‘honeymoon ’ dancing for René Blum, probably in 1927. No written proof of any of this has been located.

     With the research coming toward an end, an extensive bibliography and notes were prepared; a chronology of Balanchine ’s professional life was drawn up, including the roles he danced and the festivals he directed; and the book was indexed by Louis Silverstein of Yale University. Howard Gralla developed the design, experimenting with numerous type styles and entry arrangements to create the greatest possible legibility and clarity of presentation.

     By the summer of 1982, Balanchine’s failing health had increased the level of urgency. It became clear that Variations, set to the music of his most important collaborator over sixty years, Stravinsky, and made for the muse of the last stage of his creative life, Suzanne Farrell, would be his final work. In early December, Harvey Simmonds traveled to Verona for the last proofreading and approval as sheets came from the press. Three sets of folded and gathered signatures were hand-bound in Belgian linen by the Milanese firm that was to bind the full edition, and on December 23, Simmonds arrived from the printer with the first three copies of Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works.

     Balanchine was given the book at Roosevelt Hospital on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, as Tanaquil Le Clercq entered his room, he stretched his hand out to the book on the bedside table and said, ‘You see, Tanny, the Bible!’