Symphony in C: Dancing a Classical Symphony

Kara Yoo Leaman explores the quintessential classical symphony themes that are found in Georges Bizet’s Symphony in C, and how they are mirrored in George Balanchine’s choreography for the ballet.

GBF Catalogue Listing

Resources

Musical Score of Symphony in C

Video Transcript

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY (SUGGESTED READING)

Balanchine, George. 1954. Balanchine’s Complete Stories of the Great Ballets. Ed. Francis Mason. Garden City:
Doubleday.
———. [1949] 2006. “The Dance Element in Stravinsky’s Music.” Opera Quarterly 22 (1): 138–43.

George Balanchine Foundation. 2007. “Palais de Cristal” and “Symphony in C.” Music by G. Bizet, choreography by George Balanchine. Nos. 240 and 244 in Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works.
https://balanchine.org/catalogue-page/catalogue-main-archive/.

Goldner, Nancy. 2008. Balanchine Variations. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.

Homans, Jennifer. 2022. Mr. B: George Balanchine’s Twentieth Century. New York: Random House.

Hutchinson, Ann. 1948. Symphony in C. Labanotation score. Music by Georges Bizet, choreography by George Balanchine. New York: Dance Notation Bureau.

Jordan, Stephanie. 2000. Moving Music: Dialogues with Music in Twentieth-Century Ballet. London: Dance Books.

Leaman, Kara Yoo. 2021a. “Dance as Music in George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco.” SMT-V 7.2 (February).
http://doi.org/10.30535/smtv.7.2.
———. 2021b. “Musical Techniques in Balanchine’s Jazzy Bach Ballet.” Journal of Music Theory 65 (1): 138–69.
———. 2022. “George Balanchine’s Art of Choreographic Musicality in Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux.” Music Theory Spectrum 44 (2): 340–69.

Lena Leson. 2021. “Making an American Modernist: Franco-Russian Music Practices and Cold War Aesthetics in the Ballets of George Balanchine.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan.

Reynolds, Nancy. 1977. Repertory in Review: 40 Years of the New York City Ballet. New York: The Dial Press.

Shanet, Howard. 1958. “Bizet’s Suppressed Symphony.” The Musical Quarterly 44/4 (October): 461–476.

“Symphony in C New York City Ballet (1973).” 2016. YouTube video, 29:20. Posted by John Clifford, September
3. https://youtu.be/Fn1ZVGp0plc.