New York City — The Jerome Robbins Foundation, by a gift made in recognition of Mr. Robbins's great respect and affection for George Balanchine, has announced a leadership grant of $150,000 to The George Balanchine Foundation for the updating and expansion of Choreography by George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works and for the creation of an online searchable database of this material to be mounted on the Foundation's website, www.balanchine.org, during 2004, Balanchine's centennial year.

Published in 1983 to critical acclaim and updated in 1984, the Catalogue, the first catalogue raisonné devoted to a choreographer's output, outlines the entire breadth of Balanchine's creativity. It is a comprehensive source of information on each of his ballets and every dance work he created for opera, musical theater, film and television, from the performance of his earliest choreography, La Nuit, at the Petrograd Theater Ballet School to the revision of Stravinsky's Variations for Orchestra for New York City Ballet, his final work. Prepared with Balanchine's participation (1979-82), entries provide full details on each production, including premiere cast and music, scenery and costume credits, as well as specific notes on the work, revisions, and stagings by dance companies throughout the world.

Nancy Reynolds, the Foundation's director of research, will review the content of the original catalogue and devise a roadmap for revisions. In addition to incorporating information about Balanchine's choreography that has surfaced during the past twenty years, a filmography and description of institutions with significant Balanchine holdings will be added. Publications about Balanchine, including his own writing, and a listing of roles he danced, features of the first edition, will be updated. New material in all areas will be introduced as it becomes available. Ms. Reynolds is the author of Repertory in Review: 40 Years of the New York City Ballet, a history of the company through 1976, and co-author of No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century, a voluminous history of 100 years of theatrical dance. She was also research director of the original Choreography By George Balanchine: A Catalogue of Works. Eakins Press Foundation, the publisher and copyright-holder of the original edition of the book, has agreed to support this project during its not-for-profit stages without remuneration, and will also be available for consultation.

The Foundation has engaged Smart Content Solutions, a New York custom publishing firm that deals with all media, to execute the online searchable database, thus making a large body of information about one of the twentieth century's creative giants easily available to scholars, students, teachers, artists, and the general public.