Lauren King
FORMER NEW YORK CITY BALLET PRINCIPALS PATRICIA MCBRIDE and BART COOK coach excerpts from LIEBESLIEDER WALZER
On October 7, 2024, in the rehearsal studios of the New York City Ballet, former principal dancers Patricia McBride and Bart Cook taught and coached principal dancers Unity Phelan and Roman Mejia the roles originated by Melissa Hayden and Jonathan Watts. McBride was the first of many interpreters to inherit Hayden's role. Among the highlights of that couple's choreography is a sequence described by critic Arlene Croce in which "Hayden, supported by Watts, glides low along the floor, then extends her leg from under her skirt as if unfolding an expressive hand (Playbill, Jan-Feb, 1970).
Over many years, dancers, critics, and audiences have reveled in thoughts of Liebeslieder, a lavishly costumed work harking back to the etiquette an earlier era, performed to the accompaniment a piano duet and vocal quartet. Following its opening in 1960, New York Times critic John Martin wrote: "After an hour and five minutes of sheer waltzing, and by only [four] couples at that, one's major reaction was to wonder if perhaps Brahms had not still another opus hidden away somewhere…Nothing at all happens, of course--nothing but the constant revelation of beauty" (11/23/60). Some years later the Times' Anna Kisselgoff expressed the notion that "Balanchine could reveal the depth of human emotion as well as, if not better than, anybody else" (1974). For Violette Verdy, on whom Balanchine choreographed one of the four female roles, "It is so incredibly complete in whatever concerns the business of waltzes forever. The exploration, the confession, is total" (recorded interview for the GBF Video Archives, 2010).
Liebeslieder Walzer has been a cherished ballet for its dancers from the beginning.
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, along with the Sugar Plum role from George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker and most recently, Tanaquil Leclercq’s role in La Valse.
BART COOK, NYCB principal dancer, choreographer and ballet master, began his dance studies with Willam Christensen in Utah and at 17 transferred as a scholarship student to The School of American Ballet in NYC. Two years later Cook joined NYCB and in 1979 was promoted to principal dancer. Shortly thereafter NYCB appointed Cook Assistant Ballet Master to Jerome Robbins. Cook excelled in Balanchine’s “black and white” leotard ballets. In addition, his interpretations of Balanchine’s romantic protagonists were as natural a fit as were those of his character and demi-character roles. In 1993 Cook retired from dancing. He has staged Balanchine and Robbins ballets for over thirty years for a wide range of companies including The Royal Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Stuttgart Ballet, La Scala Opera, and San Francisco Ballet. Cook
has been recorded coaching “Melancholic” from Four Temperaments, the “Sarabande” from Square Dance, A Midsummer Night’s Dream Titania and Bottom pas de deux with Kay Mazzo and with Allegra Kent he has coached Agon pas de deux and the Concerto section of Episodes for the Balanchine Foundation’s Video Archives.
UNITY PHELAN, born in Princeton, New Jersey began her dance training at the age of five at the Princeton Ballet School, where her teachers included Douglas Martin, Maria Youskevitch, and Mary Barton. After moving her training to the School of American Ballet, she joined NYCB in 2013, was promoted to soloist in 2017 and to principal in 2021. Several of the Balanchine roles she is identified with include Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2, Concerto Barocco, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Titania) and Liebeslieder Walzer. For the Video Archives, Phelan was coached by Allegra Kent and Bart Cook in the Concerto section of Episodes.
ROMAN MEJIA, began his training with his parents, Maria Terezia Balogh and Paul Mejia, in Arlington, Texas, before entering the School of American Ballet (SAB) in 2015. In 2017, Mr. Mejia became an apprentice with NYCB and joined the company as a corps member later in the year. He was promoted to principal in 2023. Mr. Mejia was featured by Dance Magazine in 2019 as one of their “25 To Watch,” was the recipient of the Princess Grace Foundation-USA Dance Fellowship, and was a finalist for the Clive Barnes Award in 2020. An exuberant performer, he has been featured in virtuosic roles, including George Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux, Allegro Brillante, Candy Cane from George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker and Puck from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Jerome Robbins’ Other Dances and Fancy Free and Alexei Ratmansky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Fandango. Mr. Mejia can be seen being coached by Patricia McBride for the GBF Video Archives in Tarantella and George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker, by Patricia Wilde and Robert Barnett in Western Symphony, by Jacques d’Amboise in Stars and Stripes, and Peter Schaufuss in A Steadfast Tin Soldier.
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.
