Lauren King
lking@balanchine.org
ROBERT WEISS, former NEW YORK CITY BALLET PRINCIPAL DANCER, coaches select MALE VARIATIONS from the BALANCHINE REPERTORY
New York City — On September 22nd in the New York City Ballet Studios in Lincoln Center, the principal male solos from Ballo della Regina and Divertimento No. 15 were coached by New York City Ballet former principal dancer Robert Weiss for the George Balanchine Foundation’s Video Archives. Weiss worked with NYCB soloist David Gabriel on Ballo della Regina, a ballet choreographed on Weiss, and with NYCB principal Chun Wai Chan on Divertimento No. 15. In addition, he coached the brief male trio from Divertimento. The selections demonstrate a variety of Balanchine inventions in his classical choreography for men.
Faye Arthurs, Fjord Review dance critic, conducted the interview segment with Weiss, solo pianist Elaine Chelton of the New York City Ballet Orchestra accompanied the coaching session, and the taping was supervised by Video Archives director Paul Boos.
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.
ROBERT WEISS began his professional career at age 17, joining the New York City Ballet in 1966, at the invitation of George Balanchine, rising through the ranks first to soloist and then to principal. In addition to dancing over 40 soloist and principal parts in the company’s repertory Balanchine created several roles for Weiss, including Ballo della Regina, Symphony in 3 Movements, Coppélia, and Gaspard de la Nuit. Weiss spent his entire career with the company retiring in July of 1982. After retiring from NYCB Weiss served as Artistic Director of the Pennsylvania Ballet in Philadelphia from 1982 to 1990 before founding Carolina Ballet in Raleigh, NC. He is a prolific choreographer. Prior to his directorships he made ballets for Michail Baryshnikov, Gelsey Kirkland, Ivan Nagy, Kay Mazzo, Peter Martins, and Bart Cook. His ballets have been in the repertories of NYCB, ABT, and Béjart. For Pennsylvania Ballet, Weiss created his first full-length story ballet Winter Dreams to various arrangements of Tchaikovsky pieces. Carolina Ballet premiered his full-lengths Romeo and Juliet, Messiah to Handel’s Oratorio, The Kreutzer Sonata (based on the Tolstoy novella), Carmen (to arrangements of Bizet, and Macbeth and Orpheus and Eurydice, with original scores by J Mark Scearce. Mr. Weiss now lives in Philadelphia from where he oversees the allocation of his ballets and is currently working on a musical theater piece with Mr. Scearce and collaborating on an archival project to document the classes of his longtime teacher and mentor, Stanley Williams. Weiss’ Romeo and Juliet had its Cleveland Ballet premiere this past May and his Messiah will be presented there in March of 2026.
CHUN WAI CHAN, born in Guangdong, China, and trained at the Guangzhou Art School from 2004 to 2010. In 2010 he was a finalist at the Prix de Lausanne, which earned him a full scholarship to study with Houston Ballet’s second company, Houston Ballet II. In 2012 Chan joined Houston Ballet as a member of the corps de ballet and he was promoted to principal dancer in 2017. Chan joined NYCB as a soloist in August 2021, and in May 2022 was promoted to principal dancer, making a name for himself as a skilled partner in such ballets as the Cavalier in George Balanchine's The Nutcracker ©, Apollo, Emeralds, Diamonds, and Liebeslieder Walzer. Chan has previously contributed to the Video Archives dancing in Bourrée Fantasque, Symphony in C, and La Valse.
DAVID GABRIEL began his dance training at the age of eight in Colorado and at 15 he continued his training at Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet. He attended the 2019 summer program at the School of American Ballet and enrolled full-time at SAB for the winter term that year. As a student at SAB, Gabriel received the Rudolph Nureyev scholarship. Gabriel became an apprentice with NYCB in August 2021 and joined the corps de ballet in May 2022. He was promoted to the rank of soloist in June 2024. His current principal repertory includes Ballo della Regina, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Oberon), Divertimento from ‘Le Baiser de la Fee, Sonatine, and Minkus Pas de Trois in Ratmansky’s NYCB staging of Paquita.
FAYE ARTHURS is a former dancer with the New York City Ballet, where she danced featured roles in the works of George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Christopher Wheeldon, Peter Martins, Albert Evans, Robert LaFosse, and Lynn Taylor-Corbett. She chronicled her time as a professional dancer in her blog, Thoughts from the Paint. While dancing, Arthurs graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in English from Fordham University. She now writes about dance for Fjord Review, Air Mail, and Dance Magazine. Arthurs has interviewed Susan Pilarre for the Video Archives recording of Valse Fantaisie and Merrill Ashley for the coaching of Who Cares?
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, 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.
