lking@balanchine.org
MARIA CALEGARI AND BRUCE WELLS coach excerpts from AGON - SECOND PAS DE TROIS
New York City — On June 15th in the New York City Ballet Studios, Lincoln Center, NYCB dancers Naomi Corti, Davide Riccardo, and Andres Zuniga will be coached in the second pas de trois from Agon by former principal dancer Maria Calegari and soloist Bruce Wells. Claudia Roth Pierpont interviews Calegari and Wells at the conclusion of the coaching session. Solo pianist Elaine Chelton of the New York City Ballet Orchestra will accompany the coaching, and the taping will be supervised by Video Archives director Paul Boos.
Balanchine choreographed the leading role in this Pas de Trois for the dramatic ballerina Melissa Hayden, supported by Roy Tobias and Jonathan Watts. To this day, depending on its interpreters, the Pas de Trois retains the surprise, the wit and the audacity of the original.
Berlin’s RM Productions filmed fifteen Balanchine ballets in 1973 for which Wells was cast by Balanchine in the second pas de trois opposite Karin von Aroldingen and Victor Castelli. Nearly ten years later in 1982, for NYCB’s Stravinsky Centennial Celebration, Balanchine cast Calegaria to dance the Melissa Hayden role for the Great Performances/Dance in America series. “Another of the company's most distinctive members is young Maria Calegari, a spikey day lily of a dancer until she presses into that big, clear arabesque of hers … she melted through the second pas de trois section in a way that caught its suggestions of court dance and un-fleshed neo-classicism.” NYT Jennifer Dunning (1981).
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.
MARIA CALEGARI, a native New Yorker, was a principal dancer with New York City Ballet (1974-1994), studied at the School of American Ballet on a full scholarship and was chosen by George Balanchine to join the company at age 17. Her principal roles included a wide range of ballets; Serenade, Agon, Apollo, Glass Pieces, Afternoon of a Faun, and Symphony in 3 Movements. Since 1998 she has been a répétiteur for both the George Balanchine Trust and the Robbins Rights Trust, staging ballets for a wide range of companies including, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Ballet, American Ballet Theater, San Francisco Ballet and Miami City Ballet. Ms. Calegari has received numerous awards, the Jerome Robbins Award 2011, the Isadora Duncan Award (The” Izzie”) 2012, Russia’s Golden Mask Award 2002, The National Society of Arts and Letters Gold Medal 2025, for her achievements in dance. She is listed in “Who’s Who of American Women,” and has appeared numerous times on public television, Live From Lincoln Center, Dance in America, Great Performances, and American Masters-Jerome Robbins.
BRUCE WELLS began his career under the direction of George Balanchine where he danced as a soloist with the NYC Ballet from 1966-1974. He then went on to perform and choreograph with The Connecticut Ballet from 1975-1978. Wells accepted an invitation by the Boston Ballet to be a principal dancer and resident choreographer from 1979-1989. In 1981, Wells was named Associate Director at the time of his retirement from the stage. His next appointment was as sole choreographer of Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre from 1990-1996. His choreography has been presented by Australian Ballet, Dance Theater of Harlem, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, and others. In 1997 Wells joined the faculty of The Pacific Northwest Ballet. A frequent guest teacher his most recent assignments were as guest teacher for The Dutch National Ballet & Jacobs Pillow.
NAOMI CORTI was born in Luxembourg and began her dance training in France, which she continued in California. She enrolled at SAB in 2014, joined NYCB corps de ballet in 2019 and was promoted to soloist in 2025. Since joining New York City Ballet, Ms. Corti has performed featured roles in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker (Dewdrop and Coffee), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hippolyta), Agon (2nd Pas de Trois) and works by Justin Peck, William Forsythe and Pam Tanowitz, among others.
DAVIDE RICCARDO is a soloist with the NYCB. He was born in Messina, Italy and began his dance training there and in 2012 he enrolled at the Rome Opera Ballet School. Mr. Riccardo entered SAB as a full-time student in 2015 and in 2018 he first became an apprentice with NYCB and joined the company in 2019. In 2018, while still a student at SAB, Riccardo received the Mae L. Wien Award for Outstanding Promise and the Lincoln Center Award for Emerging Artists. He was promoted to soloist in 2023. For the Interpreters Archives, Riccardo was coached by Bart Cook and Allegra Kent in Agon’s pas de deux and by Adam Luders in the in the Phlegmatic section of The Four Temperaments and Swan Lake.
ANDRES ZUNIGA, soloist at NYCB, was born in Mexico City and began his dance training at the age of 13 in Los Cabos, Mexico. In 2014, he relocated to Philadelphia to continue his training at The Rock School for Dance Education and soon after transferred to SAB. He has been a member of NYCB since 2017. His roles are varied; he’s been featured in Balanchine’s Agon, Bourrée Fantasque, Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, The Four Temperaments, and La Sonnambula. For the Video Archives he has been coached by Robert Weiss in George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker (Candy Cane).
CLAUDIA ROTH PIERPONT is a staff writer for The New Yorker, where she has written about the arts for more than twenty years. She is the author of three books: Passionate Minds (2000), a collection of essays about women writers ranging from Hannah Arendt to Mae West; Roth Unbound: A Writer and His Books (2013), an exploration of the life and work of Philip Roth; and American Rhapsody (2016), a collection of essays on American subjects including George Gershwin, Nina Simone, and the Chrysler Building. She is currently working on a history of New York culture that will include a chapter on New York City Ballet.
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, the estate of Suzanne Youngerman, 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.
