KYRA NICHOLS AND ADAM LUDERS COACH EXCERPTS FROM SYMPHONY IN C
New York City — On September 7th in the New York City Ballet Studios, Lincoln Center, NYCB principal dancers Indiana Woodward and Roman Mejia were coached in the soloist roles of the first movement of Symphony in C by former principal dancers Kyra Nichols and Adam Luders. Robert Greskovic interviewed Nichols and Luders at the conclusion of the coaching session. Solo pianist Elaine Chelton of the New York City Ballet Orchestra accompanied the coaching, and the taping was supervised by Video Archives director Paul Boos.
Symphony in C’s first movement was originally performed in America by Maria Tallchief, partnered by Nicholas Magallanes. Tallchief would later become the most famous ballerina in America, thanks to her great success in Firebird. By contemporary accounts she was also a commanding presence in the first movement of Symphony in C. The first movement is an authoritative and brilliant statement that leads us into the mercurial world of the ballet – the lyrical second movement, the buoyant third, and the quicksilver fourth. Kyra Nichols and Adam Luders were among the last dancers chosen to perform the movement under Balanchine’s supervision.
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.
KYRA NICHOLS is a native of Berkeley, California and studied ballet with her mother, NYCB alum, Sally Streets. Nichols joined the New York City Ballet in 1974 and was promoted to principal dancer in 1979. She is among the last dancers to have worked with George Balanchine. Ms. Nichols retired from performing in 2007, after a 33-year career. She joined the Pennsylvania Ballet as a ballet mistress in the 2014-15 season. In 2017, she left to serve as Violette Verdy and Kathy Ziliak Anderson Chair in Ballet and professor of music in ballet at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. With Adam Luders she has coached her role in the first movement of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet for the Interpreters Archives.
ADAM LUDERS began his ballet training at the Royal Danish Ballet School and graduated to become a member of the Royal Danish Ballet in 1968. He was a principal dancer with London Festival Ballet (1973–5) and New York City Ballet (1975–94) creating roles in Balanchine's Davidsbündertänze, Kammermusik No. 2, and Walpurgisnacht, as well as Robbins's In Memory of... among others. Since retiring he has taught widely, including at the School of American Ballet, and staged Balanchine repertory for the George Balanchine Trust. Trained in the Bournonville tradition, Luders was the classic ‘danseur noble’. He is part of the last generation of dancers who worked closely with Balanchine at the New York City Ballet and has danced most of the Balanchine and Robbins repertoire. Luders is famous for his skill in pas de deux, and he has partnered most of Balanchine’s ballerinas as well other international stars. For the Interpreters Archive he has coached many ballets besides those choreographed on him, including the first movement of Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, Chaconne, Ballade, La Valse, Orpheus, and Vienna Waltzes.
INDIANA WOODWARD, born in Paris, France, began her dance training in Venice, California, and continued her studies at SAB. In 2012 she joined NYCB and was promoted to soloist in 2017 and principal in 2021. Her repertory includes works of Balanchine: George Balanchine's The Nutcracker® (Sugar Plum, Dewdrop); Apollo (Calliope); Liebeslieder Walzer; Ratmansky: Solitude; Robbins: Four Seasons (Spring), Dances at a Gathering; and Martins: Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and La Sylphide. For the Video Archives, has been coached by several luminaries, Patricia Wilde in her roles from George Balanchine's The Nutcracker® (Marzipan), Caracole, Western Symphony and Swan Lake (pas de trois); in addition, Allegra Kent coached Woodward in Stars and Stripes (Corcoran Cadets) and Patricia McBride in the Tanaquil Le Clercq role from La Valse and Donizetti Variations.
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.
ROBERT GRESKOVIC is a freelance writer in New York City. He writes about dance for The Wall Street Journal and is the author of Ballet 101, A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving the Ballet (Hyperion). He has taught dance history and aesthetics at City College of New York, Hunter College, Sarah Lawrence College and Princeton University and he has been writing about dance since 1972. He was an Associate at Ballet Review, contributed several entries for the International Encyclopedia of Dance, and his writing is included in Reading Dance (Pantheon) and in Dance in America, A Reader’s Anthology (Library of America). He served as consulting editor for Baryshnikov: in Black and White (Bloomsbury). His published writings have long focused on the works of George Balanchine and the dancers in his New York City Ballet. He was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1983 with a focus on studying dance photographs and was a two-time Dance Division Research Fellow for the New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division. His dance reviews and feature stories have appeared in the Village Voice, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, and other publications. He is currently working on a companion text of annotations for a reissue of Edward Gorey's The Lavender Leotard: or, Going a Lot to the 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.
