"A milestone in the history of dance."

Set to Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, this sweeping ballet was the first work created by Balanchine in America.  It was originally created in 1934 as an exercise for the students of the newly formed School of American Ballet.  Serenade has since gone into the repertoire of companies around the world. Attendance was sporadic at those first rehearsals, so Balanchine, undaunted, made due with whomever he had in the moment and he incorporated random accidents such as a ballerina falling, a dancer arriving late and someone’s hair coming undone into the final product, creating a ballet of exhilarating movement, lush musicality and moving drama without telling an actual story.

George Balanchine transformed the world of ballet.  He is widely regarded as the most influential choreographer of the 20th century, and he co-founded two of ballet’s most important institutions: New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet.

In the summer of 1924, Balanchine left the newly formed Soviet Union for Europe, where he was invited by impresario Serge Diaghilev to join the Ballets Russes. For that company, Balanchine choreographed his first important ballets: Apollo (1928) and Prodigal Son (1929).  After Ballets Russes was dissolved following Diaghilev’s death in 1929, Balanchine spent his next few years on a variety of projects in Europe and then formed his own company, Les Ballets 1933, in Paris.  Following a performance of Les Ballets 1933 at the Savoy Theater in London, he met American arts connoisseur Lincoln Kirstein, who later persuaded him to come to the United States. In 1934, the pair founded the School of American Ballet, which remains in operation to this day, training students for companies around the world. Balanchine’s first ballet in the U.S., Serenade, set to music by Tschaikovsky, was created for SAB students and premiered on June 9, 1934. Balanchine and Kirstein founded several short-lived ballet companies before forming Ballet Society in 1946, which was renamed New York City Ballet in 1948. Balanchine served as the Company’s ballet master from that year until his death in 1983, building it into one of the most important performing arts institutions in the world, and a cornerstone of the cultural life of New York City. He choreographed 425 works over the course of 60-plus years, and his musical choices ranged from Tschaikovsky (one of his favorite composers) to Stravinsky (his compatriot and friend) to Gershwin (who embodied the choreographer’s love of America). 

Ballet West was established in Salt Lake City in 1963.  Willam F. Christensen was the company’s first artistic director, co-founding the company together with Utah’s “First Lady of the Arts” Glenn Walker Wallace. In 1951, Christensen had established the first ballet department in an American university at The University of Utah, which grew into the Utah Civic Ballet, Ballet West’s first incarnation.  But this was not the first ballet company Willam Christensen’s founded. Along with his brothers Lew and Harold, Christensen made history by establishing the oldest ballet company in the western United States, the San Francisco Ballet.  Since 2007, Artistic Director Adam Sklute, former dancer, Ballet Master and Associate Director of The Joffrey Ballet has further energized and expanded Ballet West’s remarkable repertoire with works by the most renowned choreographers of today such as Ulysses Dove, Jiri Kylian, Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp, and Stanton Welch. Sklute has also introduced the elegant historical masterpieces from the great Ballets Russes of the early 20th Century and continues to preserve Ballet West’s classical legacy.