Balanchine’s ‘Square Dance’ Speaks Ballet With American Accent

NEW YORK — Ballet, which began life in Western Europe during the Renaissance, is danced all over the globe with many accents. The many ways in which it can be (and seem) American often occupied the mind of Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine, who moved to New York in 1933 and became an American citizen in 1939. The very title of his ballet “Square Dance” tells you that he was thinking of America.

Yet here, as so often, Balanchine’s thoughts were indirect. His music was from the European baroque, Vivaldi and Corelli, but this ballet tells everyone that these composers are now American property, too. The steps and manners combine those of ballet and those of American square dancing; so do its patterns and structures.

“Square Dance” returns this week (Feb. 2-10) to the repertory of New York City Ballet, the company for which it was made. It is informally formal, polite and virtuoso, sweet and outgoing. I’m especially fond of a passage in the finale when the men and women, holding hands, in couples, kick the air behind them with one foot: not an academic ballet step at all, just a folk moment, and wonderfully fresh. When the ballet was new, Balanchine clinched the connection by having a caller onstage whose rhyming lines included “See those feet go wickety-whack!”

The ballerina role remains one of the peaks of allegro bravura. In one passage, she does gargouillades (sideways jumps in which each foot writes rings in the air). Then the six corps women do them, too. Gargouillades, originally an 18th-century step, occur in many Balanchine ballets (and in a few by other choreographers), but these are the most high-exposure and isolated.

After them, the ballerina’s footwork gets faster and more intricate, with phrases of the most intoxicating brio. Balanchine later wrote, “The American style of classical dancing, its supple sharpness and richness of metrical invention, its superb preparation for risks, and its high spirits were some of the things I was trying to show in this ballet.” He had spent years forging that very style.

When “Square Dance” was new in November 1957, it was the first ballet that the usually prolific Balanchine had made in 18 months. He had been absent from New York City Ballet — he, its co-founder — all that time. Everyone knew why he was away: His wife, the ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, had contracted polio and collapsed in Copenhagen, and Balanchine remained by her side.

When he returned from Europe, ballets flowed out of him in quick succession — and they showed that he had much to say about America and history, combining the two subjects with astonishing imagination. After “Square Dance” (November) came “Agon” (December) and then “Stars and Stripes” (January). “Agon” is so modernist and American that it’s hard at first to see the European traditions that underpin it; “Stars and Stripes” seems such a celebration of the brashest kind of patriotism that it’s easy to overlook its phenomenal geometries.

Balanchine was a great reviser, though. In 1976, he brought “Square Dance” back to City Ballet repertory, but now without a caller. The Americanness of his dance style and compositions was now widely felt; he no longer needed to spell it out. More radical yet, he added a new solo that transformed the work, danced by the lead man. In a ballet that is largely about speed, here’s a slow, exploratory dance that seems like creativity at work. The man arches his back as if wracked by dark inspiration, makes his way around the stage like a visionary, suddenly pirouettes in ways you don’t anticipate, and softly jumps, making a shape in the air as if testing an idea. The others have departed for this brief interlude: This poet is alone with his dance imaginings.

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Event Information:

“Square Dance” will be performed from Friday to Feb. 10 at New York City Ballet, David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nycballet.com.