Serenade is a romantic work of immense sweep, set to a transcendent Tschaikovsky score.

Serenade is a milestone in the history of dance. It is the first original ballet George Balanchine created in America and is one of the signature works of New York City Ballet’s repertory. Balanchine began the ballet as a lesson in stage technique and worked unexpected rehearsal events into the choreography. A student’s fall or late arrival to rehearsal became part of the ballet.

After its initial presentation, Serenade was reworked several times. In its present form there are four movements: “Sonatina”, “Waltz”, “Russian Dance”, and “Elegy.” The last two movements reverse the order of Tschaikovsky’s score, ending the ballet on a note of sadness.

“In everything that I did to Tschaikovsky’s music, I sensed his help. It wasn’t real conversation. But when I was working and saw that something was coming of it, I felt that it was Tschaikovsky who had helped me.”

George Balanchine

The outer sections of Stravinsky Violin Concerto are carefully woven masterpieces of symmetry that peel away to reveal two of Balanchine’s most ingenious and unique pas de deux.

Stravinsky Violin Concerto was composed in 1931 and at its premiere, conducted by Igor Stravinsky with Samuel Dushkin as the violin soloist. It was first used by Balanchine for Balustrade with the Original Ballet Russe in 1941. When Balanchine returned to this score three decades later, he could no longer remember his original choreography. “What I did then was for then,” he said, “and I wanted to do this music for our Stravinsky Festival.” Stravinsky Violin Concerto premiered on the opening night of the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, which also included the premiere of Balanchine’s Symphony in Three Movements.

Captivated by the moody and mysterious world of Ravel’s La Valse, a young woman waltzes through Balanchine’s surging choreography with tragic results.

"We are dancing on the edge of a volcano," Maurice Ravel wrote in his notes to La Valse. His words are an apt description of both the music and Balanchine's neo-romantic choreography: couples waltzing in a cavernous ballroom where a woman in white is at once horrified and fascinated by the uninvited figure of death.

Intrigued by the disintegration of the waltz form, Ravel envisioned La Valse set in the Imperial Court of Vienna in 1855, and called the score "a choreographic poem … a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz … the mad whirl of some fantastic and fateful carousel."

Serge Diaghilev commissioned the score for his Ballets Russes, but rejected it for being "untheatrical." When Balanchine created La Valse in 1951, he found the score to be too short and preceded it with Ravel's Valse Nobles et Sentimentales, eight short waltzes, which establish the mood of the ballet — a mood of superficial gaiety mixed with an uncertain feeling of impending catastrophe.