Balanchine's Serenade turns 90

Photo by Martha Swope, from 1961, with Patricia Wilde.

I think what I love most about Balanchine's Serenade, besides the tenderness of the Russian dance and the exaltation of the ending, is the excitement and breadth of movement of the world it creates onstage, a world of women. It is the excitement of the corps de ballet, of bodies whooshing and flying, moving in all directions, filling the space, electrifying the air. Each woman is distinct and driven by her own internal strength and desire, but also part of a whole, moved at times by a single brain.

I've often felt the men in this ballet are almost irrelevant; the man in the Waltz and Dark Angel sections is there to perform a function, to fill a space, perhaps in the woman's mind, but we're scarcely interested in him as a character in the drama. We're interested only in the function he plays in the woman's emotional imagination. It's the women's dreams and longings that matter.

The moment in which one of the women is carried offstage and into the light, after falling to her knees in front of another female figure, always catches in my throat. Where is she going? Is this the end, or the beginning? What lies beyond the stage? We'll never know.

I'll never forget that first Serenade at NYCB as the pandemic was lifting. It was as if life, itself, were returning.

Serenade is 90 this year, and is being performed at this year's Workshop performances at the @sab_nyc, which is also turning 90.