In Paris in 1928, when classical dance was démodé, Balanchine created a ballet that prompted Diaghilev to remark at a rehearsal: “What he is doing is magnificent. It is pure classicism such as we have not seen since Petipa’s.”[1]
But Balanchine’s Apollo was not a mere re-creation of Petipa classicism. It represented a new classical ballet style, one that would come to be called neoclassical. As always, music was Balanchine’s inspiration—though he disliked the word, preferring to say that certain music “moved” him to try to make it visible.
The music that moved Balanchine most was Stravinsky’s. In the case of Apollo, Stravinsky’s music seems to have provided not only the impetus for a ballet but the basis for a personal manner—a modern classical style that was both to assure the survival of the danse d’école as a viable creative language and to provide a uniquely valid contemporary approach to the performance of the classical masterpieces of the past.
In his 1947 essay “The Dance Element in Stravinsky’s Music,”[2] Balanchine describes Stravinsky’s “calculated, dynamic use of silence” as one of the “living secrets” of his music: “A pause, an interruption, is never empty space between indicated sounds . . . . It acts as a carrying agent from the last sound to the next one.” In musical terms, Balanchine is describing articulation, the separation that makes possible connection by providing junctures at which motifs or phrases may be joined.
Articulation assumes
