Compilation/Packaged Set: NYCB Digital Season
Release Date 2021
NYCB Digital Season (2021)

Balanchine’s Theme and Variations - NYCB 2021 Digital Stream
New York City Ballet (1947)
Ballet/Dance, Short
In Collection
#2382
9*
Seen ItYes
(3/4/2021 NYCB Digital Season)
26 mins USA / English
Personal Digital Archive (PDA) 
Andrew Veyette Principal Dancer
Tiler Peck Principal Dancer
Director/Choreographer
George Balanchine
Writer/Composer Peter Ilyitch Tschaikovsky

A work that drips with gilded grandeur, Theme and Variations pays tribute to Balanchine’s imperial Russia with its regal structure and sumptuous Tschaikovsky score.

An intensive display of the classical ballet lexicon, Theme and Variations was intended, as Balanchine wrote, “to evoke that great period in classical dancing when Russian ballet flourished with the aid of Tschaikovsky’s music.” Set to the final movement of Tschaikovsky’s third orchestral suite, the score consists of a theme and 12 variations, culminating in a polonaise in the Imperial style. Arguably the most substantial part of the suite, Tschaikovsky himself began the concert tradition of playing this final movement as a separate piece. Balanchine created Theme and Variations in 1947 for Ballet Theatre (now American Ballet Theatre), and it briefly entered the NYCB repertory in 1960. In 1970 Balanchine used the complete orchestral suite to create Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3, and Theme and Variations, with a few minor revisions, returned to the repertory as the fourth and final movement of the ballet.
Edition Details
No. of Discs/Tapes 1
Personal Details
Location Personal Library - PDA
Links NYCB: Theme and Variations

Notes

Premiere: September 27, 1947, Ballet Theater, Richmond, Virginia
New York City Ballet Premiere: February 5, 1960, New York State Theater