Dance as Music in George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco
Kara Yoo Leaman (Oberlin College)
Volume 7.2 (February 2021)
In George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, a neoclassical ballet choreographed in 1941 to J. S. Bach’s Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins (BWV 1043), there is a memorable passage in which ten dancers hop on pointe while creating surprising visual accents against the music and against each other. The off-beat accents reflect the jazzy character of the ballet, and the pattern they articulate artfully relates to a metrically dissonant rhythmic motive in Bach’s score.
Keywords: J. S. Bach, George Balanchine, dance, ballet, choreomusical, audiovisual
Excerpts of Concerto Barocco used with permission from the New York City Ballet.