Remembering Inspiration

ISB ballerinas on break from rehearsal to celebrate Mr. B's birthday.

The Indianapolis School of Ballet's Founding Artistic Director, Victoria Lyras, is a product of the School of American Ballet, founded in 1934 by George Balanchine. Dancing children's roles with his New York City Ballet in the 1970s in many ballets, some choreography set on her generation of dancers by "Mr. B", inspired her professional career. She went on to dance with the Pennsylvania Ballet, the Balanchine-based company in Philadelphia, among others. This thread of creativity passed on to her continues to live right here in Indianapolis. ISB has been honored by The Balanchine Trust to perform several of his works - Tarantella and the Grand Pas de Deux from The Nutcracker - stage by Victoria Lyras. As we observed the 107th birthday of George Balanchine on January 22, his legacy is celebrated and a new generation of young dancers is influenced by his genius.

The George Balanchine Foundation supports a comprehensive website about his life and work and maintains a Facebook page. You can find news and keep up with events about the Foundation's preservation and advancement of his life's work. 

One of the most important sections of the website is the Balanchine Catalogue which houses complete premiere information about every known work staged or choreographed by George Balanchine - more than 400 ballets, opera dances, operettas, movies, staged choral works, musicals, straight plays, concert works, television, and circus. Compiled by scholars and researchers in many parts of the world and prepared with Balanchine’s participation, the Balanchine Catalogue covers a period of more than sixty years--from La Nuit at the Petrograd Theater Ballet School, choreographed in 1920 or earlier, to a revision of Stravinsky’s Variations for Orchestra for the New York City Ballet in 1982, Balanchine’s final work.

This brilliant electronic edition of the Balanchine Catalogue, an indispensable resource for students of his work, was made possible by a leadership grant from The Jerome Robbins Foundation, with additional funding provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and Furthermore: A Program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund. The publisher and copyright holder of the book version of the Catalogue, Eakins Press Foundation, contributed the rights necessary for this project.

Continue the celebration of Mr. B's birthday and learn more about him.