George Balanchine Essays - Ballet Choreographers, Ballet Masters

George Balanchine 11.13.00 One of the most important and influential people in the world of ballet is George Balanchine. He became a legend long before he died. He brought the standards of dance up to a level that had never been seen before, and he created a new audience for ballet. Balanchine was one of the greatest and most prolific choreographers in ballet history, choreographing at least 300 ballets; he was rivaled in quantity only by Jules Perrot and Marius Petipa. At the age of nine he started training at the Imperial School in St. Petersburg. He rarely saw his family because they lived far away and he became the ward of Grigory Grigorevich, who was in charge of the school. There Balanchine performed his first role as cupid in Sleeping Beauty. During the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Imperial School closed and the students were put out on the street. Balanchine was cut off from his family in the Caucasus, and was taken in to live with Mr. Grigorevich. The school did reopen and Balanchine graduated in 1921. He then joined the Soviet State Ballet. Upon graduation Balanchine married Geva, a fellow student whom he had met in the ballroom dancing class. Geva described her husband as a cross between a poet and a general. In order to have his choreography seen, Blanchine organized a small company called The Young Ballet, to perform at halturas (bread and butter jobs). At the Maryinsky, Balanchine had been assigned to stage the procession in Rimski-Korsakoff's opera Coq d'Or, and what he devised, although beautiful, shattered tradition. The company tried to re-train him, but he wouldn't conform. His choreography continued to be controversial, so the board at the Maryinsky Theater dismissed him from the company. They also threatened all of Blanchine's dancers with the same fate if they continued to dance for him. In 1924, with Vladimir Dimitriev's help, Balanchine, Tamara Geva, Nicholas Efimov, and Alexandra Danilova formed the Soviet State Dancers, and were allowed to tour Germany during the Maryinsky vacation. They decided not to return to Russia, but to defect and go to England. The small company did so poorly in London that they were bought out of their contracts. They then went to Paris in hopes of finding work. Serge Diaghilev heard of this Russian company and sent for them. He hired the four dancers, and also allowed Dimitriev to work for the company. Diaghilev thought the Georgian's name Balanchivadze was too difficult to pronounce and changed it to Balanchine. Diaghilev was immediately impressed with Balanchine's creative ballets and wanted him to choreograph for the opera in Monte Carlo. For the Ballets Russes he created Apollo in 1928 and The Prodigal Son in 1929, which have remained Blanchine's signature pieces to this day. In 1926 Geva divorced him and went to America, and Alexan dra Danilova became his unofficial wife. In 1929, while still with the Diaghilev company. Balanchine choreographed and danced in Dark Red Roses, the first talking motion picture in England. It was at this time that Balanchine heard of Diaghilev's death, leaving him and the entire Ballets Russes without work. George Balanchine past successes found him work as a choreographer in London, Copenhagen, Paris and also for a new company in Monte Carlo under the sponsorship of the Monaco Royal House. Rene Blum and Colonel William de Basil were the impresario and director of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Balanchine was fired from the Blum - De Basil company because of his unorthodox choreography and was replaced by Leonide Massine. In 1933 Balanchine formed his own company, Les Ballet 1933. It opened to poor reviews in Paris and gave only 20 performances in England. It was in England that he met his future benefactor, Lincoln Kirstein, a wealthy young American. Kirstein, with his friend Edward M.M.Warburg, invited Balanchine and Vladimir Dimitriev to come to America in order to open a ballet school in Hartford, Conn., far away from the enticements of Broadway. Since the stage at the Hartford Museum was too small for ballet performances Balanchine refused the offer. Kirstein searched the island of Manhattan until he found an appropriate place. The School of American Ballet (SAB) opened at 59th Street and Madison

Review of Professional Ethics essays

Review of Professional Ethics essays A Review of Professional Ethics Codes: How the AFP (Association of Fundraising Professionals) Code of Ethical Principles and Standards of Professional Practice Compares Introduction: In this paper, the ethical code of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) is compared with the ethical codes of five other professional organizations in order to more completely discover those areas in which the AFP Code is on solid footing with other, like organizations, as well as where the AFP Code may be lacking from an objective viewpoint. The comparative codes used were some of the best-written professional conduct codes from various well-respected professions of our society. These codes are: American Bar Association (ABA) Creed American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Code of Professional Conduct and Bylaws American Medical Association (AMA) Oath and Law of Hippocrates American Association of Political Consultants (AAPC) Code of Ethics United States Department of Commerce (DOC) Model of Business Principles Professional ethical codes have been in existence for thousands of years. Just as codes were established to protect professions from outside contamination (i.e.: a person pretending to be a physician when s/he was not) and external regulation; so too have ethical codes become shields for the clients using the services of those various professions. Ethical codes and professional creeds of practice often protect the public from unseemly actions of the practitioner. They also provide direction for the training of new professionals. Standards of conduct for actions taken while performing services or even standards of conduct in general life, which would reflect negatively on the individual as a member of the profession are sometimes addressed, as well as a sense of organization around a professional that could establish a corporation or guild, with regu...