SIGNATURE WORKS : George Balanchine’s Personal Stamp Is All Over NYC Ballet’s Weekend Series

The nine works by George Balanchine that close the New York City Ballet engagement this weekend at the Orange County Performing Arts Center span only about four of his six-plus decades of creativity.

“Serenade,” the great Russian choreographer’s first work in this country, was created in 1934 to Tchaikovsky’s Serenade in C for Strings, only months after Balanchine arrived in the United States.

“Serenade” subsequently become a signature piece for the choreographer, the New York company he co-founded with Lincoln Kirstein, and his new conception of a plotless ballet which only reflects the music to which it is danced. Balanchine called it “a dance in the light of the moon.”

The last work chronologically in the weekend series devoted to Balanchine is “Symphony in Three Movements,” choreographed as part of the company’s extensive and ambitious Stravinsky Festival in 1972 in New York.

In between, Balanchine responded to composers ranging from the young Bizet (“Symphony in C,” first called “Le Palais de Cristal” when it was created in 1947) to the exuberant George Gershwin (“Who Cares?”; 1957).

The choreographer used as few as two dancers--the “Sylvia Pas de Deux” (1951) and the “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” (1960)--and as many as 52 dancers, in the original finale of “Symphony in C,” which has been danced virtually every season since it was created.

This weekend series shows how he edited a classic such as the Petipa “Swan Lake” from his own point of view, and invented new movement possibilities to the knotted duodecophonic score Stravinsky wrote in 1957 for “Agon,” a ballet Balanchine described as “all precise, like a machine, but a machine that thinks.” “Agon” is a work for 12 dancers--four men in black tights and white T-shirts and eight women in black leotards.

He choreographed “Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux” to music Tchaikovsky wrote for the ballet “Swan Lake” but that the composer later discarded. The music remained lost until it was rediscovered in 1953 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow.

But Balanchine also choreographed to music that had not been composed specifically for dance, though it sometimes was infused with vivid dance rhythms, such as the several Chabrier orchestral showpieces brought together in “Bourree Fantasque,” choreographed in 1949. Balanchine chose good music, he maintained, because if people were bored with his ballets, they could always close their eyes and just listen.

Chris Pasles covers classical music and dance for The Times Orange County Edition. *MUSIC LISTINGS, Page XX

*DANCE LISTINGS, Page XX

What

New York City Ballet dances works by George Balanchine.

When

Friday, Oct. 22, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, Oct. 23, at 2 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, Oct. 24, at 2 and 7:30 p.m.

Where

Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

Whereabouts

San Diego (405) Freeway to Bristol Street; exit north, turn right onto Town Center Drive.

Wherewithal

$18 to $58.

Where to call

(714) 556-2787.

IN COSTA MESA: MOSCOW BOYS CHOIR

Ninel Kamburg will direct the 40-member choir in classical repertory and Russian folk songs on Friday, Oct. 22, at 8 p.m. in the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College, 2701 Fairview Road. (714) 432-5880.

IN COSTA MESA: TZIGANKA

The 10-member folk troupe, formed in 1975, will bring a Russian music, song and dance program to the Robert B. Moore Theatre at Orange Coast College on Saturday, Oct. 23, at 8 p.m. (714) 432-5880.

IN FULLERTON: CLEVELAND DUO, GUEST CELLIST

Bryan Dumm and the duo open the new Fullerton Friends of Music series with a free program of works by Mozart, Bartok, Brahms and more on Sunday, Oct. 24, at 3:30 p.m. at Sunny Hills High School, 1801 Warburton Way. (714) 525-5836.