Elizabeth Kiem

George Balanchine was just twenty-one when he created Le Chant du Rossignol, his first work for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. He was twenty-three when he triumphed with his first popular and critical hit, La Chatte and scarcely older when he created the mad Surrealist masquerade, Le Bal. It was Balanchine who, after the death of Diaghilev, ushered in the next generation of émigré Ballets Russes and assembled them for his 'glamorously hectic' Cotillon. He would choreograph dozens of pieces for the stage before he turned thirty.

 

In the 1980s Millicent Hodson and Kenneth Archer reconstructed five of the major works that were nearly lost to time, setting them on ballets from Rio to Finland. 

​

Now, that work of reconstruction is recalled and illustrated in a series of five bijou books featuring Hodson's original choreographic drawings and hundreds of documentary pieces from Hodson & Archer's archives.

 

Edited and designed by Elizabeth Kiem of Trapeze Press, Balanchine's Twenties is available exclusively on Blurb,

 

In the interest of making these works of dance history accessible, they have been produced at zero profit to the artists and designer.

​