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George Balanchine is one of my favorite people in dance history, not only because he choreographed The Nutcracker(my favorite ballet ever), but he has an entire ballet method named after him, as well as founded the most widely known ballet school and company in the US.

Balanchine is a Georgian-American ballet choreographer and considered one of the most influential choreographers of the 20th century. He lived from January 22, 1904 to April 30, 1983.

His dad, Meliton Balanchivadze (Don't you just love these foreign names that are nearly impossible to pronounce?), was an opera singer, culture minister of the Democratic Republic of Georgia, and one of the founders of the Tbilisi Opera and ballet theatre. His mom, Maria Nikolayevna Vasilyeva, was said to be the daughter of Nikolai von Almedingen, a German who later left russia and abandoned his family, causing her to take on her mother's last name. Besides this, not much else is known of his maternal side. His parents were also 11 years apart, which back then I suppose it was normal, but nowadays there would be some questions, at least from me.

As a child, Balanchine wasn't really interested in ballet, but his mom insisted that he audition with his sister who shared his mom's adoration for the art.

In 1913, at age nine, he relocated to Saint Petersburg from finland and was accepted into the Imperial Ballet School, learning under Pavel Gerdt and his son in law, Samuel Andrianov.

He performed at the mariinsky Theater, where his father composed music at the time, until 1917 when it closed down due to a government decree. (I looked to see what the decree was, but couldn't find anything else on it.) It reopened in 1918 after becoming property of the State and was renamed to the State Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet.

During the time that the theater was closed, it is assumed that he mounted some new ballets for the Mikhailovsky Theatre in Petrograd. These include Le Boef Sur Le Toit by Jean Cocteau and a scene for Caesar and Cleopatra by George Bernard Shaw.

In 1920 he choreographed his first work, a pas de deux named La Nuit, which the school of directors didn't approve of of like. He experimented with the choreography during the evenings, and eventually he and his colleagues performed it at the State School of Ballet.

Balanchine graduated in 1921 and enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory, while working in the corps de ballet at the State Academic Theater for Opera and Ballet (Mariinsky Theater). Among his studies there are advanced piano, music theory, counterpoint, harmony, and composition.

He graduated from the Conservatory in 1923, and danced as a member of the corp until 1924.

In 1923 he met his future wife, Tamara Geva, while teaching at the Mariinsky Theater. he formed a small ensemble in the same year, The Young Ballet, With Tamara and other dancers.

In 1924, the Young Ballet managed to obtain permission to leave Russia and tour around Europe. They went to Germany, but their performances were not welcomed in Berlin. Geva wrote later, that in that time they had to dance 'in small dark places, in summer theaters and private ballrooms, in beer gardens and before mental patients'. They could barely afford paying for hotels and often had only tea for meal.

In London, they had two weeks of very unsuccessful performances, when the audience met them with dead silence.

With expiring visas, they were not welcome in any other European country. They moved to Paris, where there was a large Russian community. At this time, the impresario and founder of the Ballet Russes Sergei Diaghilev invited Balanchine to join the company as a choreographer.

Diaghilev insisted that he change his name from Balanchivadze to Balanchine and promoted him to ballet master of the company and encouraged his choreography.

Between 1924 and Diaghilev's death in 1929, he created ten ballets along with lesser works and suffered a knee injury, effectively ending his dance career. After that he focused all his attention on choreography.

After Diaghilev's death, the Ballet Russes went bankrupt and Balanchine started staging dances for Charles B. Cochran's revues and Sir Oswald Stoll's ariety shows in London. He was also retained by the Royal Danish Ballet in Copenhagen in that time as ballet master.

He insisted that his first project in the US would be to establish a ballet school because he wanted to develop dancers with strong technique along with his style. He also thought that the US dancers didn't dance very well compared to his classical training. He founded the SAB (School of American Ballet) with the help of Lincoln Kirstein and Edward M.M Warburg on January 2, 1934, less than three months after he arrived in the US. It is now a home for dancers of the New York City Ballet (Co founded and directed by Balanchine in 1948) as well as other companies from all over the world.

Between his ballet activities in the 1930s and '40s, Balanchine choreographed Broadway musicals. Among them is Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes in 1936, where his program billing specified "choreography by George Balanchine" rather than the standard "dances staged by." This was the first time in history that a 'dance maker' recieved choreography billing for a Broadway musical.

On Your Toes featured two ballets: La Princesse Zenobia, and Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.

Here are the awards Balanchine has won in his lifetime:

1975- French Legion d'honneur,

1978- Kennedy Center Honors,

1980- Austrian Decoration for Science and Art,

1983- Presidential Medal of Freedom,

1987- National Museum of Dance's Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney Hall of Fame (Posthumously), and

1988- Induction into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Here's also a link to the list of all of his works, in chronological order:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ballets_by_George_Balanchine

SOURCES:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Balanchine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Balanchine#Awards