Discover Balanchine's Ballet Agon
Balanchine’s last, great collaboration with Stravinsky.
Agon is a plotless and abstract ballet for eight female and four male dancers, set to Stravinsky's soaring and complex harmonies. It encapsulates the choreographer Balanchine’s ideas of neoclassical dance. The dancers are en pointe and use classical positions, but move solely in response to Stravinsky’s music, striking jaunty angles and performing athletic high extensions. Nothing distracts from the dancing itself. Balanchine chose a cast of 12 dancers, he explained, so the work can display 'every possibility of dividing 12’.
The ballet opens with a fanfare for three trumpets. The curtain rises to reveal four male dancers standing with their backs to the audience. They turn round and dance in and out of symmetry. They are then joined by eight female dancers. Their dances overlap, making kaleidoscopic patterns, moving in and out of sequence, both on and off the beat. This is followed by the traditional classical ballet centrepiece, a pas de deux, considered to be one of Balanchine’s greatest pieces of choreography for its sensuous beauty and unearthly intensity.
The ballet ends as it began: the ensemble falls away to leave four male dancers, who return to their opening positions with their backs to the audience to a final fanfare of three trumpets.
The dancers do not act or attempt to convey a story. The stage is bare and the dancers wear simple monochrome tights and leotards. This is no novelty today but was a radical departure when first performed in the 1950s.
Balanchine said that Agon was inspired by 17th-century French court dances; the dancers sometimes join hands or give courtly bows. Stravinsky incorporated elements of such old dance forms, such as the galliard, into the music and used period instruments, such as the harp and mandolin.
The title Agon comes from ancient Greek, meaning ‘contest’, and refers to the dancers' athleticism and acrobatic poses, as well as, perhaps, to an undercurrent of rivalry between the male and female dancers. But, there is no overt reference to ancient Greece in the choreography.
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Agon In Brief
Ballet in one act
Composer: Igor Stravinsky
Choreography: George Balanchine
World premiere: 1 December 1957, New York City Ballet, City Center of Music and Drama, New York
Current Royal Ballet production:
Production premiere: 25 January 1973
Staging: Patricia Neary
Revival lighting designer: John B Read
Discover the composer:
igor stravinsky
George Balanchine's Jewels:
Watch the Backstage Film
MORE ABOUT BALANCHINE
Patricia Neary from The Balanchine Trust describes working with George Balanchine.
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Agon: View the Collections
See photos and more of Agon: search our collections for artefacts from previous productions of Agon.