George Balanchine

Ballet Impérial and Who Cares? are the 35th and 36th of
Balanchine’s ballets to enter the repertoire of the Opéra
National de Paris.
“I know everything that can be done with a ballerina’s foot,
I know all the possibilities; I know what’s inside a foot...
but inside a ballerina’s head? Therein lies the mystery. This
is undoubtedly the reason why I invent ballets. To try to
understand.“ George Balanchine
From Saint Petersburg to New York, in succession
Balanchine lived for twenty years in Russia, ten years in
Europe and half a century in the United States where he
founded the New York City Ballet.
“Choreographers are not creators. We are researchers. Each
piece of music corresponds to a dance. We are striving to
find it. [...] Ballet is above all a matter of tempo and space:
the space delimited by the stage, the time set by the music.“
George Balanchine
Apart from the complexity and richness of the composition,
what is striking about Balanchine is the speed of execution
of the steps which allows his ballets to be very modern,
just like his desire for an absence of expression on the
faces of his performers, for a neutrality, so that everything
is expressed by the dancing body.