The Dance Element in Stravinsky's Music
George Balanchine · The Opera Quarterly · 2006
In Stravinsky’s music, the dance element of most force is the pulse. It is steady, insistent yet healthy, always reassuring. You feel it even in the rests. It holds together each of his works and runs through them all. The time in Le Sacre changes from measure to measure; in Oedipus the rhythms are four-square; in Apollon the patterns are uncomplicated, traditional; the Symphony of 1945 reviews almost everything he has done before. But in each work his pulse builds up a powerful motor drive so that when the end is reached you know, as with Mozart, the subject has been completely stated, is in fact exhausted. Stravinsky’s strict beat is his sign of authority over time; over his interpreters too. A choreographer should, first of all, place confidence without limit in this control. For Stravinsky’s rhythmic invention, possible only above a stable base, will give the greatest stimulus to his own powers.