AMERICAN MASTERS Online spoke with BALANCHINE I & II director Merrill Brockway.

AMERICAN MASTERS: You directed many of the early “Dance in America” films for PBS, including several works by Balanchine.

MERRILL BROCKWAY: The difference with “Dance in America” was that we wanted the participation of the choreographers. Balanchine had been used to people just taking his pieces and doing what they want to do. Emile Ardolino, who was my colleague in this, had been trained as a dancer, and we were very firm that we wanted the participation of the choreographer. If we didn’t care about the choreography we didn’t do the piece. Because we had that kind of leeway. So Balanchine was very much a part of our team, and he liked that, and he liked making television, and he liked that his vision was coming through, the way he wanted his pieces to be seen.

When I met Balanchine he said, “How much do you know about ballet?” And I said, “Nothing.” And he said “Good. I’ll teach you.” And that’s what he did. We would be sitting on a set waiting for changes and he would start talking, he would give me little essays– notes and steps and things like that, and about what dancer succeeds more than others and so forth.

AM: It sounds like he had a real love for teaching.

MB: Oh, he was the best teacher anybody has ever seen. Just ask any of the dancers, they would fall over backwards for him. He had such an influence. You know, he would stand on stage right in the wings for all the performances that he would see and his dancers would be so aware that he was there, and they would dance better.

AM: Balanchine created over 400 works in his lifetime. How do you think he was able to be so prolific?

MB: That’s the mystery. That seems to be the question that nobody’s been able to answer. How did he do it? And where did he get the inspiration, the pulse, to go towards certain subjects? I think one of the secrets is he made pieces for individuals. He didn’t make pieces in general. They were all pieces based upon character and dancer qualities of his company.

AM: So he was always able to be inspired by the people around him?

MB: Yes. He had people around him who grew and changed and they were wonderful, they became better artists around him. So I think that’s part of it.

He gave his dancers such license. He would teach his dancers the steps and then just watch them as they developed into the role. It’s a totally singular way of teaching. If a dancer was replaced in a role, he would come in with the replacement and redo the piece for that dancer so that they didn’t just step in to somebody else’s piece. What he did was make you better than you could be by yourself. And that I think would be my catch phrase for Balanchine: he made me better than I could be by myself.

AM: Tell us more about recording dance and the process of working with Balanchine.

MB: Some people and a lot of directors, they work the dancers too hard, and finally when you get to the performance, they’ve already given it. The dancers are wonderful, because I always maintained that they are the best trained and disciplined of any of the artists. You see, they’re used to performing, building up and performing at eight o’clock at night, while we start [television production] at nine o’clock in the morning. And they have class, so that’s 10:30, and then they have to rest a bit, so we can’t get started before 11. But then it’s 11 through seven, constantly rehearsing, taping, rehearsing, taping. And we never did anything over five minutes in length, and would edit the pieces together later. Because that’s the way you can get your [complete] performance. Jerome Robbins hated the idea, because he wanted to see the spontaneity that comes from [a complete] performance. Well, it was just not possible [to film that way], but Balanchine was delighted with it, because he got the perfection he was looking for.

A lot of people have commented that the shooting, our shooting was just boring, it was too bland, but Balanchine wanted you to see the dance. We didn’t want the camera to distract you. A lot of television today [consists of] fast cuts but dancing doesn’t take to that– particularly ballet dancing. You have to trust the dancing. That was Balanchine’s phrase. When we talked at first, he said, “Would you trust the dancing?” And I said, “Yes.” It took me years to figure out what he meant, but I think I found out.

By the time of his death on April 30, 1983, George Balanchine had created over 400 works and was recognized as a 20th-century master alongside Picasso and Stravinsky. Here is the story of how the man born Georg Melitonovitch Balanchivadze in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1904 went on to become the artistic director and primary choreographer of the New York City Ballet:

The man who would one day rank among the greatest choreographers in the history of ballet came to the United States in late 1933 following an early career throughout Europe. His trip came at the invitation of Lincoln Kirstein, a Boston born dance connoisseur whose dream it was to establish an American school of ballet and company equivalent to those in Europe.

The first result of the Balanchine-Kirstein collaboration was the School of American Ballet, founded in early 1934. It later became known as the premier American ballet academy and breeding ground for the New York City Ballet, which Balanchine and Kirstein were to establish together after 14 more years, in 1948. Balanchine’s first ballet in this country was “Serenade,” set to music by Tchaikovsky, which was premiered outdoors on the estate of a friend near White Plains, New York, as a workshop performance by students of the school.

In 1935, Balanchine and Kirstein set up a touring company of dancers from the school and called it the American Ballet. That same year the Metropolitan Opera invited the company to become its resident ballet, with Balanchine as the Met’s ballet master. On October 11, 1948, Morton Baum, chairman of the City Center finance committee, saw Ballet Society, formed two years earlier by Balanchine and Kirstein, in a City Center Theater program that included “Orpheus,” “Serenade” and “Symphony in C” (a ballet Balanchine had created for the Paris Opera Ballet under the title “Le Palais de Cristal” the previous year).

Baum was so impressed that he negotiated to have the company join the City Center municipal complex. Balanchine’s talents had found a permanent home. That home was to become known as New York City Ballet and Balanchine would serve as its artistic director until his death in 1983.

With a company initially strapped for cash, Balanchine eschewed elaborate costumes and sets and presented his dancers in practice clothes, an innovation he continued to use for selected ballets long after money was no longer an issue. Among the “practice-clothes ballets” in the Balanchine repertory: “Agon,” “Episodes,” “Ivesiana,” “Kammermusic No. 2,” and more than 20 Stravinsky/ Balanchine collaborations.

At this time, he also choreographed “The Nutcracker,” New York City Ballet’s first full-length ballet and an enduring popular success. Although it took a long while for New York City Ballet to become a popular company, by the time Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts opened in 1964, Balanchine’s reputation was established and he was ready to reach a larger audience on a larger stage.

To many observers who followed New York City Ballet through the lean years, the opulent and elaborate productions that began to emerge at the New York State Theater must have seemed out of character. For those, however, who realized that Balanchine had dreamed of creating for America what the Maryinsky had been for Russia, the development was perfectly logical, and ballets such as “Don Quixote,” “Union Jack,” “Jewels,” and “Vienna Waltzes” soon followed.

The legacy left by Balanchine when he died remains as profound as it is extensive.