\n<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a numinous blue that suggests the sky, the sea, the infinite. It\u2019s a field \u2014 poetic and abstract \u2014 that sets off the eloquence of dancing bodies. The cerulean backdrop associated with the ballets of George Balanchine and New York City Ballet has come to seem so natural a setting for plotless ballet that we barely notice it.<\/p>\n
But at sunset on Wednesday its importance will be broadcast across New York City, Balanchine\u2019s adopted home: The Empire State Building will light up with \u201cBalanchine Blue<\/a>\u201d to celebrate the 75th anniversary of City Ballet\u2019s first performance, on Oct. 11, 1948<\/a>, at the City Center of Music and Drama. And at Lincoln Center, the company\u2019s home since 1964, the company, founded by Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein, will perform the program that it danced on that first night: \u201cConcerto Barocco,\u201d \u201cOrpheus\u201d and \u201cSymphony in C,\u201d the first and last set against a blue background.<\/p>\n The color is \u201ca blue with little or no green in it,\u201d slightly shading toward purple, said Perry Silvey, who worked in City Ballet\u2019s production department from 1977 to 2019.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not just one color. \u201cThe blue in \u2018Agon\u2019 is a different blue than \u2018Symphony in C\u2019 or \u2018Divertimento No. 15,\u2019\u201d Mark Stanley, City Ballet\u2019s resident lighting designer, said referring to three Balanchine classics. (Forty-two Balanchine works in the current rep have lighting in the blue family, he said, as do about 30 not by Balanchine.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cA deeper, richer blue evokes a different feeling from a lighter sky blue,\u201d Stanley added. \u201cWe try to find the color that fits mood, emotion and energy of each ballet.\u201d<\/p>\n Within the company, he said, the color is called \u201cRosenthal Blue,\u201d for the influential lighting designer Jean Rosenthal<\/a>, who worked with Balanchine on many early ballets. \u201cThey were already using blue lighting at City Center,\u201d Silvey said. \u201cI assume it started with the idea of the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Maybe. There are other theories, too. \u201cThe \u2018Balanchine\u2019 blue was the color of the upholstery (velvet) on the seats in the Mariinsky Theater at the time he was a student,\u201d Barbara Horgan, Balanchine\u2019s longtime assistant, said in an email. (The Russian-born Balanchine trained at the Mariinsky in St. Petersburg.)<\/p>\n Later, Horgan offered another theory in a phone conversation: \u201cA lot of the lighting and costumes changed when Balanchine started working regularly with Karinska<\/a> in the 1950s,\u201d she said, referring to the costume designer. \u201cShe loved blue. Her hair was blue!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Or perhaps it was sheer pragmatism. \u201cSo much of what we did was because there was no money,\u201d Horgan said. \u201cA backdrop was less expensive than scenery.\u201d<\/p>\n Even if the motive was financial, the aesthetic represented by the blue backdrop was in line with Balanchine\u2019s desire to concentrate on movement and music, without the distractions of story, d\u00e9cor and costume. (Several \u201cBalanchine Blue\u201d works, like \u201cConcerto Barocco\u201d and \u201cThe Four Temperaments,\u201d originally had sets and elaborate costumes \u2014 and presumably different lighting \u2014 but Balanchine began paring away these elements as early as 1945.)<\/p>\n No one seems to be able to pinpoint exactly when Balanchine first introduced a blue backdrop, or if previous ballet choreographers had jettisoned scenery in favor of lighting alone. \u201cYou don\u2019t get lighting by itself much before the middle of the 20th century,\u201d said Jane Pritchard, the curator of dance at the Victoria & Albert Museum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Stanley explained that in the 1960s, light began to be projected through a blue scrim, a transparent overlay with a blue color \u2014 the Rosenthal Blue. \u201cThen backlighting was introduced in the late 1970s by Ronald Bates, who started to mix lighter or richer blues into the projections to get more variety,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Because lighting equipment has evolved so dramatically over time, Stanley said, much has changed. \u201cI try to be true to the formulas I inherited,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not exact. It\u2019s in the family.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He pointed out that City Ballet uses a gray, rather than a black, stage floor. \u201cThat\u2019s iconic Balanchine too,\u201d he said, \u201cand it changes the way you see the Balanchine Blue. That lighter floor and cool background forms what people think of as a Balanchine aesthetic.\u201d<\/p>\n Sara Mearns, a principal dancer, said that as soon as she joined City Ballet she noticed that \u201cyou never felt you were being bombarded by the lights \u2014 you could just think about the dancing.\u201d For her, \u201cSerenade\u201d epitomizes the Balanchine Blue lighting. \u201cI don\u2019t think I have ever felt more comfortable onstage than in that lighting,\u201d she said. \u201cYou feel like you are being hugged by the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n Balanchine\u2019s use of a blue backdrop became an unspoken standard for neoclassical ballets in the 1960s and \u201970s, said the choreographer William Forsythe, who paid homage to it in \u201cThe Vertiginous Thrill of Exactitude\u201d<\/a> (1996), projecting the words \u201cSky Blue\u201d on an Yves Klein-blue backdrop \u2014 \u201can expression of my admiration,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The blue backdrop is less fashionable now among contemporary choreographers, but it remains an essential part of City Ballet\u2019s identity. As Pritchard put it: \u201cWhen the curtain rises on that blue, you think, Yes, I am at New York City Ballet!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n