Dance: Homage to Igor

STRAVINSKY: How much music will you want for the three dancers' first variation?

BALANCHINE: Thirty-one seconds, I would think.

STRAVINSKY: Could you settle for thirty-two?

They were not joking. One reason the late Composer Igor Stravinsky and Choreographer George Balanchine got on so well was that they both worried about craft at a time when everyone else was worrying about art. If art was the result of their labors, so much the better, but they did not agonize about it. "When I know how long a piece must take, then it excites me," Stravinsky said...

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