In 1941 George Balanchine choreographed the ballet “Concerto Barocco” to Bach’s Concerto in D minor for Two Violins. When I write “choreographed to,” I really mean it, because the dance has virtually no plot except to express the music, with the two soloist dancers acting as the two violins, and the chorus as background. It succeeds on every term—as a visualization of the music, as a puzzle solved in patterns, and as a showcase for the dancers. It must have been revolutionary when it was first performed.

This is a cast from the Balanchine mother ship, New York City Ballet, at a time when Balanchine was still alive and personally supervising just about everything (my estimate for this is mid-1970s, but I’m not certain). Unfortunately, the video has some “creative” camera angles that shift and change too much; I’d much have preferred simple and steady. But it’s still lovely:

However, I’d like you to look at a much older video. Although the ballet was choreographed in 1941, it didn’t receive its NYCB premiere until 1948, and this may have been the original cast. If not the original, it’s not long after; perhaps the early 50s.

For me, this version is incomparable. There is a gentleness and ease, particularly in the second dancer who enters, Tanaquil Le Clerc. She had an usual combination of strength and refinement, a precision of movement that seemed both intentional and completely relaxed at the same time, which makes everyone else seem to be straining in comparison. Note, also, how the two soloists move on the music in a way that synchronizes them far better than in the previous video, where they seem slightly disconnected from each other. These two have a sixth sense that unites them:

It’s grainy, and it’s black-and-white. But there is a delicacy and wit and emphasis that is quite different from today, and to me superior.

[NOTE: Tanaquil Le Clerq developed polio in 1956 while in her mid-twenties, and never walked again. She was married to Balanchine at the time, and he divorced her in 1969.]