Limelight · Ballet

Noah and the Flood

Choreography by George Balanchine

Noah and the Flood is a stage ballet by George Balanchine and Jacques d'Amboise, made to Igor Stravinsky's The Flood (1962). The article records its theatrical premiere as 11 June 1982 at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, with a text assembled by Robert Craft drawing on the Book of Genesis, the Te Deum and Sanctus hymns, and the 15th-century York and Chester miracle plays.

What is danced

The source article gives no description of steps, technique or choreographic structure — it records only the creative credits, the compiled text sources, and the premiere date and venue. There is no cast list content, no scene breakdown and no synopsis to draw section-level movement claims from. Anything said about the actual dancing in this work would have to come from outside the article, and the article itself supports none of it.

Context

The article situates the work at the intersection of Balanchine's long collaboration with Stravinsky and a text tradition reaching back to medieval English mystery plays, filtered through Robert Craft's compilation of biblical and liturgical sources. It names a co-choreographer, Jacques d'Amboise, alongside Balanchine, which is itself worth noting since most Balanchine-catalogued ballets carry his name alone.

Staging history

The only staging the article documents is the 11 June 1982 premiere at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center — no later revivals, transfers, or companies are mentioned.

How to watch it

The article gives no guidance on performance convention beyond the textual sources used, so specific viewing cues cannot be offered from it alone. A viewer would want to watch for how spoken or sung text (Genesis, Te Deum, Sanctus, the York and Chester plays) is set against Stravinsky's score and against the dancing, since the piece is built from compiled text rather than a single narrative source.

Credits

  • composer: Igor Stravinsky

Questions

Who choreographed Noah and the Flood?
George Balanchine and Jacques d'Amboise, according to the article.
What music does the ballet use?
Igor Stravinsky's The Flood (1962).
Where does the text come from?
Robert Craft chose and arranged it from the Book of Genesis, the Te Deum and Sanctus hymns, and the 15th-century York and Chester miracle plays.
When and where did the stage version premiere?
The article gives 11 June 1982 at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, though this date is not yet reflected in our own record.
This entry was written from “Noah and the Flood (ballet)” on English Wikipedia (revision 1271645719), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. The link points at the exact revision this text was written from, so it shows the words we actually used rather than whatever the article says today. Credits and premiere data come from Wikidata (CC0), cited per field.