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of the most prolific and important creators of
twentieth-century ballets. His father was the
Georgian composer Meliton Balanchivadze
(1862-1937), and his brother, Andrei (born
1906), became an important composer in Soviet
Georgia. From 1914 to 1921, Balanchine studied
at the Imperial Ballet School (later known as the
Kirov), then studied music at the Petrograd Con-
servatory, graduating in 1924. His early experi-
ments in choreography antagonized the ballet
establishment and, while on tour in Europe with
the Soviet State Dancers in 1924, he joined
DIAGHILEV
's Ballets Russes, becoming its choreog-
rapher until Diaghilev's death in 1929. Among
the 10 ballets he choreographed for Diaghilev
were Stravinsky's
Le Chant du rossignol
(1925),
Sauguet's
La Chatte
(1927),
STRAVINSKY
's
Apollo
(1928), and
PROKOFIEV
's
Prodigal Son
(1929). Bal-
anchine came to the United States in 1933 on
the invitation of Lincoln Kirstein, an author and
prominent figure in the world of American
dance and theater, to found the School of Amer-
ican Ballet. He also became director of the
Metropolitan Opera House, a post he held until
1937. Beginning with
TCHAIKOVSKY
's
Serenade
(1934), he began a prolific and outstanding
career that lasted half a century and is almost
synonymous with the history of American ballet
itself. Although he drew from a wide range of
composers, he returned frequently to the classi-
cal Russian training of his youth, preserving and
transforming it in his distinctive neoclassical
style. His collaborations with Stravinsky, dating
back to the 1920s, resulted in some of the mas-
terpieces of Balanchine's canon:
Orphée
(1948),
Agon
(1958), and
Monumentum pro Gesualdo
(1960). In 1946, he again joined forces with
Kirstein to found the company that two years
later would become the New York City Ballet
which went on to become one of the great ballet
companies in the West. He choreographed over
100 ballets for the company, including his signa-
ture
The Nutcracker
and
Don Quixote.
Balanchine
also choreographed Broadway shows and ballet
scenes for films. In 1962 and 1972, he returned
to the Soviet Union to great acclaim, touring
with the New York City Ballet.
Banzarov, Dorzhi
(1822?-1855)
scholar
Born to a Buriat
COSSACK
family in the Trans-
baikal region (currently the Dzhidinskii aimak of
the Buriat Republic), Banzarov became the first
Buriat scholar of renown within the broader sci-
entific community of the Russian Empire. In
1846, he graduated from Kazan University,
where he studied with the noted scholar O. M.
Kovalevskii. In 1847-48, he conducted research
at the Asiatic Museum in St. Petersburg, where
he befriended a number of leading Orientalist
scholars. From 1850 to 1855, he served as a
bureaucrat based in Irkutsk, and during his trav-
els in Siberia, he became acquainted with many
Decembrist exiles. One of them, N. A. Bestu-
zhev, painted his portrait. Banzarov's scholarly
legacy consists of 15 printed works and three
manuscripts. His main work,
Chernaia vera, ili
shamanstvo u mongolov
(
Black Faith, or Shamanism
among the Mongols
), published in 1846, was the
first scholarly work in Russia about shamanism.
Banzarov argued that shamanism was the
ancient religious cult of Mongols, which arose
independently of other religions. This work and
his specialized articles on historical philosophy
and epigraphic problems is distinguished by the
care with which he studied Mongol literary relics
and is a model of philological investigation. In
1947, the Buriat Pedagogical Institute in Ulan-
Ude was renamed in his honor. His collected
works were published in Moscow in 1955.
Baranov, Aleksandr Andreevich
(1747?-1819)
administrator
As the first, and most able, governor of Russia's
Alaskan territories, Baranov provided the foun-
dations for a thriving colony with settlers,
schools, libraries, a shipbuilding yard, and wide-
ranging commercial links that were not followed
by his successors. Baranov was born in Kargopol
and from a young age worked for a Moscow
merchant. In 1780, he moved to Siberia, settling
in Irkutsk, where he managed glass factories and
vodka distilleries and prospered in the fur trade,
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