George Balanchine Serenade and Agon

Twyla Tharp writes in her book "The Creative Habit" about George Balanchine's choreography of abstracted gestures "that pluck a chord in us that we can't name but that resonates."

Balanchine created "beautiful plotless structures that mirror music rather than interpret it… The content is the essence of life, not the details of living." He wasn't trying to explain or tell a story with his movements. His language of movement created connections between the natural and the emotional.

I chose the example video because the movements are broken into small pieces, they are interspersed with natural movements shot from intimate range rather than performance range and the use of atypical music makes the movements seem more primal.