Even after the death of the great choreographer and ballet master George Balanchine, the legacy of his beautiful ballets and the striving for perfection which he instilled in his dancers live on. This documentary celebrates six of Balanchine's ballerinas, Mary Ellen Moylan, Maria Tallchief, Melissa Hayden, Allegra Kent, Merrill Ashley and Darci Kistler, and shows them keeping alive the ballets and the inspiration they learned from him. For all of them, Balanchine was the single most powerful influence in their lives.
These ballerinas, along with Suzanne Farrell, Tanaquil le Clerq and Diana Adams, are seen in a feast of excerpts of Balanchine ballets, including Concerto Barocco, Serenade, Symphony in C, Firebird, Stars and Stripes, Ballo Della Regina, Chaconne, Agon, Four Temperaments, Apollo and Scotch Symphony.
This film creates a composite portrait of being a dancer, of being a Balanchine dancer, and shows how the lives of Balanchine and these six ballerinas touched each other in indelible ways during a unique period. He nurtured and made each of them, and many others, more beautiful as dancers than they would have imagined possible, and they in turn inspired him in many different ways to create his remarkable range of superb ballets.
