The School of American Ballet was founded by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein in 1934 and is the official ballet school of the New York City Ballet.
The school's main purpose is to train dancers who are as skilled as surgeons.
Balanchine has a very clear aesthetic. He wanted his dancers to be very tall, young, and slender with long legs, supple feet, narrow hips and a small head. His dancers were to move fast, light, and big with "an edge as sharp and clear as the facet of a diamond.
Balanchine was very meticulous about each body part and how it was supposed to move in connection with other parts such as head movements and port de bras. Balanchine also had a very distinct position of the hands. He liked to see all 5 fingers so his dancers would practice by dancing with small tennis ball shapes in their hands.
In Balanchine technique, the dancers are moving so light and quick that placing weight on the heels of the foot was never fully complete. He used to say, "pretend, in jumping, that you were landing on eggs - not hard-boiled eggs even - to be that controlled. It was up to you when and how you put the heel down. But the plie could never die. You descended in order to come back up. And to move fast you can't have your weight on the four points of the feet."
Balanchine dancers also had great musicality and a way of thinking.
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