Compañía Nacional de Danza

There is no plot; in Balanchine’s own words, “the ballet tells its story musically and choreographically, without resorting to any external narration.” Perhaps, in terms of meaning, it could point to a thought of Balanchine’s: “Every man walks with destiny at his back; he meets a woman, he loves her, but destiny already has other plans.”
Serenade expresses the rhythm, dynamism, and tonalities of the music.
A simple blue-toned stage design frames the rhythmic, precise, and seemingly narrative movements of the five soloists and twenty dancers of the corps de ballet that Balanchine stages. Their encounters and disagreements, their interaction, whether crossed or symmetrical, compose a successive and uninterrupted series of scenes in which one perceives a pure romanticism, very subtle and fully in keeping with the neoclassical character of the Balanchine style.
It is the first choreography that Patricia Neary, considered a “typical dancer” of Balanchine, staged in Spain.