in ballet, or probably anywhere else for that matter.
It’s work and work and work, on little things as much as big.
A few years after the premiere of La Valse in 1951, NYCB was performing it in Chicago, “and it was obvious,” one dancer recalled, that Balanchine had been spending time with Le Clercq on it. “Because it was even better. The scene where she puts the gloves and jewelry on–it was so magnificent. You got chills watching her.”