Circus Polka for a Young Elephant

Stravinsky turned to the Viennese tradition again when, by way of the choreographer George Balanchine, he was commissioned to provide the music for a ballet of elephants in the Barnum and Bailey Circus. In spite of the difficulty the pachyderm dancers apparently had with the polka rhythms, not least where they get mixed up with Schubert’s Marche militaire, this ballet for Modoc and a corps de ballet of 49 other elephants was performed no fewer than 425 times in Madison Square Gardens, New York City, in 1942.