Balanchine would later recount the conversation as follows:[2] Although Stravinsky was busy with other projects at the time, he negotiated a high fee with the Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey Circus for a short instrumental, which he composed within a few days.
The piano version of Circus Polka, subtitled "For a Young Elephant" as an allusion to the phone conversation with Balanchine, was finished on February 5, 1942.
During the following months a number of charity concerts to support the U.S. Army fighting in World War II were held and broadcast over the radio.
Stravinsky reported that after one such broadcast he received a telegram from an elephant called Bessie who had taken part in the ballet in 1942, and whom he then met in Los Angeles.
[7] After listening to another such broadcast, Charles de Gaulle ordered the sheet music for the piece and took it back home to France.
George Balanchine re-choreographed the piece for a one-time performance by students from the School of American Ballet, which took place on 5 November 1945 at Carnegie Hall, directed by Lincoln Kirstein.
[10] In 2006, a children's book detailing the history of the Circus Polka, Leda Schubert's Ballet of the Elephants, appeared in the United States.