Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Lincoln Kirstein, Modern Dance, and the Left: The Genesis of an American Ballet

Lincoln Kirstein, Modern Dance, and the Left: The Genesis of an American Ballet Ballet Caravan, the short-lived chamber company founded by Lincoln Kirstein1 in 1936, is mostly remembered as a high-minded but misguided experiment in presenting ballets by Americans on American subjects. With the exception of Billy the Kid (1938), which teamed Eugene Loring with composer Aaron Copland on the first of the latter’s Americana classics, and to a lesser extent the Lew Christensen-Virgil Thomson-Paul Cadmus collaboration, Filling Station (1937), the repertoire did not outlast the company’s five-year existence. To be sure, aspects of the enterprise proved more lasting. The ‘seasoning’ of a generation of young American dancers, the discovery of a generation of new American choreographers, and the tapping in New York and on the road of an educated, sophisticated audience – all contributed to the ballet ‘boom’ of the 1940s and the strong American presence in companies such as Ballet Theatre, Ballet International, and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Ballet Caravan survived in part because of Kirstein’s willingness to associate the company with institutions and practices peripheral to ballet. The first of these was modern dance, which helped establish the company’s American identity. Ballet Caravan made its debut at the Bennington College Summer School of the Dance,2 performed http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Dance Research Edinburgh University Press

Lincoln Kirstein, Modern Dance, and the Left: The Genesis of an American Ballet

Dance Research , Volume 23 (1): 18 – Apr 1, 2005

Loading next page...
 
/lp/edinburgh-university-press/lincoln-kirstein-modern-dance-and-the-left-the-genesis-of-an-american-vGfH82DNBJ

References (2)

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press
ISSN
0264-2875
eISSN
1750-0095
DOI
10.3366/drs.2005.23.1.18
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Ballet Caravan, the short-lived chamber company founded by Lincoln Kirstein1 in 1936, is mostly remembered as a high-minded but misguided experiment in presenting ballets by Americans on American subjects. With the exception of Billy the Kid (1938), which teamed Eugene Loring with composer Aaron Copland on the first of the latter’s Americana classics, and to a lesser extent the Lew Christensen-Virgil Thomson-Paul Cadmus collaboration, Filling Station (1937), the repertoire did not outlast the company’s five-year existence. To be sure, aspects of the enterprise proved more lasting. The ‘seasoning’ of a generation of young American dancers, the discovery of a generation of new American choreographers, and the tapping in New York and on the road of an educated, sophisticated audience – all contributed to the ballet ‘boom’ of the 1940s and the strong American presence in companies such as Ballet Theatre, Ballet International, and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Ballet Caravan survived in part because of Kirstein’s willingness to associate the company with institutions and practices peripheral to ballet. The first of these was modern dance, which helped establish the company’s American identity. Ballet Caravan made its debut at the Bennington College Summer School of the Dance,2 performed

Journal

Dance ResearchEdinburgh University Press

Published: Apr 1, 2005

There are no references for this article.