Conclusion

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Harris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
Current State ◽  
The Arts ◽  
History Of ◽  
Lincoln Center

The Conclusion briefly examines the current state of the New York City Ballet under the auspices of industrial billionaire David H. Koch at Lincoln Center. In so doing, it to introduces a series of questions, warranting still more exploration, about the rapid and profound evolution of the structure, funding, and role of the arts in America through the course of the twentieth century. It revisits the historiographical problem that drives Making Ballet American: the narrative that George Balanchine was the sole creative genius who finally created an “American” ballet. In contrast to that hagiography, the Conclusion reiterates the book’s major contribution: illuminating the historical construction of our received idea of American neoclassical ballet within a specific set of social, political, and cultural circumstances. The Conclusion stresses that the history of American neoclassicism must be seen as a complex narrative involving several authors and discourses and crossing national and disciplinary borders: a history in which Balanchine was not the driving force, but rather the outcome.

Kirstein, Lincoln Edward (1907–1996)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Steichen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
The United States ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Institutional Leader ◽  
Lincoln Center ◽  
Dance Companies

Lincoln Kirstein was an American impresario, writer, and philanthropist, best known as the patron and champion of choreographer George Balanchine, whom he brought to the United States in 1933. Born in Rochester, New York, Kirstein was raised among the wealthy elite of Boston and graduated from Harvard University. A prolific writer, editor, collector, and fund-raiser, Kirstein was a tireless advocate on behalf of the arts generally, and ballet and dance specifically, in the United States. He was a founding editor of the literary quarterly Hound & Horn and helped to create the organization that became the Museum of Modern Art. With Balanchine, Kirstein founded a series dance companies in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the School of American Ballet (SAB), culminating in the creation in 1948 of the New York City Ballet (NYCB). He served as Managing Director of the New York City Center, and was a member of the original planning committee for the Lincoln Center. Kirstein was instrumental in securing major philanthropic support from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations for SAB and NYCB (in addition to other American dance companies), and was a crucial institutional leader of both organizations throughout his life. An astute and wide-ranging collector of art, books, and dance memorabilia, Kirstein’s donations to the MoMA Dance Archives and the New York Public Library’s Jerome Robbins Dance Division constitute some of the most significant archival holdings in America on the history of ballet and dance.

Making Ballet 3

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Harris
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Movement Analysis ◽  
Story Line ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Ballet History ◽  
Choreographic Analysis

Making Ballet 3 provides a choreographic analysis of the ballet Western Symphony, produced by the New York City Ballet in 1954 with choreography by George Balanchine, music by Hershy Kay, scenery by John Boyt, and costumes by Karinska. It brings to light the multitude of intertextual allusions that occur throughout the ballet, playfully intermingling references of “America” with an entire lineage of nineteenth-century European classicism. Although Western Symphony has no story line, it crafts a deliberate message: a long, transatlantic genealogy of Western classicism that, in the twentieth century, has come to rest in America. Drawing on archival sources and movement analysis, this interchapter argues that Western Symphony incorporates parody to present a revisionist ballet history in which the high cultural lineages of Europe and America are intimately entwined. Ultimately, this message reinforced the Atlanticist politics of private and state anticommunist groups in the cultural Cold War, the historical setting for its production and performance.

Chicago's Auditorium Building: Opera or Anarchism

1998 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Siry
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Social History ◽  
Chicago School ◽  
Paris Opera ◽  
Metropolitan Opera ◽  
History Of ◽  
Opera House ◽  
Opera Houses

Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Building in Chicago (1886-1890) is here analyzed in the context of Chicago's social history of the 1880s. Specifically, the building is seen as a capitalistic response to socialist and anarchist movements of the period. The Auditorium's principal patron, Ferdinand W. Peck, created a theater that was to give access to cultural and civic events for the city's workers, to draw them away from both politicized and nonpoliticized "low" urban entertainments. Adler and Sullivan's theater was to serve a mass audience, unlike opera houses of the period, which held multiple tiers of boxes for privileged patrons. This tradition was represented by the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City (1881-1883). Turning away from works like the Paris Opéra, Peck and his architects perhaps sought to emulate ideas of other European theaters of the period, such as Bayreuth's Festspielhaus (1872-1876). Sullivan's interior had an ornamental and iconographic program that was innovative relative to traditional opera houses. His design of the building's exterior was in a Romanesque style that recalled ancient Roman monuments. It is here compared with other Chicago buildings of its era that represented high capital's reaction to workers' culture, such as Burnham and Root's First Regiment Armory (1889-1891), Peck's own house (1887), and the Chicago Athenaeum (1890-1891). The Auditorium's story invites a view of the Chicago School that emphasizes the role of patrons' ideological agenda rather than modern structural expression.

Nietzsche's Looming Presence in the 1930s Dance Polemics of John Martin and Lincoln Kirstein

2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-203
Author(s):  
Rachel Straus
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
Modern Dancers

Some of the most perplexingly antagonistic comments about the differences between modern dance and ballet can be found strewn throughout the works of two pioneering twentieth-century American dance writers: John Martin (1893–1985) –  The New York Times's first permanent dance critic, champion of modern dancers and early supporter of Martha Graham ( Kisselgoff et al. 1988 : 44) – and Lincoln Kirstein (1907–1996), the prodigious author, impresario, and balletomane, who cofounded with George Balanchine the New York City Ballet. Looming behind a significant number of Martin's and Kirstein's appraisals and condemnations of modern dance and ballet are Friedrich Nietzsche's aesthetics, particularly his Apollonian-Dionysian conceptualisations. This essay investigates the reception of Nietzsche in the context of the 1930s writing of these two dance critics, particularly in respect to their treatment of gender. Foundational for this essay's development are the analyses of Nietzsche's reception by earlier twentieth-century dance figures in the works of Susan Jones (2013 , 2010 ), Susan Manning (2006) and Kimerer LaMothe (2006) .

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Steichen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
New Approach ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
The Past ◽  
Collective Work ◽  
Collaborative Efforts

This introduction explains that the early collaborative efforts of George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein have been written about in ways that misrepresented the true character of their activity during the 1930s. It shows how a “received history” has come to define this period, which is construed as leading to the inevitable success of the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet. It contextualizes the goals of this book in relation to recent innovations in the study of twentieth-century dance and music, in particular scholarship on modernism, and makes the case for a new approach to this period of cultural history. It argues that a lack of clarity regarding this formative period in Balanchine and Kirstein’s collaborative enterprise has led to misunderstandings regarding the past, present, and future meaning of their individual and collective work.

scholarly journals A journey in collections management : the creation of a finding aid for the Black Star Ephemera Collection at the Ryerson Image Centre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren N Potter
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Collections Management ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
The Creation

This applied project involved the creation of a finding aid for the Black Star Ephemera Collection held at the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) at Ryerson University in Toronto. This little known and un-catalogued collection was originally part of the Black Star Agency photographic collection founded in New York City in 1935. Black Star is a well known photo agency that has served as a resource for the picture press during the twentieth century, providing photographs of significant events, people, and places. This ephemeral collection is made up of all the textual material originally used by the agency to organize and support the photographic collection. In addition to the finding aid this paper discussed the significance of this collection and its relationship to the history of photojournalism as well as providing a summary of the rational and methodology for the applied project.

Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Steichen
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Hollywood Cinema ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
Broadway Musical ◽  
Broadway Musicals

George Balanchine is today one of the most celebrated figures in twentieth-century ballet and is closely identified with the two institutions he helped found in collaboration with Lincoln Kirstein: the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. During the early years of their efforts in the 1930s, Balanchine and Kirstein’s enterprise underwent numerous changes and transformations. The complexity of their endeavors has been misrepresented in many existing accounts of their lives and careers, in part because their activities have not been assessed as a whole. This book chronicles Balanchine’s and Kirstein’s work between 1933 and 1940 in the spheres of ballet, opera, Broadway musicals, and Hollywood cinema. This new account shows the ways in which their collective and individual efforts influenced and affected one another and ultimately shaped the character of the institutions they would eventually found. The work of the short-lived organizations the American Ballet (1935–38) and Ballet Caravan (1936–40) brought together dozens of dancers and collaborators, and the activity of these companies was closely related to work of the School of American Ballet as well as Balanchine’s projects in Broadway musical theater and film.

scholarly journals A journey in collections management : the creation of a finding aid for the Black Star Ephemera Collection at the Ryerson Image Centre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren N Potter
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Collections Management ◽  
Significant Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
Textual Material ◽  
The Creation

This applied project involved the creation of a finding aid for the Black Star Ephemera Collection held at the Ryerson Image Centre (RIC) at Ryerson University in Toronto. This little known and un-catalogued collection was originally part of the Black Star Agency photographic collection founded in New York City in 1935. Black Star is a well known photo agency that has served as a resource for the picture press during the twentieth century, providing photographs of significant events, people, and places. This ephemeral collection is made up of all the textual material originally used by the agency to organize and support the photographic collection. In addition to the finding aid this paper discussed the significance of this collection and its relationship to the history of photojournalism as well as providing a summary of the rational and methodology for the applied project.

scholarly journals News and Announcements

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Mead-Willis
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Short History ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Popular Appeal ◽  
The World ◽  
Book Award ◽  
History Of ◽  
Inside Out

The final months of 2011 brought to a close a banner year in children’s publishing, with the announcement of major book awards both in Canada and abroad. In November, the Canada Council for the Arts announced the winners of the 2011 Governor General’s Literary Awards. In the children’s-lit categories, Cybèle Young’s Ten Birds and Caroline Merola’s Lili et les poilus won for illustration, while Christopher Moore’s From Then to Now: A Short History of the World and Martin Fournier’s Les aventures de Radisson: L’enfer ne brûle pas took home top honours for text. November also saw the announcement of the prestigious National Book Awards in the New York City. Among the winners was Thanhha Lai’s Vietnam War saga Inside Out and Back Again, which placed first in the Young People’s Literature category. Nor is 2012 off to an inauspicious start. In January, Canadian-born author Moira Young won a Costa Book Award for her debut YA novel, Blood Red Road. The Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, recognize fiction that combines popular appeal with literary merit.

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