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) .

Episodes (1959): Entente Cordiale?

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-72
Author(s):  
Angela Kane
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
Dance Company ◽  
Working Practices ◽  
Paul Taylor ◽  
General Director

This article investigates Episodes (1959), which was a co-production by the New York City Ballet and the Martha Graham Dance Company. It assesses the immediate and longer-term impact of the work, both conceptually and choreographically, and the extent to which it can be considered ‘a historic meeting of two dance worlds’, as the New York Post claimed at the time. The article also explores the motivations of the three key figures involved – George Balanchine and Martha Graham as co-choreographers, and Lincoln Kirstein, General Director of NYCB – and the different working practices of the two companies. It draws upon dancers' accounts of the co-production, including Paul Taylor who performed in Balanchine's choreography, and extensive correspondence between Graham's company and NYCB.

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.

Shearer, Sybil (1912–2005)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bonnie Brooks
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Rudolf Steiner ◽  
Spiritual Authenticity

In the modern dance world, Sybil Shearer was by most accounts an idiosyncratic, singular, and somewhat esoteric figure whose career spanned the second half of the twentieth century. As a dancer Shearer came of age in the 1930s, when she studied at the Bennington School of the Dance, joined the Humphrey–Weidman company, and performed with Agnes DeMille. In 1941 she presented her debut concert as a soloist in New York City and became recognized as an innovator, an original voice within the generation that followed Bennington. The following year she moved to Chicago, a decision that enhanced her reputation for curiosity, elusiveness, and mystique. She founded her own ensemble of Chicago-based dancers, the Sybil Shearer Company, created scores of short solos for herself, and was a pioneer in the photographic and film documentation of her dances in collaboration with photographer Helen Balfour Morrison. Deeply philosophical and at the same time profoundly spiritual, Shearer devoted her career as well as her inner life—it is impossible to separate her artistry from her spirituality—to a constant search for cosmic meaning, aesthetic purity, and spiritual authenticity. Strongly influenced by Rudolf Steiner, she was a true modernist in the sense that she believed deeply in universal concepts and was in constant search of the evidence and experience of those realities through choreography and dancing.

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.

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.

scholarly journals Nueva York 1916. La ciudad sin límites | New York 1916. Unlimited city

ZARCH ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
José Durán Fernández
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
Urban Planning ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
York City ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Siglo Xx ◽  
The City

La Ciudad de Nueva York fue pionera en la aplicación de un sistema de planificación de control urbano que pusiera orden y concierto a una ciudad que rebasa los 5 millones de habitantes a principios del siglo XX. Tal complejo organismo urbano, inédito hasta ese momento, fue objeto del más ambicioso plan urbano sobre una ciudad construida.Este artículo se destina al estudio de este originario plan urbano de 1916, el cual sentaría las bases, unas ciertamente visionarias otras excesivas, de la construcción de la Ciudad de Nueva York en todo el siglo XX. La Building Zone Resolution se creó con dos fines: resolver los problemas de congestión humana en un espacio reducido, la ciudad del presente, y proponer una visión del espacio urbano en las décadas venideras, la ciudad del futuro.El artículo es un compendio de diez textos cortos y un epílogo, que junto a sus respectivos diez documentos gráficos, construyen el corpus de la investigación. El lector pues se enfrenta a un ensayo gráfico formado por pequeños capítulos que le sumergirán en los orígenes de la primera ciudad vertical de la historia.PALABRAS CLAVE: Nueva York; Planeamiento; Visión urbana.The city of New York was a pioneer in the implementation of an urban control planning system that set in order a city that exceeds five million people in the early twentieth century. Such complex urban organism – invaluable until that moment – was the target for the most ambitious urban planning on a built city.This paper focuses on the study of this initial urban planning from 1916, which would set the basis, certainly some visionary yet others excessive, for the building of New York City throughout the 20th century. The Building Zone Resolution was created with two purposes: to solve the issues related to the human bundle in a limited space, the city of the present, and to aim a vision of the urban space in the forthcoming decades, the city of the future.The article is a compendium of ten short texts and one epilogue, which in combination with ten graphic documents, frame the corpus of this investigation. Thus, the reader will face a graphic essay composed by a series of brief chapters that highlight the beginning of the first vertical city in history.KEYWORDS: New York; Planning; Urban vision.

“Ballet Is a Flower”

2020 ◽  
pp. 97-128
Author(s):  
Anne Searcy
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
York City ◽  
Soviet Government ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
The Soviet Union

Chapter 4 analyzes New York City Ballet’s (NYCB’s) 1962 tour of the Soviet Union and the Soviet reception of NYCB choreographer George Balanchine. Previous scholarly accounts have claimed the Soviet reviews of Balanchine’s works were heavily censored, and that, as a result, the tour undermined the authority of the Soviet government with the intelligentsia. Chapter 4 re-examines this tour, using transliteration as a way of modeling the Soviet response to Balanchine. This re-examination shows that Soviet cultural authorities were not at all hostile to the choreographer or his company. The Soviet critics mostly accepted Balanchine’s ballets, but they reframed his accomplishments within their own debates about drambalet and choreographic symphonism. According to Balanchine’s Soviet critics, his works were successful precisely because they reaffirmed the value of the Russian systems of training, artistry, and meaning.

Balanchine, George (1904–1983)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
York City ◽  
Violin Concerto ◽  
Classical Dance ◽  
George Balanchine ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Classical Ballet

George Balanchine (Georgii Melitonovich Balanchivadze), arguably the greatest ballet choreographer of the twentieth century, was at once both modernist and traditionalist. Unlike many radical innovators, in charting new ground he did not reject the past. Virtually all of his major works make reference, even if obliquely, to the classical ballet technique in which he was trained. Although born in Russia and active in Europe in the early part of his career, it was in America that he made his greatest impact, directing the New York City Ballet, which he co-founded with Lincoln Kirstein, from its inception in 1948 until his death in 1983. During this time, the company grew from modest beginnings to become one of the most important ballet troupes in the world. Balanchine is credited with creating a particularly American style of classical dance, one that is characterized by speed, precision, energy, daring, and a rough grace more associated with athletes than with sylphs. His more than 400 dance works include Apollo (1928), Serenade (1934), Concerto Barocco (1941), Le Palais de cristal (later renamed Symphony in C) (1948), Orpheus (1948), The Nutcracker (1954), Agon (1957), Symphony in Three Movements (1972), Stravinsky Violin Concerto (1972), Vienna Waltzes (1977), Ballo della Regina (1978), and Mozartiana (1981).

Trial by Jury: An Alternative Form of Theatrical Censorship in New York, 1921–1925

1985 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
David K. Rod
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New York City ◽  
York City ◽  
Alternative Form ◽  
American Theatre ◽  
Jury System ◽  
Legal Controls ◽  
Public Concerns

Between 1921 and 1925, an experimental form of nongovernmental censorship of the theatre was developed and practiced in New York City. Referred to variously as volunteer juries, citizens' juries, or the play-jury system, the experiment attempted to overcome the shortcomings of existing legal controls on the theatre and to relieve public concerns about the exploitation of sexually suggestive and obscene materials in stage plays. Although the play-jury system was short-lived, a review of its brief career reveals significant accomplishments and can provide a clearer picture of some of the issues confronting the American theatre in the first part of the twentieth century.

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