Making Ballet American

Abstract

George Balanchine’s arrival in the United States in 1933, it is widely thought, changed the course of ballet history by creating a bold and original neoclassical style that is celebrated as the first successful “American” manifestation of the art form. Making Ballet American: Modernism Before and Beyond Balanchine intervenes in the prevailing historical narrative and rebalances Balanchine’s role in dance history by revealing the social, cultural, and political forces that actually shaped the Americanization of neoclassical ballet. Situating American ballet within a larger context of literary, musical, art, and dance modernism, Harris examines a series of critical efforts, most prominently by Lincoln Kirstein and Edwin Denby, to craft new, modernist ideas about the relevance of classical dancing for American society. The book’s unique structure interweaves chapters focused on cultural and intellectual histories of ballet criticism and production with close examinations of three American ballets in the Depression, World War II, and Cold War eras: Eugene Loring’s Billy the Kid (1938), Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo (1942), and Balanchine’s Western Symphony (1954). Through this blend of cultural and choreographic analysis, Making Ballet American illustrates the evolution of modernist ballet theory and practice during a turbulent historical period. Ultimately, Making Ballet American argues that the Americanization of Balanchine’s neoclassicism was not the inevitable outcome of his immigration or his creative genius, but rather a far more complicated process that spanned several authors and continents, always pivoting on the question of modern ballet’s relationship to America and the larger world.