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

Abstract

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) .