Making Ballet American - Harris, Andrea

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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. This book intervenes in the prevailing historical

Résumé :
George Balanchine's arrival in the United States in 1933, it is widely thought, changed the course of ballet history by creating a bold neoclassical style that is celebrated as the first American manifestation of the art form. In Making Ballet American, author Andrea Harris challenges this narrative by revealing the complex social, cultural, and political forces that actually shaped the construction of American neoclassical ballet. Situating American ballet within a larger context of modernisms, the book examines critical efforts to craft new, modernist ideas about the relevance of classical dancing for American society and democracy. Through cultural and choreographic analysis, it illustrates the evolution of modernist ballet during a turbulent historical period. Ultimately, the book 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 story that pivots on the question of modern art's relationship to America and the larger world....

Biographie:

• Introduction


• 1. Modernism and American Ballet


• Interchapter 1. Americana Ballet I: Billy the Kid


• 2. Lincoln Kirstein's Social Modernism and the Cultural Front


• Interchapter 2. Americana Ballet II: Rodeo


• 3. Edwin Denby's Objectivist Modernism and the New York School


• Interchapter 3. Americana Ballet III: Western Symphony


• 4. The Making of an American Ballet Institution in Europe in the Cultural Cold War


• Conclusion: We drink the health of the guy that died.


• Bibliography


• Index