Making Ballet American: Modernism Before and Beyond Balanchine

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Andrea Harris (Assistant Professor of Dance, Assistant Professor of Dance, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Making Ballet American

Modernism Before and Beyond Balanchine

Andrea Harris (Assistant Professor of Dance, Assistant Professor of Dance, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

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Hardback

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English

Oxford University Press Inc
11 January 2018

Ballet; Contemporary dance

Series: Oxford Studies in Dance Theory

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.

By: Andrea Harris (Assistant Professor of Dance Assistant Professor of Dance University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 163mm, Width: 236mm, Spine: 20mm
Weight: 544g
ISBN: 9780199342235
ISBN 10: 0199342237
Series: Oxford Studies in Dance Theory
Pages: 284
Publication Date: 11 January 2018
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

"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"

Andrea Harris is Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Certified Movement Analyst.

Reviews for Making Ballet American: Modernism Before and Beyond Balanchine

Andrea Harris's Making Ballet American is a remarkable tale of two men - Kirstein, the brilliant ballet entrepreneur, and Denby, the poet of dance critics - who, together and separetly, championed Balanchine's neoclassicism as the cynosure of American ballet. But the book's historical synthesis is even more gripping, focusing on how modernist artists and thinkers from all walks of American culture confronted the deep, underlying fears of the twentieth century: mass media's potential to create unthinking mobs in the guise of fascism, totalitarianism, and even unbridled capitalism. At last, a critical intellectual history of twentieth-century ballet in America - one that is particularly resonant in our time, and full of irony, as individuals initially driven by countercultural and nonconformist values erect elite institutions guaranteed to quash alternative voices! * Joellen Meglin, Dance Chronicle *