Elevated: Ballet and culture in the United States, World War II to the National Endowment for the Arts

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ELEV ATED: BALLET AND CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES,
WORLD WAR II TO THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

by

Sarah E. Fried-Gintis

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)

Copyright 2010 Sarah E. Fried-Gintis

ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

They say it takes a village to raise a child; I know it takes the love and support of
an extended group of colleagues, friends, and family to write a dissertation.
I would like to thank the University of Southern California for seven years of
consistent funding. Grants from the Center for Feminist Research and the Visual Studies
Graduate Program deflected the costs of doing research on the other side of the country.
The Roberta Persinger Foulke Summer Endowment provided four years of much needed
summer support. The Dean Joan Metclaff Scholarship paid for research and travel to
professional conferences during my final year of study.
I am grateful to a number of faculty and colleagues for providing helpful feedback
and criticism. Members of the USC History Department Dissertation Reading Group,
including Phil Chase, Karin Huebner, Ruth Mills Robbins, David Rands, Stephanie
Schnorbus, and Xiaofei Wang provided helpful advice on early chapters of the
dissertation. Members of the USC Visual Studies Dissertation Group provided the
perspective of readers outside my own discipline. Thanks to Jennifer Black, Chera Kee,
Stacey Lutkoski, Leta Ming, and Jia Tan.
Audiences at several professional conferences asked insightful and thought-
provoking questions. Advice received at the 2007 Mid-Atlantic Popular Studies
Association shaped Chapter five. Commentators at the Western Association of Women's
Historians (2007, 2008, and 2009) contributed to Chapters three, five, and seven.
Presenting at the Society of Dancer History Scholars (2008 and 2009) brought me the
necessary perspective and criticism of scholars in dance and cultural studies. In

iii
presenting at the 2010 conference of the American Historian Association, I received
feedback from Lynn Garafola, whose criticism I am especially grateful for.
The staff and librarians of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
particularly in the dance division, were an invaluable source of information during the
researching of this dissertation. Thank you to the staff of the photo-copy division, who I
kept very busy for many weeks. I am also grateful to the staffs of the Margaret Herrick
Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the University of Southern
California Film and Television Archive, and the Los Angeles Public Library.
The staff and “regulars” at M Street Coffee in Sherman Oaks, CA and Starbucks
in Reseda, CA tolerated me camping out for days (sometimes weeks) at a time. Thank
you. You provided the ideal “vibe” for constructive work. Lisa’s Infant and Toddler
Experience in Tarzana, CA has allowed me to work in total confidence that my daughter
is well cared for, an invaluable gift for a new mother. Shelly, Steve, and Jennifer Wolff
and my grandparents, Mort and Esther Fried, opened their homes to me while I did
research in New York. Your generosity made this dissertation possible.
My friends and family have sustained me through seven years of constant work.
In graduate school I owe thanks to Stephanie Clayton, Chera Kee, Julia Ornelas-Higdon,
Laura Kalba, Megan Kendrick, Allison Lauterbach, Ericka Swenson-Tsagkis, Raphaelle
Steinzig, and Liz Willis-Tropea. I am especially grateful to Jennifer Black, who read
every chapter of the dissertation, often two or three times (I will repay the favor) and
whose friendship I have come to value, and to Karin Huebner, whose support, positive
outlook, and friendship has lasted the duration of graduate school.

iv
For much needed respite from the dissertation I thank: Steve Lee and Lora Napier
and Jamie and Christian Shaffer and most recently Arianna and Brooke Carlson, Carol
Zierke Grogan, Patryce Harris, Rose and Carmen Sevilla, Lauren Shand, Kelly Lee, and
Jennifer Styles Zuecher. Heather Wolff's friendship -for more than twenty-five years now
– has been a constant source of love and comfort. Thanks also to her soon to be husband,
Steve Vanucci, for understanding how much time we spend on the phone.
I am especially grateful to my dissertation committee, Steve Ross, Alice Echols,
and Sharon Gillerman for their intellectual generosity and assistance throughout graduate
school, and to my adviser, Lois Banner, for being a true feminist scholar – for offering
sharp and much needed critical advice and for supporting young women as they navigate
the murky terrain of having a family while trying to establish a career. I also thank Lori
Rodgers, Lavernne Hughes, Sandra Hopwood, and especially Joe Styles for all their
logistical help in making graduate school run smoothly. For first turning me onto history
as an undergraduate at Vanderbilt University, I thank Katie Crawford, Rebecca Plant,
Helmut Smith, and Arleen Tuchman.
Finally, I thank my family: my brother Matt, his wife, Dawn, and their two sons,
Sean and David (born the first year of graduate school the lives of these now not so “little
guys” are a reminder of how much time I have invested in this endeavor); my
grandparents, Mort and Esther Fried; my in-laws, Mark and Marty Gintis and Barbara
Gintis; my brother-in-law, Noah Gintis; and most, importantly, my parents, Marty and
Jack Fried, who have supported me in everything I have done and whose emphasis on

v
education and learning first pushed me towards the scholarly path. My mother generously
proofread nearly the entire dissertation.
To my best-friend, partner, and husband, Adam, there are no words to express my
gratitude. You have supported me through every step of my education and know the trials
of the dissertation as no other. This dissertation would not have been possible without
you. To my daughter, Laura, born in the final year of writing the dissertation: Be open-
minded, work hard, believe and be confident in yourself, and be proud of your
accomplishments. These are by far the most important things I have learned in graduate
school.

- Sarah Fried-Gintis, (August 2010)

vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ii

List of Figures vii

Abstract xii

Overture:

Introduction 1

Act 1:

Chapter 1: “Romanticizing” Ballet in the United States 20

Chapter 2: Advancing American Ballet (1909-1940) 71

Act II:

Chapter 3: Reviving Ballet in the Postwar Era 127

Chapter 4: The American Ballet Community: Participation and Appreciation 169

Chapter 5: “From Tutus to T-Shirts:” An “American Ballet” 227

Act III:

Chapter 6: The Swan Takes Flight: The Rise of the Ballerina as a Symbol 284
of Ideal Womanhood

Chapter 7: The Runaway Dancer: Rudolf Nureyev and Masculinity 322
in the United States

Finale:

Concluding Comments 367

Bibliography 377

vii
LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Image of Louis XIV of France costumed for his role 25
as the Sun in Le Ballet de la Nuit (The Ballet of the Night),
Roger Pryor Dodge Collection, New York Public for the
Performing Arts

Figure 2: P.L. Débucourt (1809), La Dansomanie, Gaston Vuiller, 27
History of Dancing (London: Heinman, 1898), 189.

Figure 3: Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide (1832), 36
Bibliothèque de l’Opéra.

Figure 4: Marie Taglioni in La Sylpjhide (1832), 37
Bibliothèque de l’Opéra.

Figure 5: Edgar Degas, “Rehearsal of a Ballet on Stage,” 41
1874, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

Figure 6: Edgar Degas, “Ballet Rehearsal,” 1875, gouache 41
and pastel on canvas, George G. Frelinghuysen Collection,
New York.

Figure 7: Fanny Ellsler in the Cracovienne from The Gypsy, 44
Collection of Allison Delarue.

Figure 8: Fanny Ellsler performing La Cachucha, 44
Collection of Carol Lee.

Figure 9: The dance of the “Pas de Fleurs” in The Black Crook, 48
Hoblitzelle Theatre Arts Library, University of Texas
at Austin.

Figure 10: Image of corypee in The Black Crook,

Hoblitzelle 49
Theatre Arts Library, University of Texas at Austin.

Figure 11: Betty Rigl as the “Demon” in The Black Crook, 49
Museum of the City of New York, Theatre Collection.

Figure 12: The Morlacchi Ballet company, Morlacchi third 52
from the left, Tompkins and Kilby, Boston Theatre,
Harvard Theatre Collection, Houghton Library,
Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts.

viii
Figure 13: Loie Fuller, photograph by B. J. Falk, circa 1896, 60
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 14: Ruth St. Denis in Radha, circa 1906, New York Public 60
Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 15: Isadora Duncan, photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1916, 62
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 16: Set Design for Scheherazade (1916), music by 77
Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), set by Leon Bakst.

Figure 17: Original costume of Kaschei, from The Firebird, 81
Diaghilev Ballet Material: Costumes, Costume Designs
and Portraits (London: Sotheby’s Auction Catalogue, 1967),
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Figure 18: Vaslav Nijinsky as the Faun in, Afternoon of the Faun (1913), 81
Image is widely circulated on the internet.

Figure 19: Anna Pavlova, dressed as the Swan in The Dying Swan, 86
Medinah Temple, Chicago, 1921, Anna Pavlova programs,
1915-1923, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 20: Marilyn Miller in Florenz Ziegfeld’s Sally, Billy Rose Theatre 91
Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 21: Virginia Bacon in an acrobatic ballet pose, Ned Wayburn, 96
The Art of Stage Dancing (New York: Ned Wayburn
Studios of Stage Dancing, Inc., 1925), 137.

Figure 22: May McAvoy posed for a still from The Jazz Singer (1927), 99
National Film Archive, London.

Figure 23: Greta Garbo in a publicity still for Grand Hotel (1932), 102
National Film Archive London.

Figure 24: Hyacinth the Hippo in the Alligator Ballet from 106
Walt Disney’s animated film, Fantasia, 1940.

Figure 25: Rodeo (1942), choreographed by Agnes de Mille, 113
Photographer, Roger Wood, New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts.

ix
Figure 26: “Speaking of Pictures,” Life Magazine, April 11, 1949, 23. 163

Figure 27: “Ballet Helps Texan Make Big Jump,” Life Magazine, 164
July 13, 1953, 56.

Figure 28: “Ballet Goes American,” Life Magazine, 166
November 11, 1940, 59.

Figure 29: Advertisement, “Selva and Sons,” Dance Magazine, 187
April 1937, inside over.

Figure 30: Advertisement, “Anthony Costumes,” Dance Magazine, 187
February 1958, 94.

Figure 31: Advertisement, “Califone,” Dance Magazine, 187
January 1958, 67.

Figure 32: Therrell Smith's Dance Students, June 1964, 218
Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives
Center, National Museum of American History.

Figure 33: “Filipino American girl dancing ballet,” ca. 1948, 224
Hollywood Citizen News/Valley Times Collection,
Los Angeles Public Library.

Figure 34: “Ballet Class at Valley Cities Jewish Community Center,” 224
ca. 1961, Hollywood Citizen News/Valley Times Collection,
Los Angeles Public Library

Figure 35: Unidentified dancers in Episodes, choreography by 237
George Balanchine, Photographer, Martha Swope.

Figure 36: Unidentified male and female dancers in Oklahoma!, 245
St. James Theatre, 1943, Vandamm theatrical photographs,
1900-1957, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 37: Fancy Free, choreography by Jerome Robbins, 249
Photographer Roger Wood, circa 1946, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 38: Unidentified dancer in Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes (1958), 260
Photographer, Martha Swope.

x
Figure 39: Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (1948), Directors 272
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

Figure 40: Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Milton Greene, 1955. 284

Figure 41: Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Milton Greene, 1955. 288

Figure 42: Marilyn Monroe, photographed by Milton Greene, 1955. 288

Figure 43: “Ballet Beauties: American Company Has Young and 290
Lovely Dancers,” Life Magazine, November 3, 1947, 99.

Figure 44: “Beautiful Young Ballerina,” Life Magazine, June 9, 1947, 291
cover page.

Figure 45: “Beautiful Young Ballerina,” Life Magazine, June 9, 1947, 127. 291

Figure 46: “Speaking of Pictures: Ballet Dancer Goes Under Water 292
in Hollywood,” Life Magazine, August 27, 1945, 15.

Figure 47: “Speaking of Pictures: 400 Year-Old Art Acquires Startling 293
Different Look,” Life Magazine, March 23, 1953, 21.

Figure 48: “Speaking of Pictures: 400 Year-Old Art Acquires Startling 293
Different Look,” Life Magazine, March 23, 1953, 22.

Figure 49: Alberto Varga, original source unknown, reprinted in, 312
Charles G. Martignette and Louis K. Meisel, The Great
American Pin-up (New York: Taschen, 2002), 416.

Figure 50: Petty Girl, January 1956, Petty Calendar, 314
Collection of the author.

Figure 51: Audrey Hepburn in a still from The Secret People, 316
Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles, CA.

Figure 52: Rudolf Nureyev performing The Sleeping Beauty with 330
the Kirov Ballet in Paris in May 1961, prior to his defection,
Agence de Presse Bernand.

Figure 53: Nureyev performing a grand jeté in The Sleeping Beauty, 330
with the de Cuevas company following his defection, Paris,
June 1961, Agence de Presse Bernand.

xi
Figure 54: Rudolf Nureyev dancing Prince Igor in London, 1965, 342
Photographer, Reg Wilson.

Figure 55: Rudolf Nureyev portraits, Paris, 1962, Photographer, 345
Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Figure 56: Rudolf Nureyev with Margot Fonteyn in 348
Marguerite and Armand, London, 1963, Photographer,
Eve Arnold.

Figure 57: Rudolf Nureyev rehearsing Giselle with Margot Fonteyn, 350
London, 1962, Photographer, Houston Rogers.

Figure 58: Rudolf Nureyev in Les Sylphides, London, 1963, 351
Photographer, Houston Rogers.

Figure 59: Rudolf Nureyev in Le Corsaire, London, 1962, 351
Photographer, Houston Rogers.

Figure 60: Rudolf Nureyev performing Giselle with Margot Fonteyn, 352
London, 1962, Photographer, Zoë Dominic.

Figure 61: Serge Oukrainsky, date and photographer unknown, 359
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 62: Andreas Pavley, date and photographer unknown, New York 359
Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Figure 63: Concluding pose, first dance in Revelations by Alvin Ailey. 374
Photographer and dancers unknown. Circa 1961.
Image is widely circulated on the Internet.

xii
ABSTRACT

In recent decades historians have traced the popularization of “high” culture in the
United States in the post-World War II era. In recognizing opera, classical music, and
ballet as part of the “culture boom” of the 1960s, they tend, however, to treat the status of
cultural forms as fixed and unchanging: pre-existing “high” arts become popular. By
tracing the cultural history of ballet dancing in the United States, an art form long tied to
the popular theater but elevated to the status of high art in the twentieth century, this
dissertation examines the process by which cultural categories take form.
The widespread dissemination of ballet in the United States via television, film,
and theater, the tours of international ballet companies, and the prevalence of regional
ballet schools, companies, and festivals in the 1940s and 1950s reveals that ballet reached
a diverse, national audience in the United States in the post-war period, a notable
achievement given the peripheral nature of ballet to American culture during most of the
eighteenth, nineteenth, and early twentieth-centuries. Once limited to occasional
appearances within popular forms of entertainment, ballet now entertained millions of
Americans, many of whom eventually enjoyed ballet as a unique and independent art
form - ballet for the sake of ballet.
Ballet dancers, choreographers, and publicists exploited the cultural politics of the
era that privileged high art, particularly Cold War era inspired international rivalries and
pervasive social anxieties pertaining to American consumer culture, gender, sexuality,
race, and class, and positioned ballet as a symbol of cultural accomplishment and
refinement. At the same time, by drawing from the long history of ballet in popular

xiii
culture, these ballet makers also created an art form with widespread public appeal. The
celebration of the ballerina, an image of grace, refinement, and control, as a
representation of iconic American womanhood, and the simultaneous fascination with the
glamorous, highly sexual and often effeminate Russian male ballet dancer Rudolf
Nureyev reveals the particularly important role changing conceptions of masculinity and
femininity played in the ballet revival.
Drawing from contemporary popular literature and newspapers, the extensive film
and television collection of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the
records of several major ballet companies, dancers, and associations, “Elevated: Ballet
and Culture in the United States, World War II to the National Endowment for the Arts”
traces the invention of ballet as high art. Recognized today as one of the highest of the
high arts in the United States, ballet dancing has not always occupied this place in
American culture. The history of ballet’s elevation to this role is the history of the making
of modern American culture, a culture in which the ballerina epitomizes feminine grace
and is a major influence on contemporary fashions, in which ballet classes symbolize
middle and upper class accomplishment, and in which appreciation of ballet indicates
taste.

xiv

Overture

1

INTRODUCTION
Given contemporary culture, it is hard to imagine a time when Americans
perceived ballerinas as anything but beautiful, elegant, and elite. Little girls today
routinely dress up in frilly tutus, take ballet lessons, and wear pink slippers on their feet.
They watch beauty contestants perform elegant ballet sequences in the Miss America
pageant, and they dress their Barbie and American Girl dolls up in ballet costumes.
Meanwhile, television programs, films, and popular literature present ballerinas as
skinny, fragile women. Ballerinas represent grace, refinement and self-discipline.
To many Americans ballet represents elite, highbrow, rarified culture. In 2009,
comedian Joan Rivers defined being rich in New York as possessing, among other things,
the ability to buy a table at the ballet.
1
One popular parenting website advised readers,
“Start your toddlers, preschoolers and little kids off on a diet of high brow culture tailored
just for kids and before you know it you'll be taking them to the real thing.” These
parental experts defined highbrow culture as “Concerts, Ballet, Jazz, and Art Events.”
2

As this article suggests, ballet today is synonymous with wealth, education, culture, class,
taste, grace, elegance, and sophistication.
Americans have not, however, always viewed ballet so positively. In fact,
attitudes towards ballet in this country have shifted dramatically across the eighteenth,

1
Jada Yuan, “Katie Couric, Joan Rivers Talk Money,” New York Magazine, August 5, 2009, New York
Magazine Online, www.nymag.com.

2
“High Brow Culture For Kids This Weekend: Concerts, Ballet, Jazz and Art Events,” March 6, 2009,
Mary Poppins: Get More Out of N.Y. With Kids, http://mommypoppins.com/ny-kids/high-brow-culture-
for-kids-this-weekend-concerts-ballet-jazz-and- art-events .

2

nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. During the eighteenth century, many of the nation’s
founding citizens were devoutly religious, and, therefore, viewed dancing in all forms
skeptically.
3
In the nineteenth century, when ballet in Europe and Russia thrived primarily
in the opera and royal courts, ballet in the United States appeared more often in popular
venues – particularly in burlesque and vaudeville productions.
4
With a few exceptions, as
when in the 1830s Fanny Ellsler brought the sylphlike grace of Europe’s Romantic Ballet
to American stages, middle-class social arbiters shunned women dancers as prostitutes
and middle-class families conforming to Victorian codes of social conduct criticized a
woman’s decision to profit from the display of her body as salacious and scandalous. Few
middle or upper class families viewed ballet as an appropriate pastime for their
daughters.
5

In the early twentieth century, dancers fleeing the Russian Revolution introduced
American audiences to ballet in its most elite and highbrow form. The Ballet Russes, the

3
The Puritan tradition perceived performance, particularly mimicry, as blasphemous. Robert Allen,
Horrible Prettiness (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 47-51. For additional
information on this subject see, Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1981); Ann Wagner, Adversaries of Dance: From the Puritans to the Present (Urbana:
University of Illinois, 1997).

4
I discuss this topic in greater detail in Chapter One. On burlesque and vaudeville see, Barbara Barker,
Ballet or Ballyhoo: The American Careers of Maria Bonfanti, Rita Sangalli, Giuseppina Morlacchi (New
York: Dance Horizons, 1984); Barbara Naomi Cohen- Stratyner, Ned Wayburn and the Dance Routine:
From Vaudeville to the Ziegfeld Follies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996); Andrew Erdman,
Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895 – 1915 (Jefferson: McFarland
and Company, 2004); Richard Kislan, Hoofing It On Broadway: A History of Show Dancing (New York:
Prentice Hall Press, 1987); Renee Sentilles, Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of
American Celebrity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

5
Barbara Barker, “The Ballet Girl: Graceful, Ungraceful, or Disgraceful?” unpublished paper, Folder 4,
Box 4, pp. 309, 313. The Barbara Barker Papers, (S)*MGZMD 157, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts. On the reputation of ballet dancers in Paris in the nineteenth
century see, Ivor Guest, The Ballet of the Second Empire (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1974),
14.
3

most famous touring troupe of the era, performed exotic and extravagant ballets that,
although widely popular, also inspired much criticism. New York City Police arrested
Ballet Russes dancers following a performance of the ballet L'après-midi d'un faune (The
Afternoon of the Faun), and the Metropolitan Opera banned the production of the ballet
Narcisse, which would have featured dancing by the premier danseur Vaslav Nijinsky, as
pornographic. The sexual themes and minimal costumes of both ballets defied the
conservative social mores pertaining to acceptable sexual displays common to the
Progressive era.
6

Three decades later audiences viewed ballet differently. Whereas mothers had
once protected their daughters from the dangers of the theater, pointing to ballet girls as
evidence of misled women, they now ushered them into local studios. Little girls across
the nation flocked to ballet classes, eager to wear tutus and dance on their toes. In 1947,
the cover of Life Magazine featured an elegant, graceful woman, simply titled, “Young
Ballerina.”
7
A year later the magazine ran an article entitled, “Children's Ballet School.”
Accompanying it, were pictures of little girls wearing pink tights, leotards, short skirts,
and ballet slippers. They eagerly awaited entrance into a ballet class.
8

In the years immediately following World War II, new ballet companies also
appeared throughout the nation. In New York City Lucia Chase and Oliver Smith founded
Ballet Theater, and George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein founded the New York City

6
Olga Maynard, The American Ballet (Philadelphia: Macrae Smith Company, 1959), 32.

7
“Young Ballerina,” Life Magazine, June 9, 1947. Cover.

8
“Children’s School of Ballet,” Life Magazine, July 26, 1948, 106-107.

4

Ballet. Moreover, international companies, including the Royal Ballet, the Bolshoi and
Kirov Ballet, the Danish Ballet, and the Ballets Russes, successfully toured the United
States, bringing ballet to audiences in cities ranging from Boston, Massachusetts to Tulsa,
Oklahoma. Local ballet schools organized regional companies and participated in ballet
and dance festivals.
Ballet dancers also became more and more visible in popular culture. They
appeared on television shows as guest artists on programs such as the Ed Sullivan Show
and the well-known Ford Foundation sponsored art series, Omnibus. On Broadway,
shows such as Oklahoma (1943), Carousel (1945), Brigadoon (1947), and West Side
Story (1957) included choreography by some of the nation’s best known dancers. Films
such as The Pirate (1948), The Bandwagon (1953), and Daddy Long Legs (1955)
featured extended ballet sequences. And, Hollywood star Audrey Hepburn, a trained
ballerina, rose to fame.
In short, Americans saw ballet dancing everywhere and it quickly became
common for little girls to dream of careers as ballerinas. Americans came to view ballet
as an acceptable pastime for women and even encouraged their daughters, sisters, and
friends to study ballet. Ballet became a desirable activity for women, a symbol of ideal
femininity. Furthermore, whereas ballet in the early decades on the twentieth century had
moved on the periphery of American culture, by the 1950s it commanded the attention of
a national audience.
By the late 1950s respect for ballet in this country had risen to such an extent that
large philanthropic organizations such as the Rockefeller Association and Ford
5

Foundation began to contribute to the operation of ballet companies. In 1963, in the
single largest philanthropic donation to an arts organization to date in American history,
the Ford Foundation donated nearly eight million dollars to George Balanchine’s New
York City Ballet and School of American Ballet.
9
Three years later, President Eisenhower
established the National Endowment for the Arts. Among its first awardees was the
American Ballet Theatre, which received two matching grants for a four week season at
the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
10
Aside from a brief period during the New
Deal, when agencies such as the National Theater Project sponsored various arts
programs, dance in the United States had never before received federal funds.
Clearly, in the three decades between the conclusion of World War II and the
establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts public attitudes towards ballet in
the United States shifted dramatically. “Elevated: Ballet and Culture in the United States,
World War II to the National Endowment for the Arts” asks the question: what triggered
this transformation in American perceptions of and participation in ballet dancing?
* * * *
Historian Lawrence Levine has described the emergence of cultural hierarchies in
the United States in the nineteenth century. Mass immigration, urbanization, a rising and
newly moneyed middle-class, and rapid social change threatened the social identities of
the nation’s elite. The new bourgeoisie of the post-Civil War era affirmed their social

9
Allen Hughes, “Ford Fund Allots 7.7 Million to Ballet,” New York Times, December 16, 1963.

10
Nan Robertson, “Johnson Submits $10 Million Plan to Support Arts,” New York Times, March 11, 1965;
Marjorie Hunter, “House Approves Bill to Aid Arts,” New York Times, September 16, 1965; Richard P.
Shepard, “U.S. Arts Program Gets Under Way,” New York Times, November 21, 1965.

6

stature by designating particular forms of culture as more elite and legitimate than others.
They proclaimed themselves the guardians of “high” culture and asserted the edifying
power of opera, Shakespeare, symphonic music, art, and museums as forms of high art.
Meanwhile, other forms of entertainment, such as burlesque and later vaudeville theater,
musicals, revues, film, and television, represented “lowbrow” or “popular” forms of
culture.
11

To the surprise of twenty-first-century audiences accustomed to thinking of ballet
as high art, these art connoisseurs did not include ballet among the arts they claimed
responsibility for protecting. Ballet did not rise to the status of high art in the United
States until the middle of the twentieth century, when the makers of ballet in this country
-- dancers, choreographers, musicians, set and costume designers, patrons, critics,
directors and managers -- marketed ballet as a symbol of cultural accomplishment,
education, and taste to a diverse, cross-class and cross-race audience. The makers of
ballet in this country created a broad audience for ballet by codifying it as high art.
Stuart Hall has argued that culture is a site of contestation, a battleground where
social transformations occur and where the “active work” of culture and cultural change
takes place.
12
Ballet dancing in the postwar era represented one arena of culture in which
contemporary anxieties played out. World War II disrupted American attitudes towards
gender, sexuality, class, race, and nation, causing a shift in contemporary tastes for many

11
Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1988).

12
Stuart Hall, “Notes on Deconstructing the Popular,” in Popular Culture: A Reader, ed. Raiford Guins
and Omayra Zaragoza Cruz (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2007), 64-71.

7

forms of culture. The 1940s, 50s, and 60s were the decades of Elvis Presley, Senator Joe
McCarthy, the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, suburbanization, the Beat
generation, corporate culture, rock and roll, television, Playboy, the Barbie doll, and
Leave it to Beaver. At mid-century American culture was rife with contradictory
messages.
On the one hand, veterans returned home from overseas, married, moved into
quickly erected suburbs, had babies, and settled into the seemingly happy bliss of a
burgeoning economy. Men and women who occupied both “white” as well as “blue”
collar jobs increasingly identified themselves as middle-class and eagerly purchased
automobiles, televisions, home appliances, records, and art, symbols designed to
demonstrate their upward social mobility. These men and women went to the movies,
took vacations, and spent money on recreational and leisure activities.
On the other hand, behind the apparent optimism of the era lay festering cultural
anxieties. Excessive consumption and spending led to concerns about the quality of
American culture. In addition, at the conclusion of the Second World War, the Soviet
Union refused to relinquish control of its occupied territories, causing what Winston
Churchill described as an “Iron Curtain” to descend on Eastern Europe. The U.S.
assumed a more prominent role in international affairs in the ensuing Cold War, which
produced resentment in many areas of the world, particularly in Europe, whose role as the
center of the art world was rapidly being eclipsed by New York. Finally, men and women
of color, enraged by the injustice of fighting for democracy overseas when it didn’t exist
at home, demanded similar equality in the United States.
8

In the midst of such cultural upheaval, many Americans became avid fans of high
culture. Wary of the materialism inherent in the commercial marketplace, they saw
supporting high culture as a means of proving the United States to be a nation of more
than just consumption; the United States was the cultural equal of the Soviet Union and
of European nations who prided themselves as leaders in cultural production.
Meanwhile, the booming post-war economy enlarged the American middle class to
include citizens from a wide array of incomes and backgrounds who shared an increased
discretionary income. The white-American middle class attempted to set itself apart via
their tastes in consumer goods, entertainment and leisure pursuits.”
13
Well-educated,
salaried white professionals, primarily in their mid-20s to mid-40s, they participated in
arts organizations, attended arts exhibits and events, and watched the many telecasts that
featured opera, classical music, and ballet. These “culture consumers” bought art for
their living rooms, purchased theater tickets, and attended the ballet.”
14
Meanwhile,
working-class men and women who aspired to middle-class status expressed class
ambition by participating in high culture.
The involvement of Black Americans in culture and dance expressed similar
class-based aspirations, but also a racial awareness of black exclusion from cultural
activities in the United States. Decades earlier, artists, poets, musicians, and playwrights
affiliated with the Harlem Renaissance helped make black experiences more central to

13
Karene Grad, “When High Culture Became Popular Culture: Classical Music in Postwar America” (PhD
diss., Yale University, 2006), 70-71.

14
The term “culture consumers” was used by Alvin Toffler. Alvin Toffler, “A Quantity of Culture,”
Fortune, November 1961. Cited in, Karen Grad, When High Culture Became Popular Culture, 72.

9

American culture. The escalation of the Civil Rights Movements in the 1950s drew
attention to not only the segregation of public spaces and sports in the United States, but
also once again to black involvement in culture.
In a reversal of the cultural process described by Levine in the nineteenth century,
non-elite audiences responded to the political and social instabilities of their own era by
reclaiming elite cultural forms. Across the United States attendance at all forms of high
culture – opera, symphony, and museums, as well as ballet – greatly increased.
15
As a
physical art performed by flesh and blood bodies, ballet dancing, however, stood out
among these art forms.
More than any other high art ballet, celebrated qualities that resonated with post-
war audiences: grace, refinement, control, and flexibility. Ballet celebrated a woman with
a strong body, who possessed supreme control, even when balancing on the precarious
tips of her toes, and who remained poised even when thrown in the air or when spinning
across the stage. Ballerinas never deviated from highly choreographed movements; they
remained beautiful, untouched by the corrupting world outside the theater.
Ballet also crystallized vexing concerns about gender and sexuality. During World
War II women had assumed important roles in the workforce. The return of American
men from overseas, in tandem with the political anxieties of the Cold War, however,
marked a return to traditional gender roles. Through marital fidelity and the nuclear

15
On high culture in the post-war period see, John Dizikes, Opera in America: A Cultural History (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 485; Grad, “When High Culture Became Popular Culture;” “The
Ford Foundation: Millions for Music - Music for Millions,” Music Educators Journal 53, no. 1 (1966):
83-86. Lynn Spigel, “High Culture in Low Places: Television and Modern Art, 1950 – 1970,” in Welcome
to the Dream House: Popular Culture and Postwar Suburbs ed. Lynn Spigel (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2001), 270.

10

family, Americans might forge a fierce bulwark against Soviet threats.
16
By suppressing
sexual desire, women provided a sense of stability to a society fearful of nuclear war. At
the same time, men learned that ideal masculinity was overtly heterosexual, anti-
communist pundits adopted increasingly restrictive views of sexuality, and Senator
Joseph McCarthy tried to root out homosexuals from governmental offices.
Highly sexual -- and yet also a figure of sexual containment – images of women
ballet dancers appealed to these concerns. Women dancers put their bodies on display,
wore sheer and minimal costumes, and moved their bodies in suggestive ways. Images of
ballerinas in pin-up art and girly magazines such s Playboy even fetishized the women’s
bodies as objects of male sexual desire. At the same time, the Romantic sylphlike image
of the ballerina first produced in the nineteenth century carried over into the twentieth
century. Ballerinas in fashion magazines and in many of the ballets produced on
Broadway and by professional companies seemed elegant, chaste, and refined. These
women suppressed the sexy, strong, dangerous sexuality of ambitious career-oriented
women. The protégés of George Balanchine even became thinner and smaller breasted, a
change in body type that reflected the influence of contemporary fashion trends towards
thinness but that also metaphorically contained the sexuality of adult female dancers into
adolescent looking bodies. The ballerina of the 1950s and 1960s, therefore, negotiated
conflicting cultural concerns about women and sexuality. She embodied sexuality, but
that sexuality was benign rather than dangerous and sensual rather than erotic.

16
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic
Books, 1988).
11

Scholarship on the history of dance in the United States in the twentieth century
has traditionally focused on a few epochal periods, particularly the arrival of Anna
Pavlova and the Ballet Russes in the 1910s and 1920s, the birth of modern dance in the
1930s, and most notably the “ballet mania” of the 1960s and 1970s.
17
Many scholars
describe this last period as the “high tide,” “explosion,” and “boom” in ballet activities in
the United States. They attribute the popularity of ballet during this era to the cultural
politics of the Cold War and to the defections of Russian dancers – particularly Rudolf
Nureyev. Historians Naima Prevots and David Caute argue that the Cold War inspired
more than technological and scientific rivalries between the United States and Russia; the
Cold War posed “culture wars.” Artists such as the pianist Van Cliburn, who won who
won the International Tchaikovsky festival in Moscow in 1958, engaged in “cultural
diplomacy.”
18
Likewise, according to Caute, the “ballet wars” of the 1960s reflected Cold
War anxieties about such events as the U-2 spy planes and the Berlin Crisis.
19
The

17
On Pavlova and the Ballet Russes see, Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballet Russes (New York: Da Capo
Press, 1989); Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer, The Ballet Russes and Its World (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1999); Oleg Kerensky, Anna Pavlova (New York: Dutton, 1973); Keith Money,
Anna Pavlova, Her Life and Art (New York: Knopf, 1982).
On the birth of modern dance see, Jack Anderson, Ballet and Modern Dance: A Concise History
(Princeton: Princeton Book Co., 1986); Julia L. Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism
from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
On the ballet mania of the 1960s and 1970s see, Leila Sussman, “Anatomy of the Dance Company Boom,
1958- 1980,” Dance Research Journal 16 no. 2 (Fall, 1984): 23- 28; Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm
McCormick, No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003);
Terry Teachout, “Ballet Never Heard of It: The Decline and Near Disappearance of Dance in America,”
Wallstreet Journal, November 25, 2006.

18
Max Frankel, "Russians Cheer U. S. Pianist,” New York Times, April 12, 1958.

19
David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Naima Prevots, Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold
War (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1998).

12

politics of the Cold War, so evident in the space race and “kitchen debates” (1959)
extended into culture.
This explanation of the ballet mania of the 1960s and 1970s does not, however,
sufficiently address the revival of ballet in the prior two decades. Nor, does it fully
explain why, in an era that valorized heterosexuality and masculinity, an effeminate male
dancer like Nureyev attracted such unprecedented public attention. In reality, Americans’
interest in ballet predated the Cold War. By the mid-1940s new ballet companies began to
emerge in the United States. They formed private charitable foundations to support ballet
and mobilized financial aid from audiences. The Cold War only accelerated the American
public’s interest in ballet. It mobilized interest in an art form that had been percolating in
the United States since the conclusion of the War.
“Elevated: Ballet and Culture in the United States, World War II to the National
Endowment for the Arts” historicizes the ballet boom of the 1960s and 1970s by
examining how and why public attitudes towards ballet changed in the United States in
the 1940s and 1950s. It contextualizes the public fascination with Nureyev, the salience
of the image of the ballerina, and the popularity of ballet more generally during this era.
Interest in ballet climaxed in this country in the 1960s and 1970s, but fermented and
crystallized in the decades immediately after World War II. The makers of ballet in this
country reinvented ballet to appeal to the tastes of a broad audience. They elevated ballet
to new stature in this country, marketing it not merely as high art, but as high art designed
for the consumption of a popular audience. The ballerina, once a figure of feminine
13

transgression, an image of wantonness and overt sexuality, now represented grace and
refinement.
In order to show how conceptions of ballet and the ballerina were “invented”
during this era, this dissertation begins by outlining how Americans viewed ballet
dancing prior to World War II. The first two chapters of the dissertation, Act I, trace how
cultural attitudes towards ballet changed during the eighteenth, nineteenth, and early
twentieth centuries. They outline the emergence of two ballet traditions in the United
States: one affiliated with lowbrow popular entertainments and the other with highbrow
elite culture.
Act II identifies the historical events that triggered the ballet revival, the people
who participated in it, and the creation of ballets with widespread appeal. Chapter three
complicates traditional explanations of the culture boom of the post-war era that focus
too singularly on the Cold War, analyzing the marketing materials of the nation’s most
prominent ballet companies to show several other political and social anxieties central to
motivating interest in high art and ballet. Chapter four examines the “grassroots”
dissemination of ballet throughout the United States and the creation of a diverse cross
class and cross race audience. Chapter five examines the creation of an “American ballet”
in musical theater, film, and television that appealed to and engaged a broad popular
audience.
Finally, Act III focuses on the intersections between cultural tastes and changes in
contemporary attitudes towards gender and sexuality. Chapter six examines the image of
the ballerina and argues that this highly refined and sensual image of American
14

womanhood appealed to an audience conflicted by the shifting nature of men’s and
women’s gender roles. Chapter seven examines the defection and celebrity of Rudolf
Nureyev, and argues that he challenged prevailing models of masculinity. Finally, a brief
afterward examines the institutionalization of ballet in the United States via the formation
of Lincoln Center and later the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
To summarize, this dissertation historicizes the “dance boom” of the 1970s by
investigating its ascendancy in American popular culture in the preceding two decades. It
bridges the history of ballet, women, the Cold War, and popular culture, asking: Why did
ballet become popular in the decades following World War II and what historical
circumstances contributed to its revival? By demonstrating the fluidity of cultural
categories, the invention of a once lowbrow art into a form of high culture, this
dissertation also challenges overly rigid conceptions of cultural hierarchy in the United
States. I intend to demonstrate that sustained historical analysis of dance, in this case
ballet, provides insights into not only changes in the infrastructure of the performing arts
and the lives of men and women, but also into broader transformations in American
attitudes, tastes, and culture.
Most Americans today perceive ballet as the highest of the high arts. It is
beautiful, pure, and sacred, symbolically always represented as white. A character in the
1976 musical A Chorus Line sings, “Everything was beautiful at the ballet. Graceful men
lift lovely girls in white.”
20
The commonly used online resource, thefreedictionary.com,

20
A Chorus Line was first performed on Broadway in 1976 and has been revived countless times,
including a national tour in 2008.

15

defines highbrow as, “Of, relating to, or being highly cultured or intellectual” and offers
the following sentence as an example of the term’s usage: “They only attend highbrow
events such as the ballet or the opera.”
21
This dissertation is the story of the making of
modern conceptions of ballet.

A Note on Terminology
This dissertation uses several phrases to describe various styles of dance,
including “classical ballet,” “ballet,” “modern ballet,” “modern dance” and “popular
dance.” From its earliest configuration, ballet dancing has always been influenced by
other dance forms. Indeed, in dealing with ballets performed within popular
entertainments, this dissertation shows that “ballet” encompasses a range of dance styles.
It has always incorporated new styles of dance, steps, and movements, making it a fluid
and hybrid dance form. Ballet dancing does not, therefore, look the same today as it did a
century ago.
In seventeenth-century France, ballet resembled social dances performed by the
nobility. In the eighteenth century, ballet in both the United States and Europe was
interspersed with pantomime and sometimes even song, dance, and acrobatics. In the
nineteenth century, when Romantic ballets celebrated qualities like emotion, lyricism,
and fantasy, the ballerina began to dance on her toes, a feat that made her movements
seem fantastical, delicate and otherworldly. In the twentieth century a new neo-classical
form of “modern ballet” emerged that differed from the more loosely defined style of

21
The Free Dictionary by Farlex, “highbrow,” http://www.thefreedictionary.com/highbrow.
16

American “ballet.” Eventually modern dance, American square dancing, ethnic dance
forms, and folk dance would all influence ballet dancing.
In this dissertation, “classical ballet” refers to dances that closely conformed to
the standards of the Royal Academy of Dance. First established in 1661, the Royal
Academy established what scholars refer to as the danse d’ecole, a set of steps, poses,
and rules of execution that are the basis of the ballet canon and that rely on five basic
positions of the feet, each of which corresponds to specific arm movements. In the
context of the twentieth century, “classical ballet” will also refer to ballets in which
women dance on their toes, and men and women partner each other in duets called pas de
deux. It is, however, important to realize that the term “classical ballet” was not coined
until the early to mid-twentieth century. In forming the Sadler Wells Ballet, Dame Ninette
de Valois began to refer to nineteenth-century Romantic ballets, particularly Giselle, The
Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and Coppelia, as part of the company’s “old”
repertoire; they represented the “classics.”
22

I use the term “ballet” to refer to styles of dancing that have a foundation in the
Royal Academy of Dance. This definition intentionally leaves room for some negotiation
and ambiguity, allowing “ballet” to refer to dance forms in which ballet is the prominent
dance tradition but heavily intertwined with new steps. During the twentieth century
ballet in the United States developed its own unique style, a process I will later refer to as
the Americanization of ballet. My definition of ballet is, therefore, broad, requiring only
that training in classical ballet be evident in the movements of the dancers and the

22
Beth Genné, “Creating a Canon, Creating the Classics in Twentieth Century British Ballet,” Dance
Research 18 no. 2 (Winter 2000): 132–162.
17

choreography of the dances and that the foundation onto which new steps were grafted
were ballet steps.
“Modern ballet,” sometimes also referred to as “neo-classical” or “contemporary”
ballet, refers more narrowly to a style of dance that emerged in the twentieth century.
Modern ballet used the body differently, requiring dancers to place their bodies in new
positions and often to perform very athletic movements. In “modern ballet” the hands and
feet might be flexed rather than pointed, the hips were sometimes turned in rather than
out, and poses sometimes required dancers to be off balance. The movements were often
more angular than the soft poses of classical ballet and the costumes tended to be more
minimal. Vaslav Nijinsky and later George Balanchine are the choreographers most often
associated with modern ballet.
“Modern dance” refers to a style of dancing first pioneered by Isadora Duncan in
the early years of the twentieth century and furthered most famously by Martha Graham.
Between 1915 and 1931, Ruth St. Denis and her husband Ted Shawn organized a
company of dancers who toured the United States. Taking their cue from Duncan, the
“Denishawn” dancers, as they became known, abandoned the established lexicon of
classical ballet. Modern dance favored “natural” movements. Throughout the twentieth
century ballet continued to compete with the developing field of modern dance, with
which it remained intimately tied and in direct tension.
Finally, “popular dances” refers to those were performed by individuals for
enjoyment and leisure, rather than for presentation. Some “popular” dances might include
18

square dancing, the jitterbug, the “cakewalk,” and the tango – each of which lent
something to twentieth-century ballet in the United States.

19

ACT I

20

CHAPTER 1
“ROMANTICIZING” BALLET IN THE UNITED STATES
A Google search of the term “ballet” in April 2010 located nearly fourteen million
images of ballet dancers. Of these images the vast majority showed women wearing point
shoes and tights and either a tutu or leotard. The dancers appeared on a formal stage
dressed in an ornate costume and standing beneath a spotlight, or they appeared in a
ballet studio in leotards and tights dutifully working at a ballet barre while studying their
craft.
23
Although students and aficionados know that the presentation, style, and
performance of ballet in the United States varies widely, popular culture represents it
uniformly. Images of ballet rarely depict women dancing in soft ballet slippers or
performing alongside non-dance performers. Only occasionally do these images show
ballets being performed in public spaces or by dancers wearing costumes that lack skirts
and tights. The images also almost always feature women dancers. They sometimes show
men dancing alongside women, but they focus on male dancers much less frequently.
Modern ballet iconography presents ballet as a monolithic art form performed by
graceful, dedicated women for presentation in formal venues.
Given the pervasiveness of this image of ballet in American culture today, it may
be surprising to learn that for most of its history the form and presentation of ballet has
varied widely. Ballet has consistently evolved in relationship to contemporary tastes and

23
As of April 14, 2010 a Google search of the term “ballet” brought up 13.8 million images. Of the first
one hundred and five images, only four depict an adult woman without toe shoes. About one third of the
images show women or girls in tutus and another eleven images show them in plain practice clothes - a
leotard, tights, and a thin ballet skirt. Many of the remaining images depict ballet products and ballet
inspired fashions. A smaller selection of images depicts women in costumes that, though frequently similar,
depart from the traditional ballet tutu. Search by the Author. April 14, 2010.

21

attitudes. Audiences for ballet have ranged from working-class men eager to see scantily
clad women perform on stage to wealthy men and women anxious to assert their
authority in a society undergoing immense change. Public attitudes have alternated
between viewing ballet as immoral, elite, and foreign to viewing it as the hallmark of
gentility, refinement, and propriety. Ballet performances have alternated between
lowbrow venues and elite concert theaters, and the ballets themselves have varied from
including men who danced, mimed and performed acrobatic tricks, to displaying elegant
images of beautiful, virginal women, to exhibiting saucy images of high-kicking ballet
dancers in short skirts. Ballet has moved in and out of public favor, moving from the
periphery of American culture to mainstream popular entertainments.
Contrary to what many scholars have argued, ballet has also incorporated new
movement styles. It is not a pure or uncorrupted dance tradition that strictly adheres to a
single narrow canon of movements. Historian Richard Kislan once described American
show dance as possessing a “polyglot personality” that employed multiple movement
idioms and could “never be ‘pure’ in the way that we apply the term to ballet or modern
dance.”
24
The history of ballet in the United States in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and
twentieth centuries challenges this statement, revealing ballet to be far from static and
unchanging. Ballet is a fluid dance form that adapts to the concerns, desires, fears, and
interests of its audience.

24
Richard Kislan, Hoofing On Broadway: A History of Show Dancing (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987),
152.

22

Dance scholars have traced the appearance of ballet in many forms of popular
entertainment.
25
Nevertheless, when describing the history of “ballet” in the United
States, these scholars refer primarily to a narrow and limited style of movement and
presentation which emerged from the Romantic Era of the nineteenth century and which
celebrated qualities like elegance, grace, refinement, and artistry. Dance scholar
Kathleen Barker examined the presentation of ballet in London music halls during the
eighteenth century and found that these venues regularly hired ballet mistresses and a
corps de ballet of women. Barker also found that the technical proficiency of the dancers
performing in these halls gradually improved, and that “classical ballet, or as it was more
often called in its main usage “opera ballet,” was well established in the eighteenth-
century London Theatres.”
26
At the same time, Barker also concluded, “One ought not to
make any great claim for the contribution of the early provincial music halls to dance as
art.”
27
With the incorporation of audience pleasing acts such as sword fights and military

25
Most notably Barbara Barker traces the careers of Maria Bonfanti, Rita Sangalli, and Giuseppina
Morlacchi through formal as well as popular venues in the nineteenth century. Barbara Barker, Ballet or
Balleyhoo: The American Careers of Maria Bonfanti, Rita Sangalli, and Giueseppina Morlacchi (New
York: Dance Horizons, 1984). Scholars dealing with various other dance and theater forms reference ballet.
See, Barbara Barker, ed. Bolossy Kiralfy: Creator of Great Musical Spectacles (Ann Harbor: University of
Michigan Research Press, 1988); Kathleen M.D. Barker, “Dance and the Emerging Music Hall in the
Provinces,” Dance Research: The Journal of the Society for Dance Research 5 no. 2 (Autumn, 1987): 34-
42; Alexandra Carter, Dance and Dancers in the Victorian and Edwardian Music Hall Ballet (Burlington:
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005); Barbara Naomi Cohen- Straytner, Ned Wayburn and the Dance
Routine: From Vaudeville to the Ziegfeld Follies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996); Jerome
Delameter, Dance in the Hollywood Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981); Richard
Kislan, Hoofing It On Broadway: A History of Show Dancing (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1987);
Renee Sentilles, Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

26
Barker, “Dance and the Emerging Music Hall,” 33-34.

27
Barker, “Dance and the Emerging Music Hall,” 42.
23

drills, music hall ballets represented spectacles designed for public enjoyment. According
to Barker, they were not “art.”
In distinguishing ballet as art from ballet as entertainment, Barker privileged elite
forms of ballet over another equally important tradition of ballet dancing that arose in
both Europe and the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as ballet
dancers appeared in opera houses and music halls, and adapted their performances to the
tastes of working-class and middle-class audiences, establishing a tradition of ballet in
popular cultural forms. Barker was on the mark when she wrote, “One has to say that
despite the category of 'operatic dancing' claimed by some saloon artists, there is little
trace of anything approximating ballet dancing as we know it.”
Indeed, ballet thrived in
popular venues and music halls, but appeared in forms and styles foreign to twenty-first
century audiences.
In focusing on what most people today refer to as “classical” ballet, audiences,
critics, scholars and fans have romanticized the history of ballet in the United States and
dismissed a long tradition of ballet dancing as scandalous, sexy, funny, and acrobatic.
These ballet forms are usually treated as tangential to the history of ballet in this country
or else ignored entirely. But this history is not inconsequential; it is critical to
understanding how an art form associated with Europe, wealth, and elitism, could
continue to appear in popular entertainments in the United States during times of poverty
and strong isolationist sentiments. This history provides for a far richer understanding of

28
Barker, “Dance and the Emerging Music Hall in the Provinces,” 40. Emphasis mine.

24

the various and conflicting cultural associations attached to ballet at the beginning of the
twentieth century.

The First Audiences for Ballet

Ballet dancing began as a highly exclusive social entertainment designed for the
enjoyment of an elite, aristocratic audience.

It originated in the “intermedii” dances
performed by the sixteenth century ruling class of Italy. Professional dancing masters
choreographed complicated geometric patterns for the nobility and the aristocracy to
perform at intervals during the elaborate spectacles and feasts that constituted a major
form of entertainment in European courts. Following the spread of the Italian
Renaissance throughout Europe, Louis XIV of France formalized ballet by founding the
Royal Academy of Dance in 1661, which eventually established the rubric of steps,
specific poses, and rules of execution known as the dance d'ecole, that continues to be
associated with ballet dancing today and which shifted the performance of ballet from
nobility to hired dancers.

Usually performed by male dancers, these ballets only
occasionally included women dancers
.29
Dancers during this period also typically wore ornate costumes that exhibited their
wealth and aristocracy. Male dancers performed in heeled shoes, visual symbols of lives
free from hard physical labor. (See Figure 1) The strict canon of movement tied to ballet
probably also alienated the tastes of poor rural workers tied to the demanding physical

29
For a history of the development of ballet from ancient times to the present see, Carol Lee, Ballet in
Western Culture: A History of Its Origins and Evolution (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999).

25

Figure 1 Image of Louis XIV of
France costumed for his role as
the Sun in Le Ballet de la Nuit
(The Ballet of the Night), Roger
Pryor Dodge Collection, New
York Public for the Performing
Arts.
labor involved in agriculture. Already immobilized by
work and social inequities, these working poor would
have viewed the excesses of ballet as crude and garish.
It’s highly choreographed movements might have
appeared as a further limitation of their bodily freedom.
In the late seventeenth century, as ballet became
more popular with the upper class, it moved from the
ballrooms of royal courts to the opera. In 1669, Louis
XIV formed the Academy of Opera, later called the
Royal Academy of Music (now referred to as the
National Opera of Paris). From 1671 to 1687 Pierre
Buchamp, who is remembered today for codifying the
five basic positions of the feet in ballet, directed the opera’s dancers. Finally, in 1713 the
long lived Louis XIV formally recognized the Paris Opera Ballet and its permanent
resident company of twenty dancers, by then ten men and ten women, as a national
institution.
30
Tied to the opera, which was attended primarily by the wealthy elite and an
increasing merchant class, ballet remained a largely exclusive cultural activity. The
onerous repetitive jobs created by the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century
probably also continued to render the controlling movements of ballet unappealing to the
urban poor.

30
See timeline, Marion Kant, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Ballet (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2007), xxiv.
26

The audience for ballet only began to change in the early eighteenth century when
European artists immigrated to

the American colonies. The harsh conditions of life on the
new frontier, which diminished social distinctions between rich and poor, forced dancers
to adapt the style and presentation of their performances to the tastes of a more diverse
public audience. In 1735 the London trained performer, Henry Holt, presented audiences
in Charleston, North Carolina, with “A New Pantomime Entertainment in Grotesque
Characters, Called the Adventures of Harlequin and Scaramouch, or, The Spaniard
Trick’d.” Holt blended ballet with acrobatic tricks, pantomime, song, and popular dance.
His presentation in a public setting -- a courtroom -- suggests that he performed for a
broad audience.
31

In Europe the audience for ballet did not begin to expand until after the French
Revolution (1789-1799) when the populace assembled in large outdoor festivals
commemorating the virtues of the new Republic. Day long affairs involving thousands of
men and women, these festivals often included gigantic processionals and dance
sequences (fêtes) orchestrated by out of work ballet choreographers. These spectacles
addressed nationalist themes and invited Republican audiences to view and participate in
ballet, bringing audiences who had previously lacked access to the theater into contact
with ballet dancing.
32

31
Author is unaware of any sources that describe the audience for Holt's ballet. On his performances see,
Lillian Moore, “When Ballet Came to Charleston,” Echoes in American Ballet (New York: Dance
Horizons, 1976), 35.

32
Lee, Ballet in Western Culture, 118 – 120.

27

Figure 2 P.L. Débucourt (1809), La Dansomanie, Gaston
Vuiller, History of Dancing (London: Heinman, 1898), 189.

In the wake of the Revolution, the canon of steps and movements central to
French ballet also expanded. In 1800
Pierre Gardel, director of the Paris
Opera Ballet, created La Dansomanie
(1800), a ballet satirizing the old styles
and forms of dance common to the
earlier Monarchy.
33
(See Figure 2)
Gardel also incorporated the waltz,
which was then in vogue among the
French middle-class, and whose whirling motions expressed the euphoric sensibilities of
the era.
34

The infiltration of the strict canon of movements tied to the dance d'ecole gave
physical, tangible evidence to the public's penetration of elite culture. In previous
centuries only the wealthy elite could access ballet, but by the end of the eighteenth
century middle and working-class audiences on both sides of the Atlantic attended ballet
performances, sometimes even participating in them. Choreographers and dancers
considered the tastes of a much broader audience when creating new ballets.

33
Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 77-82.

34
Lee, Ballet in Western Culture, 121-122.

28

Ballet Comes to the United States
The presence of ballet in North America increased in the years following the
Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) when French artists immigrated to the United States.
During the early seventeenth century elected officials and other persons of authority in
the French Bourbon Monarchy viewed the performing arts as a means of maintaining
control over their colonial subjects. Official ceremonies, spectacles, public balls, plays,
ballets, and operas glorified the religious, military and political power of France. As a
result, in the early eighteenth century, after the Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 established
Saint Domingue, now Haiti, as a French colony, small public theatrical productions
appeared.
35
As early as 1740 small groups of local amateurs organized plays, concerts,
and other musical activities.
In the latter half of the sixteenth century, singers, dance masters, actors, and other
artists had immigrated to the colony to perform in newly constructed private theaters. In
1766 a theater capable of seating 1,500 people opened in Cap Français, the colony's
capital. White slave owners and colonial subjects eager to demonstrate their social
prestige, in addition to emancipated black subjects -- who distinguished themselves from
slaves by adopting the cultural practices of the French aristocracy -- regularly attended
plays, operas, and ballets in the new venue.
36

When the large black slave population of Saint-Domingue revolted between 1791
and 1804, prominent dancers and teachers fled the country. In the newly founded United

35
David M. Powers, “The French Musical Theatre: Maintaining Control in Caribbean Colonies in the
Eighteenth Century,” Black Music Research Journal 18, no. 1/2 (Spring-Autumn, 1991): 229.

36
Powers, “The French Musical Theatre,” 230-232.

29

States, they discovered a nation that, though stratified by class, explicitly rejected
aristocracy and the cultural divisions attached to it. Americans had fought a war to reject
monarchical rule and defined the nation in opposition to that social system. They
preferred a culture where men and women of differing class backgrounds attended similar
entertainments, whether it was Shakespeare and opera.
37
Americans refused to
distinguish some cultural forms as more elite than others. As a result, dancers

like
Alexander Placide and Jean-Baptiste Francisqui, who left San Domingue to perform in
Charleston, North Carolina, fashioned their performances as democratic entertainments
that lacked any sense of pretension.
38

A versatile actor, rope dancer, acrobat, and mime, Placide had also trained as a
dancer at the Paris Opera Ballet School. He choreographed “grand ballet pantomimes”
that blended song, dance, and acting with performances by dancers who mixed traditional
steps associated with the French school of ballet with acrobatic tricks. In his performance
of Two Philosophers or The Merry Widow in 1792 in New York, he danced with his first
wife, the ballet dancer Suzanne Vaillande and performed somersaults backwards and
forwards over a table and chairs.
39
In The Three Philosophers, or The Dutch Coffee

37
Lawrence Levine, Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1988).

38
Lillian Moore, “New York's First Ballet Season, 1792,” Echoes of American Ballet (New York City:
Dance Horizons, 1976), 51.

39
Moore, “New York's First Ballet Season,” 44.

30

House, Placide walked a tight rope.
40
Francisqui was thought to have been trained by the
reputed French dance master Maximilien Gardel and supposedly possessed a thorough
knowledge of the French ballet repertoire. In 1796 he moved to Boston, making the city a
center of ballet production in the young nation.
41

As immigrants, dancers such as Holt, Placide, and Francisqui were probably
naturally inclined towards innovation. They were adventurers who traveled on long
voyages across the Atlantic Ocean and settled in foreign lands. They were risk takers.
Stymied by the competitive nature of European opera houses, where advancement within
the ranks of the ballet was

long and difficult, these dancers turned to the colonies as a
source of potential success and wealth. Their peers in Europe worked in well-established
opera houses, knew at least some level of job security, and could count on basic working
conditions, but these dancers lived in developing cities, performed in informal spaces,
opened new theaters, and built an audience for ballet where none had existed before.
At the time, however, the cultural climate of the United States did not lend itself
well to the growth of ballet. Francisqui and Placide tried to establish themselves as
reputable artists by citing their training and previous employment in prominent European
institutions and opera houses, thereby perpetuating the notion that ballet was a foreign

40
On the Placides and Francisqui see, Lillian Moore, “When Ballet Came to Charleston,” Echoes of
American Ballet (New York City: Dance Horizons, 1976), 35-39; Lillian Moore. “New York's First Ballet
Season, 1792,” Echoes of American Ballet (New York City: Dance Horizons, 1976), 41-53.

41
Lillian Moore, “Ballet Music in George Washington's Time,” Echoes of American Ballet (New York
City: Dance Horizons, 1976), 54.

31

and European art form.
42
Meanwhile, isolationist and anti-European sentiments in the
United States escalated.
The American Revolution and the liberation of the United States from colonial
rule created in U.S. citizens a desire to distinguish the nation's culture from the aesthetic
values of Europe. Core American values centered around liberty, independence, and
republicanism, which led to a rejection of arts or activities associated with Europe. John
Adams and Benjamin Rush decried fine arts “an infectious disease fatal to republican
values,” and painters such as Charles Willson Peale began to advocate the creation of
“public arts” that would exalt the values of the nation and be displayed in public settings
for “the people” to view.
43
By highlighting the dependence of the American economy on
European exports, the War of 1812 between the United States and Great Britain also
caused large sectors of the population to advocate national independence from Europe in
general and England in particular. Americans disdained fine arts they associated with
European decadence and corruption and viewed arts and cultural practices they
associated with European culture -- including ballet -- poorly.
44

42
Moore, “When Ballet Came to Charleston,” 35.

43
Joseph J. Ellis, After the Revolution: Profiles in Early American Culture (New York: W.W. Norton,
1979), 61-66.

44
Paul E. Johnson, The Early American Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 138. On
American perceptions of European culture in the early nineteenth century see also, Neil Harris, The Artist
in American Society: The Formative Years, 1790-1860 (New York: George Braziller, 1966).

32

As a form of live performance in which men and women danced on stage, ballet
also posed troubling moral concerns.
45
The Puritan tradition, which continued to
influence many Protestant denominations in the United States, perceived any secular
performance, particularly mimicry, as blasphemous. By assuming the personality and
appearance of another individual, a performer supposedly deceived and mocked God. As
a result, prior to 1770 many large cities in the colonies passed laws banning theaters.
Well into the nineteenth century religious clergymen continued to criticize performance
as immoral, condemning dance as frivolous and equating it with vices like gambling.
Ballet finally became popular in the United States in the 1830s and early 1840s,
as the

Industrial Revolution and rapid immigration led to an influx of single men in
search of employment within the cities. The populations of urban centers swelled, and
demand for recreational and leisure entertainments increased, triggering a shift in public
attitudes towards theater. A new tradition of ballet, based on elegance and grace, also
migrated from Europe to the United States.

Reinventing Ballet: Romanticism and the Rise of the Ballerina
The evolving intellectual, literary, and artistic movement known as Romanticism,
which began in Europe in the latter half of the eighteenth century and influenced
Americans in the early decades of the nineteenth century, also revolutionized ballet. A
response to the rationalism of the Enlightenment, which condemned aristocracy and

45
On anti-dance sentiments in America see, Robert G. Allen, Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American
Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 47-51. For additional information see,
Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981); Ann Wagner,
Adversaries of Dance: From the Puritans to the Present (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997).

33

became a source of republican trends during the French Revolution, Romanticism
furthered the Gothic trend towards extreme emotion in literature and theater that first
appeared in the late eighteenth century and reappeared in the nineteenth century. For
inspiration Gothic authors, musicians, artists and architects turned to the past, particularly
the medieval period, which they viewed as harsh, terrifying, and marked by gruesome
torture, for inspiration. These artists chose as themes subjects like death, madness,
darkness, and the supernatural. Romanticism responded to the harsh realities of early
industrialization, the mechanization of farming techniques and the movement of many
agrarian workers into highly monotonous jobs in factories where working conditions
were poor, by celebrating other emotional and artistic qualities -- qualities largely
perceived as feminine -- such as beauty, fantasy, grace and charm.
46

In Paris, ballet choreographers, dancers, and directors experimented with new
subject matter, plot lines, and styles of dancing, and created a new genre of ballet
dancing.
47
Romantic ballets continued the trend that began with the French Revolution
and perpetuated the republican ethos of the era. They incorporated national and folk-
inspired dances, which appeared in

three quarters of the ballets and operas produced at
the Paris Opera during the 1830s and 1840s
.48
Tightly intertwined with the opera, where

46
On Gothicism see, William Lyon Phelps, The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement (New York:
Gordian Press, 1968). For more information on the development of Romantic Ballet see, Ivor Guest, The
Paris Opera Ballet (Hampshire: Alton, 2006), 41. On the Romantic ballet as a response to industrialization
see, Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 6.

47
Guest, The Paris Opera Ballet, 41.

48
Lynn Garafola, ed. Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet (Hanover: Wesleyan
University Press, 1997), 3; Lisa C. Arkin and Marian Smith, “National Dance in the Romantic Ballet,” in
Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet ed. Lynn Garafola (Hanover: Wesleyan
University Press, 1997), 11-68.
34

they were most frequently performed and with which they shared similar plots, modes of
staging, and music, Romantic ballets also appropriated narrative qualities. They were part
and parcel of presentations that conveyed stories. The libretti attached to the ballets
sometimes even included dialogue, which although not spoken, guided the performances
of the dancers.
49
In earlier centuries, rigid and courtly forms of ballet alienated audiences
outside the social elite, but Romantic ballet drew a broader spectrum of society.
Romantic ballet also created the image of the graceful ballerina, an icon that has
loomed over the history of ballet ever since Romanticism shifted the focus of ballet to
women. Nineteenth-century European conceptions of manhood lauded virility,
endurance, strength, and martial skill and rejected the opulence and decadence associated
with ballet as inappropriate for men. Especially at the end of the century, when a new
culture of athleticism constructed manliness as synonymous with muscular strength,
ballet seemed ill-suited to men. It subjected men to the gaze of an audience, dressed
them in clothing perceived as decadent, and expressed a concern with beauty and
aesthetics generally associated with women. Though very strong, male ballet dancers also
rarely developed athletic looking physiques. (Ballet dancing developed long and lean
muscles rather than bulk.) By portraying female dancers as transcendent and ghost-like
creatures, Romantic ballet, however, created a highly appealing image of womanhood. It
elevated ballerinas above the physical demands of the real world – making them appear
angelic and chaste.

49
Marian Elizabeth Smith, Ballet and Opera in the Age of Giselle (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2000), XIV.
35

Marie Taglioni, daughter of the celebrated Italian choreographer Filippo Taglioni
and the most famous ballerina of the Romantic era, heightened the ethereality and
weightlessness of the ballerina when she danced the ballet La Sylphide (1832) almost
entirely on her toes. Dancers before her had risen to their toes only occasionally,
primarily as tricks to appeal to audiences, but Taglioni made toe dancing a central part of
her performance.
50
She seemed to float across the stage. The Italian-trained ballerina
Carlotta Grisi, who worked with the dance master and choreographer Jules Perrot and
appeared in the ballet Giselle (1841), replaced the soft satin ballet slippers then worn by
women dancers with shoes that possessed hard boxed toes reinforced by muslin, felt, or
cardboard and satin ribbons to support the ankle.
51
From this period on, toe dancing
became a regular component of ballet.
In the twenty-first century Americans view toe dancing as the single clearest
indicator of “classical” ballet, yet prior to 1832 it represented an acrobatic trick, the
equivalent today of performing a daring lift or turn. While ballet is approximately four
centuries old, dancing on pointe has only been a common practice for less than two
centuries. It is the hallmark of Romantic ballet, but it is not an accurate means of
distinguishing ballet from other dance forms.
Toe dancing fundamentally altered the roles of male dancers in ballet. Requiring
ballerinas to perform feats of balance and poise, toe dancing relegated men to the roles of
partners. Male dancers supported women in poses, spun them in turns known as

50
Lee, Ballet in Western Culture, 148.

51
Lee, Ballet in Western Culture, 141. See also, Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 189-207.

36

Figure 3 Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide (1832),
Bibliothèque de l’Opéra.
pirrouttes, and lifted them in duets known as pas de deux. Women dancers even dressed
as men and performed male roles, an occurrence on stage referred to in French as dancing
en travestie, not the be confused with the English term travesty which has a different
meaning.
52
This tradition lasted, with only a few exceptions, until the early twentieth
century when the Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky revived the male tradition.
53

Romantic ballets also popularized the
costume most frequently associated with ballet
today – the long tutu. With its cinched waist,
tight form fitting bodice, and full skirt, the tutu
imitated early Victorian fashion trends,
highlighting a woman’s tiny waist and creating
a silhouette reminiscent of a woman wearing a
corset.
54
(See Figure 3) With its long layers of
stiffened fabric such as muslin or tarlatan, tutus
also seemed light and diaphanous. Wearing

52
On ballerinas and travesty dancing see, Guest, The Ballet of the Second Empire, 3; Lynn Garafola, “The
Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet,” Dance Research Journal 17 no. 2 (Autumn, 1985): 35-40.

53
As the premier danseur of Serge Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, Vaslav Nijinsky attracted widespread
attention and became the center piece of many ballets. This will be discussed in greater detail in the
following chapter.

54
Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 216.

37

them, dancers appeared to glide or float across the stage.
55
The color of the tutu also
associated the woman wearing it with sexual purity, virginity, and chastity. A corps of
dancers in the long, Romantic tutus resembled angels, an impression heightened by the
wings commonly attached to many costumes, including those of the two most famous
ballets of the Romantic Era, La Sylphide and Giselle. (See Figure 4)
Debuting in Paris in 1832, La Sylphide
depicted the unfulfilled and tormented love
between a mortal man and a spirit of the other
world. Giselle, first performed in 1841 and also
at the Paris Opera, portrayed the tragic love
story of a peasant girl who went mad and died
when she learned that her lover was betrothed to
marry another woman. In the second act, the
spirits of jilted women, known as the Wilis, rose
from their graves and -- seeking revenge --
danced Giselle’s errant lover to death. Dancers
wore the long white dresses when portraying
spirits and ghosts.
Though remembered today for their white ballets (ballet blancs), Romantic
ballets also possessed what historian Judith Chazin-Bennahum has referred to as a

55
Judith Chazin-Bennahum describes the evolution of the tutu from the long skirt worn by Taglioni in La
Sylphide to the shorter modern tutus of today. She also discusses the production of new fabrics which made
the costume possible. Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 214-215.

Figure 4 Marie Taglioni in La Sylphide
(1832), Bibliothèque de l’Opéra.
38

“darker side.”
56
They celebrated an image of chastity and grace at odds with the
experiences of the women who performed those roles and they made the ballerina a
subject of sexual fascination.

The Darker Side of White
In the twenty-first century ballet fans continue to decorate their homes with Edgar
Degas's impressionist paintings of ballet dancers. College students hang his posters in
their dormitories and view his colorful images as celebrations of grace and beauty. At the
same time, scholars refer to the Romantic Era as the Golden Age of ballet, leading many
contemporary readers to assume that ballet was viewed then much the same as it is today
– as a respected art performed by respectable women. Contemporary ballet fans fail to
recognize the deeply sexual and largely negative connotations associated with ballet in
the nineteenth century. Dancers, like actresses and other female performers who profited
from the display of their body, were simply not respectable.
Ballet lessons today mark social privilege and are an expensive extracurricular
activity for the children of the middle and upper-classes. However, in the nineteenth
century women who became dancers -- in both Europe and the United States -- came
primarily from working-class families. As women who worked, performed for men, and
displayed their bodies, these dancers were the antithesis of the image of womanhood they
portrayed. Romantic ballet dancers portrayed women as elegant, chaste, and fragile while
the women who performed these roles worked hard, in poor working conditions, and for

56
Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 221.
39

meager wages.
57
These women also risked significant social stigma, turning to work on
the stage primarily out of financial need.
58

By performing in public spaces, female performers defied sharply delineated
gender roles that assigned women to the private and domestic sphere. The physical,
corporeal act of dancing also called attention to the body in ways unthinkable to any “true
woman.”
59
A dancer was constantly in motion, not standing passively by. Unlike in the
opera and symphony, where audiences focused on the sounds produced by singing
performers or by musical instruments, dance focused on the moving body.
60
The sheer
white costumes that made Romantic dancers appear angelic and virginal, and that made
them appear to float across the stage, also revealed much of the bodily form.
Tutus covered a dancer’s legs, but they left her ankles and the outline of her body
visible beneath the sheer fabric visible.
61
Contemporary fashion went to great lengths to
cover women’s lower bodies and consequently imbued these legs with tremendous sexual
meaning. The shock experienced by audiences in the United States upon the
performances of the French ballerina Francisque Hutin in 1827 reveals the extent to

57
Dance historian Ivor Guest described the career of Fanny Ellsler, noting that she and her sisters became
dancers in order to contribute to the family's income. Guest, Fanny Ellsler, 19. See also, Chazin-
Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 222.

58
Dance historian Ivor Guest described the career of Fanny Ellsler, noting that she and her sisters became
dancers in order to contribute to the family's income. Guest, Fanny Ellsler, 19. See also, Chazin-
Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 222.

59
On women's roles in the antebellum period see, Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-
1860,” American Quarterly 18 no. 2 (Summer, 1966): 151-174. She argues that virtuous “true women”
modeled piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness.

60
Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 89. See also, Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 17.

61
Guest, Paris Opera Ballet, 46.

40

which ballerinas challenged social mores about female modesty. Although she wore
pantaloons underneath her tutu, the outline of Hutin’s lower body, which was displayed
when her skirt floated up during turns, offended many members of her audiences.
62

Female dancers also risked being associated with prostitution. Spectators
associated ballet with sentimental yearning, physical desire, and amorous delights. By the
1830s, U.S. audiences knew that European opera houses had become sites of commercial
sex, where wealthy men made advances on poorly paid and usually willing dancers.
63

Americans read newspapers that hinted at immoral after-hours worlds where women
entertained men in saloons and dance halls and read popular Parisian novels that
described ballet dancers as supported by, wealthy fashionable men.
64

The rapidly expanding print industry in Europe and the United States
disseminated the image of the ballerina widely, making her common to costume studies,
scenic designs, sheet music covers, caricatures, and magazines.
65
Degas’s much lauded
paintings captured not only his fascination with the beautiful female body, but also the

62
Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 88.

63
Ivor Guest, The Ballet of the Second Empire (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1974), 14.

64
Patricia Cline Cohen describes the “third tier” and prostitution in nineteenth century theaters. Patricia
Cline Cohen, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in Nineteenth-Century New
York (New York: Vintage Books,1999), 77 – 78. On Parisian novels see, Ivor Guest, Ballet of the Second
Empire, 29; Ivor Guest, The Paris Opera Ballet (Alton: Dance Books, 2006), 45.

65
Lynn Garafola, Rethinking the Sylph, 2. See also, Judith Chazin-Bennahum, “Women of Faint Heart and
Steel Toes,” Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet ed. Lynn Garafola (Hanover:
Wesleyan University Press, 1997), 121-130.

41

Figure 6 Edgar Degas, “Ballet Rehearsal,” 1875,
gouache and pastel on canvas. George G.
Frelinghuysen Collection, New York.
fetishization of the ballerina’s body, which he captured in figures of men leering at
ballerinas from stage wings.
66
(See Figures 5 and 6)

Romantic ballet raised the female ballet dancer to her toes, made her the central
focus of ballet, and celebrated the ballerina as an object of beauty. At the same time,
Romantic ballet also, however, emerged in tandem with women’s increased access to the
physical spaces of the city, to employment, and to education -- social developments that
destabilized gender roles and produced deep-seeded social anxieties. Thus, Romanticism
also positioned women as subordinate to men. Women danced to choreography created
by men. On stage they were lifted, turned, spun and directed by men; they even danced to
music composed and conducted by men. Romantic ballets also trapped dancers in the
confined spaces of the stage, in fictive worlds of imagination and fantasy, and under the

66
Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 209 and 216.
Figure 5 Edgar Degas, “Rehearsal of a Ballet on
Stage,” 1874, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris,
France.
42

controlling gazes of largely male audiences. Romantic ballet also cultivated a fascination
with the ballerina as a sexual object. These two traditions of viewing female ballet
dancers – as beautiful sylphs and sexy women -- took even more distinct forms in the
United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, as culture in the United States
began to dissolve into class-based categories of high and low.

Ballerinas and Ballet Girls
Alhough immortalized today as an image of high culture, Romantic ballet in the
United States actually enjoyed widespread popularity in the United States in the 1830s
and 1840s. When the French ballerina Madame Celeste performed in the United States
in 1834, she was so popular that she met President Andrew Jackson and earned over
$100,000, which was particularly impressive given pervasive anti-French sentiments
caused by the refusal of the French government to compensate the United States for
damages to Americans ships inflicted during Anglo-French military actions.
67

Even more dramatically, in 1840 the Austrian dancer Fanny Ellsler inspired a far
reaching fad for ballet.

A native of Vienna, Ellsler trained under the renowned Italian
dancer and choreographer Filipo Taglioni. Before coming to New York, she danced in
London, Berlin, Naples, and Paris and became one of the most prominent rivals of her
teacher’s daughter, Marie Taglioni. In the United States, she attracted a widespread
following. Shops carried Ellsler clothing, cigars, and home products, and Ellsler

67
Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 90.

43

frequently faced adoring mobs when in public.
68
Like the opera singer Jenny Lind and the
violinist Ole Bul, her popularity cut across class and income.
As an image of refinement and art, Ellsler appealed to a social elite increasingly
preoccupied with distinguishing itself from the working-class. Beginning in the 1820s
class based tensions in the United States escalated. Newly-made industrialists became
concerned about the changing nature of the cities. These industrialists viewed the
manners of immigrants as crude, the masses as increasingly vulgar and uneducated, and
the cities themselves as profane. They turned to culture as a potential site of moral uplift.
In 1826, the mayor of New York, Philip Hone, noted that the theater might “improve the
taste, correct the morals, and soften the manners of the people.
69
The mayor, like many of
his peers, began to claim that particular forms of “culture” were more refined and
legitimate.
70
By adjusting her costumes to be more modest, being selective in the roles
she performed, and appealing to contemporary fashion trends, Ellsler positioned herself
as part of this cultural movement.
Anticipating that she would encounter more conservative values in the United
States than in Europe, Ellsler lengthened the skirt of her costume and restricted her
performances to other-worldly roles -- evanescent sprites, bewitched shepherdesses, and
non-human, unattainable figures. Beautiful and sensual, the plots of the ballets Ellsler
performed alluded to high art, literature and paintings. These ballets resonated with

68
Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow, 108.

69
Cited in, Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 51. Original Source, Diary of Mayor Philip Hone. Discussed in,
Theodore Junior Shank, “The Bowery Theatre, 1826-1836” (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1956), 12.

70
Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow, 132.

44

Victorian beliefs that appeared in the 1830s and promoted female chastity, repressive
attitudes towards sex, civic responsibility and concern with social morals.
71
Ellsler's fairy-like form also appealed to the designers of contemporary fashions
in Europe and the United States. She resembled the “steel-engraving lady,” an image of
fragile and submissive femininity that became popular during the Victorian era.
72
With
her tiny waifish waist, which imitated the current fashion for tight laced corsets, she
seemed delicate, dainty, and highly feminine.
73
(See Figures 7 and 8)

71
Scholars are somewhat conflicted in describing the pervasiveness of Victorian beliefs. Helen Horowitz
has shown that multiple strains of thought ran through Victorian culture, ranging from prohibitions against
sex to acceptance of desire. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Rereading Sex: Battles Over Sexual Knowledge
and Suppression in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Knopf, 2002).

72
Lois Banner, American Beauty (New York: Knopf, 1983), 45.

73
On fashion, ballet, and the corset see, Chazin-Bennahum, The Lure of Perfection, 179-180
.
Figure 7 Fanny Ellsler in the Cracovienne
from The Gypsy, Collection of Allison
Delarue.
Figure 8 Fanny Ellsler performing La Cachucha,
Collection of Carol Lee.
45

At the same time, Ellsler also danced English hornpipes and Spanish folk dances,
dance styles popular among working and middle-class audiences who enjoyed her for not
only the beauty of her dances, but also for the challenge viewing her posed to the process
of sacralization initiated by the elite. Confronted by the supposed edification of the
theater, lower-class audiences physically and visibly protested elite performance styles.
They laid claim to the theater by expressing their own preferences and tastes; they
shouted insults, pelted actors with food, and rioted. In May 1839 a riot even broke out at

the celebrated Astor Place Theatre, when the more cerebral English actor William Charles
Macready replaced the widely popular and vigorous American actor Edwin Forrest in the
Theater's rendition of Macbeth.
74
Rather than attending rarefied New York theaters such
as the Bowery, Park and Chatham, working-class audiences began to patronize other
venues. The nation's shared public culture fragmented along class lines, leading to a
cultural divide between “high” and “low” culture.
Working-class performers also began to distance themselves from the elite
through the use of burlesque and parody, lampooning emerging forms of high culture and
parodying the acts popular among the wealthy. As early as 1840, William Mitchell, the
manager of New York’s popular Olympic Theater, dressed in a tutu and performed La
Mosquito, a spoof of Fanny Ellsler’s performance of La Tarantula, which she was then
dancing at the elite Park Theater.
75

74
Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 57-58, 65.

75
Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 102.
46

Romantic ballet today is often equated with “classical” ballet and remembered as
a style in which beautiful women performed graceful roles. However, to many
nineteenth-century audiences Romantic ballet represented entertainment and recreation.
Most common people did not go to the theater to be educated or to appreciate great works
of art, but to laugh and smile. When they saw Ellsler dance, they enjoyed her spirited folk
dances; they went to popular theaters, saw burlesque productions, and laughed as dancers
parodied the acts of the now “high” theater. Thus, Romantic ballet, while expressing the
emerging high culture, also revived the popular tradition of ballet associated with the
nation's first dancers. Until the middle of the twentieth century these two traditions of
ballet would alternate in popularity in the United States, rising, declining, and competing
in response to public tastes.

Romanticism on the Run
Romantic ballet declined in popularity both at home and in Europe around the
middle of the nineteenth century. In Paris a lack of new talent -- partly caused by the
closure of local theaters and ballet schools which could not compete with the professional
extravaganzas produced during the height of the Romantic ballet -- led to a general
decline in creativity.
76
In the United States, the Civil War triggered a shift in public tastes
in entertainment. New York, then the nation's theater capital, became a staging ground for
the troops of the union army who went south to battle. Actresses and dancers began to
flaunt their exposed legs on stage to entertain the soldiers. One of the most famous

76
Lee, Ballet in Western Culture, 172.

47

actresses of the day, Adah Issaacs Menken, performed the role of Mazzeppa, which ended
with her dressed as a man, riding a horse bareback across the stage
.77
Later, during the painful process of Reconstruction, as audiences learned of
violent Indian uprisings in Montana and the squalid living conditions of thousands of new
immigrants from Western and Eastern Europe in the nation's cities, these audiences
escaped into light-hearted entertainments.
78
The highbrow tradition of Romantic ballet
faded, and ballet dancers retreated into music halls and popular theaters where they
performed ballets that incorporated popular styles of dance.
79
In the 1860s spectacles such as The Black Crook (1866) and troupes of women
performers like Lydia Thompson and the British Blondes (1868) frequently incorporated
ballet into performances that included slapstick humor, variety acts, marching armies, and
scantily clad women. The most celebrated popular dance performance of the 1860s, The
Black Crook (1866), debuted on September 2, 1866 at Niblo’s Garden in New York. The
show was so successful that its first run alone included nearly five hundred performances.
It would be revived for the next forty-three years.
80

Employing over eighty dancers and a “grand ballet” in each act, The Black Crook
featured ballets performed in a variety of styles.
81
The stars of the performance were the

77
Renee Sentilles, Performing Menken: Adah Isaacs Menken and the Birth of American Celebrity (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 96.

78
Barbara Barker, ed. Bolossy Kiralfy: Creator of Great Musical Spectacles (Ann Harbor: University of
Michigan Research Press, 1988), xxxi.

79
Carter, Dance and Dancers, 113.

80
Olga Maynard, The American Ballet (Philadelphia: Macrae Smith Company, 1959), 23.

81
Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 29.
48

Figure 9 The dance of the “Pas de Fleurs” in The Black Crook,
Hoblitzelle Theatre Arts Library, University of Texas at Austin.
European ballet dancers Maria Bonfanti and Rita Sangalli, both trained in Rome under
the Italian dance master, Carlo Blasis, the director of the La Scala Ballet. Both women
danced in the style of the Romantic ballet – light and controlled and with a restrained
beauty. These dancers performed ballets that closely imitated the ballets performed in La
Scala and, as practitioners of European ballet, brought class and “culture” to popular
productions.
Bonfanti and Sangalli were not, however, the only ballet dancers to perform in
these productions. Acrobatic specialists and a corps de ballet of scantily clad women also
danced around them.
82
In the “Pas de Fleurs” ballet in Act One, eight second-ranked
women carrying horse-shoe hooped garlands of flowers performed a peasant dance in
wooden shoes. (See Figure 9)

82
Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 51-52.

49

In the “Pas de Sabot,” Sangalli, Bonfanti, and Betty Rigl (another prominent
ballerina) danced solos.
83
The ballet “Grotto of Stalacta” featured several movements. In
one of them Sangalli performed with a corps de ballet of dancers behind her costumed as
amphibia and fish.

(See Figure 10) In the most notorious scene in the show, the “pas de
demons,” a group of dancers wore sleeveless bodices and mid-thigh close-fitting
pantaloons.
84
(See Figure 11)

Critics claimed that the ballerinas in The Black Crook
flaunted their legs, which were covered in flesh-colored tights.

83
Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 52.

.

84
Allen, Horrible Prettiness, 114.

Figure 10 Image of corypee in The
Black Crook, Hoblitzelle Theatre
Arts Library, University of Texas at
Austin.
Figure 11 Betty Rigl as the “Demon” in The Black
Crook, Museum of the City of New York, Theatre
Collection.
50

The performances of Lydia Thompson and her burlesque troupe, “The British
Blondes,” in 1868 bolstered the popularity of alternative forms of ballet by promoting a
new image of feminine beauty. Unlike the steel engraving lady of the pre-war era, these
women had peroxided blond hair and buxom, curvy, voluptuous bodies. Trained as a
dancer, Thompson became a member of the corps de ballet of Her Majesty’s Theatre in
London in 1852. She acquired renown in 1868 when she and her dancers exploited the
fascination with “leg shows” like The Black Crook in the United States and gave racy
performances that blended song, dance, burlesque, parody, improvisation, and cross
dressing. Although these performances were never explicitly referred to as ballet, by
featuring women trained in ballet and by showing women performing in tights,
Thompson and her dancers influenced later productions in which ballet played a more
prominent role.
85
Audiences came to favor titillating spectacles to celebrations of
chasteness and purity. They preferred Thompson’s Blondes and the dancers of The Black
Crook to Fanny Ellsler and the Romantic ballerina. For the next thirty years these “racy”
productions would remain the primary venue of ballet in the United States.

Ballet or“Ballyhoo?”
During the 1860s and 1870s Italian ballerinas such as Malvina Cavallazzi, who
eventually became the prima ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera and Director of the
Metropolitan Opera Ballet School, and Guisepinna Morlacchi, who introduced Americans

85
I am unaware of any publicity materials or photographs that refer to the dances of Thompson and her
troupe as ballet. For more on Lydia Thompson see, Kurt Gänzl, Lydia Thompson: Queen of Burlesque
(New York: Routledge, 2002).

51

to the French can-can, joined Sangalli and Bonfanti in the United States, performing in
productions of The Black Crook, or one its imitations, such as The White Fawn (1866),
Cendrillon (1866), The Devil’ s Action (1867), and The Forty Thieves (1869). In many
productions, the women played roles in contemporary stories. In The Scouts of the
Prairie (1873), which toured from New York to Chicago, St. Louis, Cincinnati,
Rochester, Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia, and Richmond, Morlacchi depicted a dual
between the mythic American hero Buffalo Bill and Indians and renegades.
86

In the twenty-first century scholars would probably refer only to the dances in
which these European ballerinas performed in the Romantic tradition as “ballet.”
Scholars would dismiss other performances as “dances,” a semantic means of
distinguishing these movements from “classical” ballet. Even dance historian Barbara
Barker, who traced the appearances of Morlacchi, Sangalli, and Bonfanti through popular
productions, distinguished the two styles of ballet as “ballet” and “ballyhoo.” It would be
easy to dismiss the “ballyhoo” dances as parodies of real ballet. Invariably some of them
were parodies, but not all of them. Audiences may have viewed Romantic ballet as more
elite, as a rendition of the European tradition, but production programs, photographs, and
descriptions by the dancers suggest that audiences also perceived popular dances that
included acrobatic, tricks, scanty costumes, or wooden shoes as “ballet.”
A photograph of the Morlacchi Ballet Company showed three of the dancers in
dresses, three en travestie, and all in flat dance shoes. The women did not wear pointe

86
Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 153-156.

52

shoes; they were not necessary for audiences to view the dances as ballet.
87
(See Figure
12) Another image showed Morlacchi and a member of her company performing the can-
can, legs kicked high in
the air.
88
Finally, a
photograph of dancers
from the ballet the Grotto
of Stalacta showed a
ballet dancer in a tutu-like
dress but performing
acrobatic tricks.
89

While post-bellum
nineteenth century audiences used the term “ballet” broadly and to refer to a wide array
of dance forms, they did not, however, use “ballet” and “dance” synonymously. Ballet,
for example, almost always referred to dance styles that featured women. It also rarely
included dances performed by black Americans, such as the popular “cakewalk,” the
dances performed in minstrel shows, or the dances performed in ethnic theaters. The
term’s widespread usage in the white popular theater is, therefore, a testament to its
residual association with high culture. The term “ballet” continued to signify
respectability -- to distinguish the dance forms of white working-class venues from the

87
Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 128.

88
Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 125.

89
Barker, Ballet or Ballyhoo, 146.

Figure 12 The Morlacchi Ballet company, Morlacchi third from the
left, Tompkins and Kilby, Boston Theatre, Harvard Theatre Collection,
Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts.
53

crude and unrespectable dance forms of black and immigrant theaters. Ballet referred to
dances that though bawdy and salacious ranked above the base entertainments of the
lowest social classes.
Like many other areas of American public life, the ballets of the 1860s and 1870s
began, however, to come under intense scrutiny in the last decades of the nineteenth
century. The construction of formal cultural venues dedicated to high culture, which had
begun in the 1840s, escalated, and the social elite slowly codified opera, museums, and
symphony music as forms of high culture. By the end of the century nine fully
professional symphonies and orchestras, ten community orchestras of amateurs and
professionals, and eighteen college orchestra groups existed in the United States. In
addition, the Boston Museum of Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened in
1870, followed by the Metropolitan Opera in 1880. The nation's first permanent
symphonic orchestra appeared in Boston in 1881, the Art Institute of Chicago in 1886,
and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1889. Museums arose in St. Louis, San
Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee, and prominent philanthropists like Andrew
Carnegie, Nelson D. Rockefeller, Johns Hopkins, and Leland Stanford donated large
sums of money to support the construction of libraries and the establishment of
universities.
90
The social elite placed a renewed emphasis on culture as a form of moral
uplift.

90
Russel Lynes, The Lively Audience: A Social History of the Visual and Performing Arts in America,
1890-1950 (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1985). See pps. 14-15 on art museums, p.5 on
philanthropy by Carnegie, Rockefeller, etc, and pps. 19-20 on orchestras and opera houses.

54

Meanwhile, middle-class moral arbiters, particularly clergy and other religious
leaders, began to criticize the liberal social mores of the Civil War Era. Urban reformers
embarked on crusades to rid the nation of prostitution, and the euphoric celebration of
life and sexuality which marked the 1860s gave way to Victorian sensibilities and a
distrust of the human body. The passage of the Comstock Laws in 1873, which censored
the circulation of pornographic images, marled this shift in cultural attitudes.
Bolossy Kiralfy, who became known for his huge spectacles in the United States
in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s, began to shy away from provocative forms of ballet.
Born in Hungary, Kiralfy began his career performing the dances of his native country in
Paris and London. While traveling in Europe he had the opportunity to train in ballet at
the Paris Opera and under Paul Taglioni at the Berlin Court Opera (1859 – 1863). He
wrote in his autobiography that while at the Paris Opera he acquired training in ballet and
also learned the “choreography that would help me to plan my lavish musical
productions.”
91
By involving large casts of singers, dancers, and actors, Kiralfy appealed to the
American preoccupation with size. In the last decades of the century, the United States
adopted increasingly expansionist policies overseas. Meanwhile, cities attracted mass
crowds, architects erected large buildings, and Americans became concerned with the
decreased power of the individual in an increasingly bureaucratized society. American

91
Barker, Bolossy Kiralfy, 55, 59, 73, xxxiii.

55

national identity became uniquely tied to size, creating a taste for grandiose spectacles
like those of Kiralfy.
92

Believing that “real musical theater” had to be popular and had to attract an
audience from all segments of society, Kiralfy insisted that his productions involve all
aspects of theater. His productions featured ballet dancers in an array of costumes and
performance styles. Supposedly regretful that The Black Crook had given ballet “an aura
of wickedness that lasted for years,” Kiralfy hoped to make it a more central and
respected component of his productions. For his revival of The Black Crook in 1889, he
engaged a full cast of professionally trained dancers, including three premier dancers,
nine soloists, a company of twenty-three English ballet dancers and twenty-nine
American dancers with some ballet training.
93
For his American production of Around
the World in Eighty Days, he brought nearly the entire cast of the original production at
the Theatre de la Porte-Saint Martin to the United States, including an entire cast of ballet
dancers and ballet masters.
94
Even in the 1880s when his productions moved to outdoor
venues -- amusement parks and exhibition halls -- Kiralfy continued to feature ballerinas
from La Scala and huge casts of chorus girls who performed pirrouttes.

In the 1890s, Progressive Era reformers began to extend Victorian era concerns
with morality to dealing with social ills such as alcohol abuse, child labor, and immigrant
working conditions. A full blown social purity movement attacked a broad range of social

92
Michael Tavel Clarke, These Days of Large Things: The Culture of Size in America, 1865 – 1930 (Ann
Harbor: University of Michigan, 2007).

93
Barker, Bolossy Kiralfy, 94.

94
Barker, Bolossy Kiralfy, 97.

56

issues, including prostitution, collegiate football, prize fighting and ballet. Dance came
under even more public scrutiny. Reformers believed it was an aphrodisiac that
endangered audiences and performers and shunned female spectacle as a licentious
display.
95

For the first time in American history, ballet retreated to opera houses. Unlike
Europe, where opera represented the traditional venue of ballet, not until the turn of the
century did ballet and opera in the United States become intertwined. Only in the 1890s,
1900s, and 1910s, following the construction of venues of high culture and a cultural
backlash against performances deemed risque, did ballet dancers in the United States
seek permanent employment in opera companies. The sacred walls of high class, elite
theaters allowed ballet to be performed as a form of art. Thus, Malvina Cavalazzi became
the first prima-ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera, where the male dancer Luigi
Albertieri also debuted in 1898. (Albertieri became known in the United States for
teaching the Cechetti technique of Italian ballet dancing.) The Italian dancer Rosina Galli
became prima-ballerina of the Chicago Grand Opera Ballet in 1911.
While ballet waned in popularity and prominence in the United States and
Europe, it entered a high period in Russia. French dancers such as Jules Perrot, Arthur
Saint Leon, and, most importantly, Marius Petipa, found employment in the Imperial
Ballet School and the Imperial Theatre System, institutions long supported by the
Russian monarchy. Petipa alone produced seventy-five new ballets, including “classics”
that continue to be performed today, such as Giselle (1850), Le Corsaire (1856), Don

95
On the social purity movement see, David Pivar, Purity Crusade: Sexual Morality and Social Control,
1868 -1900 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973).
57

Quixote (1869), La Bayadere (1877), Coppelia (1884), The Sleeping Beauty (1890), Swan
Lake (1895), and Raymonda (1898). All of these ballets continued to perpetuate images
of the Romantic Ballet. The Russian tradition of ballet dancing became central to
American ballet in the twentieth century.

The New Woman: Health, Fitness and Dance
While interest in ballet may have tapered off in the last decades of the nineteenth
century, other dance forms prospered that would facilitate the reentry of ballet into U.S.
culture at the turn of the century.

Advances in technology and medicine at this time --
particularly improvements in birth control and improved obstetric care for women, in
tandem with the closure of the American frontier and the crisis in American masculinity
that it triggered -- led to a physical health movement that encouraged both men and
women to participate in sports and other activities that benefited the body.
96

At the same time, the theories of French physician François Delsarte became
popular in the 1890s. Delsarte's theories of posture and movement suggested that
outward movements symbolized inner feelings. Eventually clergymen such as William
Alger preached that Delsartian movement could be used as prayer, to form a spiritual

96
On women and the physical health movement see, Gregory Kent Stanley, The Rise and Health of the
Sportswoman: Women's Health, Fitness and Athletics, 1860-1940 (New York: Peter Lang, 1996). For a
broader review of changes in women's health across the nineteenth century see, Judith Walzer Leavitt,
Women and Health in America: Historical Readings (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999). On
the crisis in masculinity see, Arnoldo Testi, “The Gender of Reform Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the
Culture of Masculinity,” Journal of American History 81 no. 4 (March, 1995), 1509 – 1533.

58

connection with God.
97
Movement now possessed spiritual meaning. Men became active
in rugged, “masculine” sports such as football, which showcased physical agility and
strength, and women rode bikes, played on same sex sports teams, and participated in
calisthenics, gymnastics, and dancing.
One result of this interest in healthy recreational activities was the emergence of
ballet schools in major urban areas, particularly in New York City. Since the late
nineteenth century dancers affiliated with popular productions had supplemented their
incomes by teaching. In 1880 Elizabeth Menzeli, a contemporary of Marie Bonfanti,
began teaching in New Jersey. Menzeli had a successful career dancing with European
opera companies that toured the United States and in popular burlesque and vaudeville
productions. In 1897, while designing dance programs for local productions, she also
opened her own school in New York, the Knickerbocker Conservatory.
98
In addition, in
1909 the Metropolitan Opera opened an affiliated ballet school under the directorship of
Malvina Cavallazi. Likewise, Louis Chalif, also an affiliate of the Metropolitan Opera,
established a respected school in New York in 1907. He eventually published several
textbooks on dance.
99

In addition to providing women access to college education and many forms of
employment, and to nurturing the women’s suffrage movement, the erosion of strict

97
Jack Anderson, Art Without Boundaries: The World of Modern Dance (Iowa City: University of Iowa
Press, 1997), 15.

98
On Menzeli see, Ann Barzel, “Elizabetta Menzeli,” Dance Chronicle 19 no. 3 (1996): 277 – 288.

99
Nancy Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick, No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 107.

59

social taboos that condemned women who appeared in public also enabled many middle
and upper-class women to assume more prominent roles in arts activities. Maria
Longworth Nichols Storer, for example, founded the Cincinnati May Music Festival in
1871.
100
Other women worked in settlement houses and taught immigrant women how to
dance.
101
Women such as Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and Isadora Duncan also pioneered
new styles of dance that claimed moral legitimacy and distanced dance from associations
with spectacle and sex.
Fuller

played with new innovations in light and stage technology and created
brilliant, artistic stage spectacles. Born Mary Louise Fuller in rural Illinois in 1862, she
achieved fame at the age of thirty when she began dancing with the Folies-Bergère in
Paris, where she eventually became known as “La Loïe.” Fuller manipulated large
quantities of fabric to create spectacular effects. She draped herself in masses of fabric,
which she maneuvered with sticks and wires, and positioned to reflect and play with
stage lights, thus creating vibrant but tasteful illusions of water, animals, and fire. Her
Serpentine Dance featured hundreds of yards of china silk, which billowed about, while
stage lighting made the fabric appear sometimes on fire and at other times to have created
shadows of flowers, birds, and butterflies.
102
(See Figure 13)

100
For more on the role of women in arts organizations see, Linda Whitsitt, “The Role of Women
Impresarios in American Concert Life, 1871-1933,” American Music 7 no. 2 (Summer, 1989): 159-180.

101
Linda Tomko, Dancing Class: Gender, Ethnicity, and Social Divides in American Dance, 1890 – 1920
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

102
Fuller’s career extended into the 1920s, during which time she began to incorporate other performers
into her dances. For additional information on Fuller see, McCormick and Reynolds, No Fixed Points, 3-
10; Anderson, Art Without Boundaries, 10-13.

60

Figure 13 Loie Fuller, photograph by B.
J. Falk, circa 1896, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.
Figure 14 Ruth St. Denis in Radha, circa
1906, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.
By using movement, light, and technology to
create works of “art,” Fuller challenged audiences to
see dance as showcasing more than just bodies. In a
time when tolerance towards the display or even
representation of a woman's body risked being
labeled as pornographic, she redefined the purpose of
dance. Movement, spectacle, and illusion could
replace female bodies as the focal pieces of dance
performances.

St. Denis's dances drew inspiration from the
East and supposedly possessed religious and
spiritual significance. Known for her performances
of the Hindu goddess Radha, St. Denis experimented
with the exotic forms of dance that became popular
at the turn of the century, as both Europe and the
United States became increasingly imperialistic.
(See Figure 14) World's Fairs captivated audiences
by showcasing exotic foreign cultures in native
displays, performances, and dances. Perhaps most
61

notably, the wiggling hips of a dark skinned woman known as “Little Egypt” enthralled
audiences at the Colombian Centennial in Chicago in 1893. Contemporary theater
embraced the new trend, and in the same year that Little Egypt debuted in Chicago, Oscar
Wilde adapted the biblical story of Salome, which

included the “dance of the seven
veils,” into a popular play that would eventually be performed by many of the most
famous actresses of the era, including Sarah Bernhardt and Ida Rubinstein.
103
In looking to the East, particularly Egyptian and Hindu culture, St. Denis
exploited this fascination with exoticism and the orient. By focusing

on religion and
spiritualism, she also, however, circumvented the titillating sexual overtones of
performances like those of Little Egypt. In Incense, she played a woman scattering
incense over a brazier. During the dance she used her arms to imitate the fluid movements
of smoke, a gesture of religious contemplation. Much like Fuller, she reinvented dance in
the United States; she made dance a spiritual, religious, and transcendent activity and
raised it above mere entertainment. Her dances could be enjoyed for their beauty, but they
were also personally fulfilling and enriching.
Isadora Duncan popularized a free and natural style of movement, often called
“aesthetic dance,” which explicitly rejected the spectacular effects of Fuller, St. Denis,
and the sensational exotic dances. Duncan wore loose flowing gowns, silk girdles, and
large cloaks. She performed with her hair loose and flowing along her back and with no
shoes. Most notably, Duncan also abandoned her corset, which allowed her body to move

103
For additional information on performances of Salome at the turn of the century see, Toni Bentley,
Sisters of Salome (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002).

62

freely and her dances to possess fluidity and lightness. As her career progressed, Duncan
drew inspiration from Greek architecture and sculpture, leading her often to be referred to
as a “Greek dancer.” Dancing to music by such composers as Gluck, Chopin, Beethoven,
Wagner, and Brahms, Duncan also emphasized spirituality. Like St. Denis, she wanted to
convey beauty solely through movement; envisioning dance as the ultimate form of
emotional expression.
104
She also made her body central to her performances, which
were all about the natural flow of the body, its movements, and the ability of the dancer
to convene with spirits and religion. (See Figure 15)

104
On Duncan see, Anne Daly, Done Into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1995); Peter Kurth, Isadora: A Sensational Life (Boston: Little Brown, 2001); Jack
Anderson, Art Without Boundaries, 17-26.

Figure 15 Isadora Duncan, photograph by Arnold Genthe, 1916, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
63

Fuller, St. Denis, and Duncan originated what became known as “art dance,” a
genre of dance that eventually evolved in the twentieth century into “modern dance.” In
particular, St. Denis and her husband, Ted Shawn, formed a company that in the 1920s
and 1930s nurtured some of the most important modern dancers and choreographers of
the twentieth century, including Martha Graham and Charles Weidman.
105
Though
modern dance abandoned the established lexicon of the dance d'ecole, it remained a
lasting influence on ballet in the United States throughout the twentieth century.
Turn-of-the-Century and Early-Twentieth-Century Ballet: From Vaudeville to Film
The trend towards cultural conservativism and female modesty that made dancers
like Fuller, St. Denis, and Duncan so popular in the United States also contributed to the
development of a new form of popular theater. Managers responded to the demands of a
widening middle-class audience by creating the more family oriented form of theater that
became known as vaudeville.
Vaudeville first became respectable in 1891 when New York variety impresarios
Tony Pastor, Benjamin Franklin Keith and Edward Franklin Albee, the directors of what
would become the most powerful chain of vaudeville theaters in the United States,
redefined their theaters as sites of wholesome and respectable entertainment.
106
They
distanced vaudeville from the overt sexuality of productions like The Black Crook by
construing displays of women's bodies as art. “Living pictures,” for example, displayed

105
On the history of modern dance see, Jack Anderson, Art Without Boundaries: The World of Modern
Dance (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1997); Julia Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American
Modernism From Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002).

106
Andrew Erdman, Blue Vaudeville: Sex, Morals and the Mass Marketing of Amusement, 1895 – 1915
(Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 2004), 2.

64

naked female bodies, but made them acceptable for audiences to view by describing them
as classical statues.
107

The widening influence of the United States overseas at the turn of the century
eroded the American disdain for elite arts and created a renewed acceptance of ballet.
108

Americans became confident in the nation’s political and economic stature and took
enjoyment in performances of European art forms, which became evident in the
continued formation of opera theaters and symphony orchestras and the prevalence of
European styled acts like ballet dancing in vaudeville productions. As in the “living
pictures,” ballet allowed audiences to view women’s bodies, but veiled performances as
an acceptable form of artistic presentation.
109

The ballets presented in vaudeville productions represented clear examples of
how the traditions of elite, highbrow ballet and popular, sensational ballets could overlap,
coexisting and influencing the same performance styles. Regardless of its centrality to
popular entertainments in the nineteenth century, ballet dancing had never fully shed its
association with elite culture, European opera, and Romanticism. Based largely on
parody and burlesque, popular forms of ballet continually reminded audiences of its elite
origins. As a result, during decades when ballet in the United States most often appeared

107
Erdman, Blue Vaudeville, 101.

108
Beginning in the 1890s, private citizens, particularly investors, philanthropists, missionaries, and traders,
began to transport American goods to foreign countries and promoted unrestricted trade and investment,
free enterprise, and cultural exchange. Emily Rosenberg, Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics
and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004).

109
Erdman, Blue Vaudeville, 101.

65

as sensational spectacles performed by highly sexualized women, it could still add class
to a production.
Managers may have used ballet to legitimate their productions as art and to render
them appropriate for middle-class audiences, but the ballets that appeared in the
productions did not replicate the styles of the Romantic ballet. Instead, they were
designed to titillate audiences and provoke laughter. Adeline Genée, a famed Danish-born
ballerina affiliated with the Empire Theater in London, toured the United States between
1908 and 1911, performing in vaudeville productions and revues. In Florenz Ziegfeld’s
The Soul Kiss, which toured to twenty-three American cities, she impersonated Marie
Taglioni in a dance called “The Good Old Days.”
110
Other popular vaudeville dancers
included Mazie King, Adelaide Dickey and her husband John Hughes, and Alice Eis and
Bert French.
111
The women in these ballets wore pointe shoes, but the ballets they
produced were far from imitations of La Sylphide. Eis and French often performed erotic
dances that resulted in Eis ending up in various states of undress.
112

Vaudeville remained a mass form of entertainment in the United States until the
late 1920s when it fell victim to the economic crisis of the Great Depression and the
popularity of the far less expensive entertainment of film, which almost from its inception
had experimented with recording dance.

110
Reynolds and McCormick, No Fixed Points, 108.

111
On Adelaid Dickey and Bert French see, Richard Kislan, Hoofing It On Broadway: A History of Show
Dancing (New York: Prentice Hall Press, 1987), 35.

112
Erdman, Blue Vaudeville, 14; Barbara Naomi Cohen- Straytner, Ned Wayburn and the Dance Routine,
39.

66

Thomas Edison’s first demonstration of the Edison Vitrascope in 1896 featured
dance sequences, including Annabelle Moore’s Sun Dance (1894). Later, Edison recorded
Greek freestyle dancers in Cupid and Psyche (1897) and dancers en-pointe in Little Miss
Lillian- Toe Danseuse (1903). The development of narrative cinema produced films such
as The Messenger Boy and the Ballet (1905) and Dancing Lessons (1913).
113
By
requiring actors to communicate via pantomime and the movement of the body, silent
film made use of actors and actresses trained in various dance forms.
114
Unfortunately,
many professional dancers viewed film as suspect, fearing the loss of the vitality of live
performance. As a result, many of the most of famous dancers of the early twentieth
century refused to be filmed. Two rare exceptions to this rule were Loie Fuller and Anna
Pavlova.
115

Nevertheless, film represented a form of mass culture, a means of communicating
ideas with a large, mainstream audience. Even Edison's early films Cupid and Psyche and
Little Miss Lillian-To Danseuse appeared in widely popular nickelodeons. In the
twentieth century film emerged as one of the most important mediums for disseminating
ballet to American audiences and heightening its popularity and visibility.
By the early decades of the twentieth century, American attitudes towards dance
had again begun to shift. By describing ballet as art, dancers like St. Denis, Fuller,
Duncan, and others, and the managers of vaudeville theaters circumvented the taboos

113
Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Bibliographical
Encyclopedia, With a History of Filmographies, 1893 – 1996 (Jefferson: McFarland and Co., 1997), 17-19.

114
Jerome Delameter, Dance in the Hollywood Musical (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 14.

115
Billman, Film Choreographers, 18-19.

67

against female performance that had set in during the Victorian Era. While these broad
attitudinal changes may have construed dance in positive terms, they could not, however,
transcend the long term cultural and economic consequences of ballet's shifting and
contested place in American culture.

The American Stage: Students, Schools, and Support
No sustained infrastructure to support ballet existed in the United States prior to
the twentieth century. European governments subsidized the arts, but ballet companies in
the United States depended entirely on the support of private patrons. The wealthy
philanthropists who donated large sums of money to the establishment of museums,
opera companies, symphony orchestras, and libraries in the last three decades of the
nineteenth century, did not establish independent ballet companies.
116
Thus, as late as the
1910s no professional ballet company existed in the United States. Ballet dancers
performed in popular entertainment or in troupes attached to opera companies but they
did not possess the financial means to organize independent performance groups.

116
On the development of the high arts in the United States in the nineteenth century see, Lawrence
Levine, Highbrow/ Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1991); Joseph Horowitz, “Music and the Gilded Age: Social Control and Sacralization
Revisited,” Journal of Gilded Age and Progressive Era 3: 3 (July 2004): 227 – 245; Paul DiMaggio,
“Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston: The Creation for an Organizational Base for
High Culture in America,” Media, Culture and Society 4: 1 (1982): 33-50.
For additional information on the role of wealthy philanthropists such as Carnegie and Rockefeller in
supporting museums, operas, and symphonies see, Robert A. Schanke, ed., Angels in the American
Theater: Patrons, Patronage, and Philanthropy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois Press, 2007); Russell Lynes,
The Lively Audience: A Social History of the Visual and Performing Arts in America, 1890-1950 (New
York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1985).

68

In addition, a handful of elite mangers dominated the theater and made it difficult
for smaller organizations to book appearances in local theaters and for artists to break
into the industry. In the nineteenth century when the social elite erected new theaters and
created new cultural institutions, directors and managers, who became known as
“impresarios,” assumed responsibility for organizing the tours of featured performers.
Costly and risky endeavors, tours required the backing of men with significant financial
means. Touring companies also depended on negotiations made with local theaters, which
impresarios quickly came to control. In the nineteenth century P.T. Barnum orchestrated
the performances of Fanny Ellsler and Jenny Lind. Well into the twentieth century, a
handful of men, including Gabriel Astruc, Sir Thomas Beecham, Oscar Hammerstein,
Max Rabinoff, Sol Hurok, and Lincoln Kirstein, controlled performance opportunities in
the United States.
The scarcity of ballet schools in the United States also made it difficult for
interested students to learn ballet dancing. Outside of New York City and a few other
major metropolitan areas, few ballet schools existed in the United States. As early as
1734, immigrant artists attempted to give dance lessons in the United States. In the wake
of the French Revolution Paul Hazzard, who trained at the Paris Opera Ballet, and a few
other dancers did open dance schools. For the most part, however, these instructors ended
69

up teaching social dances and etiquette.
117
Rather than teaching students to point their
toes, the dance instructors taught young women to walk with books on their heads, stand
with good posture, and carry themselves with grace.
118
In the 1890s young women,
many of whom turned to teaching to produce an income during the economic recession of
the late century, began to teach dance classes. Unfortunately, though many of these
teachers had trained under European artists, their teaching lacked the sophistication and
experience of their instructors.
119
It would be several decades before most students
interested in taking ballet lessons could choose from reputable dance instructors.

Conclusion
Although ballet dancing began in Europe as an elite practice, in the United States
Americans first experienced it as part of a “shared public culture” that involved working,
middle, and upper class audiences. Only in the nineteenth century, when culture in the
United States began to bifurcate into class specific categories, did the nation's social elite
redefine ballet as a form of high culture. Ballet, like opera, symphony, and Shakespearean
theater, came to represent refinement and cultivation. Even in the midst of this dramatic

117
A London trained performer Henry Holt, gave his first performance in Charleston, South Carolina in
1734 and went on to give dance lessons, forming the nation’s earliest dance school. In 1782, John Durang,
an American born dancer, opened a ballet school in Baltimore. Lillian Moore, "When Ballet Came to
Charleston," Echoes of American Ballet (New York City: Dance Horizons, 1976), 35; Olga Maynard, The
American Ballet, 15. Hazzard eventually trained some of the earliest native born ballet dancers in the
United States, including Mary Ann Lee and Julia Turnball. Carol Lee, Ballet in Western Culture, 316.

118
Helen Bullitt Lowry, "Our Dancing Masters and Our Manners," New York Times, December 18, 1921.
For additional information of the history of dance schools in the United States in the eighteenth century see,
Ann Barzel, “European Dance Teachers in the United States,” Dance Index 3 nos. 4, 5, 6 (April-May-June,
1944): 56- 100.

119
Ibid.

70

cultural realignment, ballet never, however, completely disappeared from popular venues.
Especially in times when interest in highbrow arts waned, popular venues provided a
source of stable employment to ballet artists. Through parody and burlesque, they
promoted a form of ballet designed for the tastes of working and middle-class audiences.
In order to render it uniquely deserving of public support and attention, as well as
sacred and exclusive, audiences today have forgotten the long, complicated history of
ballet in popular culture. Modern audiences view ballet as an art form that has overcome
tremendous hurdles in the United States. They sometimes believe that ballet lacks a
history in the United States, and that it appeared on American stages and was only
brought to American audiences following the heroic efforts of a few individuals in the
twentieth century. An examination of the history of ballet in popular entertainment in the
United States shows that these conclusions hold only if we subscribe to a rigid definition
of “ballet” as a form of art and elite culture. In reality, ballet has appeared in this country
in one form or another sense the colonial period. It has been experienced by many
different audiences, in many different forms, and in many different venues. While
Romantic ballet lacks a continuous tradition in the United States, ballet dancing does not.
71

CHAPTER 2

ADV ANCING AMERICAN BALLET (1909-1940)

In September 2007 dance critic Diane Solway described the career of the rising
choreographer Christopher Wheeldon for the New York Times. She noted that in the
months following the formation of his dance company, Morphoses/The Wheeldon
Company, the British-born dancer and former affiliate of the New York City Ballet had
visited the grave of the well-known Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev.
120
Alongside
dozens of ballet slippers and plastic flowers, Wheeldon left his business card in a basket
filled with those of many of the most famous ballet companies in the world. This gesture,
according to Solway, was “Mr. Wheeldon’s way of serving notice that he has arrived,
intent on rejuvenating the ballet world and drawing younger audiences and donors.”
121

In positioning Wheeldon, the most sought after choreographer in the first decade
of the twenty-first century, as Diaghilev’s succcessor, Solway revered the impresario as
the father of twentieth-century ballet, the figure to whom the leaders of ballet today look
for advice or inspiration. Wheeldon himself has described Diaghilev as resuscitating
ballet in Europe; “Ballet suddenly became electric under Diaghilev, it became cutting
edge, it became daring and rich.”
122

Nearly a century prior, Diaghilev orchestrated the performance of a group of
Russian dancers affiliated with the Maryinsky Theater in Paris. Performing brilliant and
exotic ballets that involved some of Europe and Russia's most prominent avante-garde

120
Diane Solway, “One Giant Leap for the Man of the Moment,” New York Times, September 30, 2007.

121
Ibid.

122
Ibid.
72

artists, the “Ballet Russes,” as Diaghilev’s company became known, established ballet as
a couture form of art in the West. The company also launched the careers of many of the
most prominent ballet artists of the twentieth century among them, Vaslav Nijinsky,
George Balanchine, Anna Pavlova, Leonid Massine, Adolf Bolm, and Alexandra
Danilova.
Diaghilev undeniably influenced the history of ballet in Europe and the United
States. However, Solway and Wheeldon, like many other critics, dancers, and scholars
today, tend to exaggerate his contributions to the development of American ballet. They
treat ballet as lacking a history in the United States prior to the arrival of Russian
immigrants. Joseph Horowitz, an accomplished teacher and writer on the history of
American music, wrote, “As of 1900, there was little ballet in the United States.”
According to Horowitz, the performances of Ana Pavlova and Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet
Russes were the “two landmark points of initiation” of ballet in the United States.
123

Horowitz, like Solway, also identified George Balanchine, one of Diaghilev’s most
successful choreographers and the founder of the New York City Ballet, as the creator of
American ballet. Horowitz referred to him as the “great dialectician of European-
American dance;” Solway referred to him as the “master architect of American ballet.”
124

Russian dancers played a crucial part in popularizing ballet in the United States,
but they did not create American ballet. Instead, they revived the elite tradition of ballet
associated with formal theaters and the Romantic ballet. Even more importantly, Russian

123
Joseph Horowitz, Artists in Exile: How Refugees From the Twentieth-Century War and Revolution
Transformed the American Performing Arts (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 13.

124
Horowitz, Artists in Exile, 14; Diane Solway, “One Giant Leap for the Man of the Moment,” New York
Times, September 30, 2007.
73

dancers resuscitated the popular tradition of ballet. As in the 1840s when burlesque
dancers parodied Fanny Elssler and in the 1890s when vaudeville producers turned to
ballet to elevate the status of their productions and to legitimate the theater, highbrow
ballet triggered the appearance of ballet dancers in Broadway shows, musical revues, and
Hollywood films. These productions quickly outnumbered the performances of the
dancers they imitated. They familiarized audiences with the aesthetics of ballet, and they
created a tradition of innovation in the United States.
In her unpublished dissertation, historian Lauren Brown identified “the absence of
a distinct tradition of ballet in the United States” before the arrival of the Russian artists.
In addition to glossing over the long history of ballet in the nineteenth century in popular
entertainments, she treated the United States as a country barren of culture, a nation
whose culture was nurtured by the more capable artists of foreign countries.
125

Redefining “ballet” and “art” to include the contributions of the many artists working in
popular entertainments in the twentieth century and to include the ballet styles created for
these entertainments demonstrates the richness and authenticity of American culture.
Ballet dancer and choreographer Albertina Rasch wrote in the 1920s, “The
European ballet is a twin-sister of the opera; ours can only be a twin-sister of the popular
stage.” Rasch claimed that musical comedy, motion pictures, and vaudeville theater, what
she termed “light entertainment,” represented “something typically American in our

125
Lauren Brown, “"Cultural Czars": American Nationalism, Dance, and Cold War Arts Funding, 1945-
1989,” (Unpublished PhD diss., Harvard University, 2008).

74

atmosphere that makes us different from the children of the old-world.”
126
While Rasch
may have underestimated the prevalence of ballet in European popular entertainments,
she recognized that ballet in the United States possessed a long history in American
popular culture.
127
This history was as important to the popularization of ballet in the
postwar period as the contributions of the Russian artists. The ballet forms created for the
enjoyment of Broadway shows, musical revues and film reappeared in the 1940s and
helped to expand the audience for ballet in this country.
Reexamining the contributions of Russian artists to twentieth-century ballet
highlights the existence of a non-elite tradition of ballet in the United States. Tracing the
relationship of these artists to American popular culture also, however, demonstrates how
thoroughly intertwined the elite and non-elite traditions of ballet became in the years
preceding World War II. A broad view of the evolving nature of ballet not only
recognizes the contributions of a wide array of artists and performance styles to the
creation of American ballet, but also recognizes the role these artists and styles played in
the elevation of ballet in the post-World War II period.

From Russia to Paris: Ballet and the Avant-garde
Confined to musical halls, vaudeville theaters, and burlesque shows, ballet
dancing almost entirely disappeared from formal cultural venues in Europe and the
United States at the turn of the century. Only in Russia, where the Imperial Theater

126
Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia,
With a History and Filmographies, 1893-1995 (Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 1997), 40.

127
On ballet in popular culture in Europe see, Alexandra Carter, Dance and Dancers in the Victorian and
Edwardian Music Hall Ballet (Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005).
75

System supported ballet schools and companies and maintained lavish theaters, did ballet
thrive. Drawing dancers, choreographers, and instructors from across Europe, Russian
ballets featured complete orchestras, newly composed music, and ornate costumes. Ballet
was one of the highest and most respected forms of culture in that country. In 1909 a
Russian entrepreneur, Serge Diaghilev, brought many of these practices to the West and
revived the elite tradition of ballet.
Four years earlier, political unrest erupted in Russia when a group of striking
workers demanded the formation of workers’ organizations and converged on the Winter
Palace in St. Petersburg in 1905. A clash with local police ended in the loss of over one
hundred lives. When news of this “Bloody Sunday” reached the artists of the Imperial
Ballet, many dancers went on strike, including several who would eventually become
well known to European and American audiences, Michel Fokine, Anna Pavlova, and
Tamara Karsavina.

Expressing their solidarity with fellow Russian workers, the dancers
demanded more artistic authority at the theater, higher salaries, and five day work
weeks.
128
Partly in response to this turmoil, Diaghilev organized a series of exhibitions of
Russian art (1906), music (1907), and opera (1908) in Paris, then the center of the
European art world. By far his most successful exhibition, the Ballet Russes opened at the
Théâtre du Châtelet in 1909. In addition to performing the ballet blanc, Les Syphides,
which was styled in the Romantic tradition and set to the music of Frederic Chopin, the

128
For additional information on the dancers’ strike in Russia see, Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev’s Ballets
Russes (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 4.

76

company also performed a series of new ballets. Like the plays depicting the biblical
story of Salome that became popular at the turn of the century following Oscar Wilde's
revival in 1896, these ballets exploited the fascination with the exotic. They featured
titillating and seductive dances, scantily clad women, and sensual themes.
129
They were
set in foreign lands and featured brilliant costumes, scenery painted by some of the best
known artists of the period, and innovative new music.
Twenty-first-century audiences often treat “Russian ballet” and “classical ballet”
as synonymous. Dance schools choose names like the “Academy of Russian Classical
Ballet;” websites use titles such as “Russian Classical Ballet;” and students read books
titled Basic Principles of Classical Ballet: Russian Ballet Technique.
130
However, when
Diaghilev introduced the Ballet Russes to Paris in 1909, he did not present ballets
reminiscent of what is considered “classical” today. His dancers did not perform the
nineteenth-century Romantic ballets considered “classic” by today’s standards. They did
not perform Giselle (1841), Le Corsaire (1856), or Coppélia (1870). Nor did they
perform the ballets created by Marius Petipa in the Romantic tradition at the turn of the
century in Russia, such as The Sleeping Beauty (1890), Swan Lake (1895), or Raymonda
(1898). Rather the Ballets Russes performed innovative new ballets that, while adhering
to many of the principles of the French dance d’ecole, also included new movements and
forms of presentation.

129
See Chapter 1, p. 61, footnote 103.

130
Agrippina Vaganova, Basic Principles of Classical Ballet: Russian Ballet Technique (New York: Dover
Publications, 1969). “Academy of Russian Classical Ballet,” http://www.russianclassicalballet.com;
“Russian Classical Ballet,” http://www.aha.ru/~vladmo/ (accessed June 1, 2010).
77

Cléopâtre (1909) featured the striking Jewish heiress, Ida Rubinstein, as the
ravishing Queen of the Nile. Six feet tall, and with long black hair and a well-defined
nose, Rubinstein’s Semitic features imitated the fashion for the exotic at the turn of the
century. Audiences also gazed in awe at the brightly colored and ornate backdrops of the
harem scene in Scheherazade (1910), and relished the music of Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov, which crescendoed when a vengeful Sheik murdered a slave who charmed one
of his concubines into sex. Shimmering in gold pants, the premier and much celebrated
male dancer Vaslav Nijinsky danced the latter role. (See Figure 16)

Figure 16 Set design for the ballet Scheherazade with music by Rimsky-
Korsakov (1844-1908) and sets by Leon Bakst, 1916. Note: Though not
apparent in this black and white print, the set featured brilliant colors, green
draperies and red carpets.
78

In a dramatic departure from the Romantic ballets of the nineteenth century, the
Ballet Russes’s startling production of Le Spectre de la Rose, first performed in 1911 and
based on a poem by Théophile Gautier, made a man rather than a woman the central
character of the ballet. The ballet portrayed a young woman who fell asleep and dreamed
she was dancing with the rose she clutched in her hand. Performed by Vaslav Nijinsky,
the role of the rose was both erotic and at the same time highly androgynous. The ballet –
as did many future Ballet Russes productions – redefined the role of the male dancer in
the twentieth century.
131

Even the ballet Les Sylphides (1909), performed in the style of the Romantic
ballet, departed from the Romantic tradition. Easily confused with its predecessor, La
Sylphide (1832), a narrative ballet performed at the French opera, Les Sylphides did not
tell a story. Les Sylphides lacked a plot and focused on the beauty of movement rather
than the expression of a storyline.
As in the Romantic ballets of the previous century, when audiences watched the
spirits of deceased women dance in Giselle and saw enchanted dolls come alive in
Coppélia, Diaghilev’s ballets represented a form of escapist entertainment. His ballets
were fantasies that introduced audiences to foreign cultures and people. The visual and
aural experience of seeing the ballets performed, of visiting Egypt and harems and of
hearing the complex and cacophonous scores of new composers, evoked their interest in
the exotic. Living in an era marked by colonial expansion and discovery, as nations
fought to sustain territorial acquisitions and as Europeans “discovered” the peoples of

131
On the Ballet Russes and its redefinition of male dancers see, Lynn Garafola, Legacies of Twentieth-
Century Dance (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 2005), 179).
79

foreign lands, these audiences reveled in the glamour and originality of the Ballets
Russes.
Diaghilev engaged the talents of well-known European and Russian artists who
circulated among the wealthiest and most influential patrons and who worked with the
most respected art institutions of the era. During its first two seasons in Paris, Anton
Arensky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and Nikolai Tcherepnin worked with the Ballets
Russes. A professor of music at the Moscow conservatory, Arensky became most well
known for his compositions for chamber music, pieces designed for smaller instrumental
gatherings and traditionally commissioned by wealthy patrons for performances in
intimate settings. Having taught at the Moscow and Saint Petersburg Conservatories,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov experimented with nationalist and oriental styles of classical
music. Incorporating Russian folk songs and exotic harmonies, melodies, and rhythms,
his work influenced later musicians such as Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and
Ottorino Respighi. The composer of one of Diaghilev’s most famous ballets Le Pavillon
d’Armide and conductor during the company’s first season, Tcherepin was one of the
leading conductors of the Maryinsky Theater. In later years Diaghilev also involved
Debussy, Richard Strauss, and Igor Stravinsky in the Ballet Russes.
132

Artists Leon Bakst, Alexander Benois, and Nicholas Roerich designed backdrops
and costumes for the ballets. Bakst began his career as a portraitist and also taught the
children of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovich of Russia. Benois, the son of prominent
members of the Russian nineteenth-century intelligentsia, attracted Diaghilev’s attention

132
For additional information on Russian composers see, James Stuart Campbell, ed., transl., Russians on
Russian Music, 1880-1917: An Anthology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
80

following an exhibition of watercolors. Finally, the creator of thousands of painting,
Roerich served as an assistant to the Director of the Emperor’s Art Encouragement
Society Museum and as assistant editor to the art magazine “Isskustvo i
khudozhestvennaya promishlennost” (“The Art and Art Industry”). In later years Pablo
Picasso and Henri Matisse, two of the most famous painters of the twentieth century, also
worked with Diaghilev.
By involving the most respected artists and musicians of the era in his
productions, Diaghilev elevated ballet from display within music halls to display
alongside some of the most respected cultural mediums of the era. Once identified with
comedy and acrobatics, ballet now represented art. Diaghilev associated ballet with
painting and symphonic music, forms of culture long respected in Europe and Russia. He
legitimated ballet for elite audiences. By situating it within the evolving artistic
movement known as modernism, Diaghilev also associated ballet with the avant-garde,
the most innovative and experimental arts of the era. These artists and musicians were the
most elite and one might say trendy or fashionable practitioners of the art world.
Rapid industrialization of Europe and the social changes it produced inspired
many artists to reject what they perceived to be outdated and “traditional” modes of
practice and creation. Artists affiliated with modernism emphasized progress and change
and contributed to several emerging schools of practice, including post-impressionism,
futurism, symbolism, fauvism, and cubism. In a departure from the realism of the
nineteenth century, artists and musicians experimented with abstract shapes and forms,
altered the tonality of music, and produced backdrops, costumes, and musical scores that
81

celebrated discord over harmony. (See Figure 17) Even the choreography of the ballets
reflected a shift from earlier dance traditions. Ballets created by Michel Fokine, and later
Vaslav and Bronislava Nijinsky, Leonid Massine and George Balanchine, included new
and often abstract movements and gestures.
133
(See Figure 18)

133
For additional information on Diaghilev and his artistic collaborations see, Nancy Reynolds and
Malcolm McCormick, No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2003), 34-36.

Figure 18 (Above) Original costume of Kaschei,
the monster who captures Prince Ivan, from The
Firebird. Note: The costume featured vibrant and
clashing colors , pink and gold against a black base,
and a busy pattern. Costume modeled by a student
of the Royal Ballet for Sotheby’s 1967 Auction.
See, Diaghilev Ballet Material: Costumes, Costume
Designs and Portraits (London: Sotheby’s 1967
Auction Catalogue), 1967. Available at the Getty
Research Institute, Los Angeles.

Figure 17 (Above) Vaslav Nijinsky as the
Faun in, The Afternoon of the Faun (1913).
The image is widely circulated on the
internet.

82

Diaghilev’s ballets were not “traditional” or “classical.” They were experimental,
radical, and couture. His ballets represented not simply high art but avant-garde high art.
They departed from not only the ballets performed in nineteenth-century theatrical
productions and music halls, but also from the ballets of the Romantic era. Though
received ambivalently by American audiences, they introduced ballet in its most elite
form to the United States and laid the foundation for the abstract ballets of the post-World
War II period. The American response to the Ballet Russes – particularly in contrast to
Russian dancer Anna Pavlova -- also reveals information about American attitudes
towards culture in the 1910s and 1920s.

Russian Ballet Comes to the United States
Russian ballet came to the United States in two forms. In 1911 two former dancers
of the Ballet Russes, Theodore Kosloff and Gertrude Hoffman, presented Les Sylphides,
Cléopâtre and Scheherazade at the Winter Garden Theater in New York. They hoped to
exploit the success of the Ballets Russes in Europe and the fad for social dancing
popularized by Vernon and Irene Castle between 1911 and 1914 in the United States. The
Castle’s elegant waltzes and foxtrots inspired many Americans to visit supper-clubs and
dance halls and to learn the Turkey Trot, Bunny Hug, Monkey Glide, and Grizzly Bear.
134

To Kosloff and Hoffman’s dismay, unlike the European performances of the Ballets
Russes, their American performances generated mixed reviews. On the one hand, critics
praised the beauty and daintiness of Les Sylphides, whose movements invoked the

134
McCormick and Reynolds, No Fixed Points, 680-681.
83

Romantic ballet of the nineteenth century. On the other hand, they condemned the sexual
overtones of Cléopâtre and Scheherazade.
In 1916, when the entire Diaghilev company came to the United States, the
Metropolitan Opera even banned the performance of Narcisse by the celebrated premier
danseur Vaslav Nijinsky, citing the ballet’s allusions to homosexuality as perverse. In The
Afternoon of the Faun Nijinsky depicted a Faun who was amorously inclined towards
seven nymphs. The ballet culminated in what appeared to be an autoerotic act, a
masturbatory moment on the part of Nijinsky. New York Police stopped any further
performances, claiming that the ballet violated public statutes forbidding public displays
of sexuality. The ballet dancers were taken to jail, and were released only after diplomats
and impresarios intervened.
135

Many of the cutting-edge and sensational qualities that made the Ballet Russes so
successful in Europe had the opposite effect in the United States. Exoticism reminded
Americans of the colonial project that collapsed into a World War in 1914. Mounting
racial tensions during the years of the “Great Migration” (1910-1920), when millions of
black Americans moved from the South to North, also rendered aspects of some ballets,
such as the miscegenation in Scheherazade between a dark skinned slave and a white
woman, controversial.
136

135
Olga Maynard, The American Ballet (Philadelphia: Macrae Smith Company, 1959), 32. See also,
Suzane Carbonneau Levy, “The Russians Are Coming: Russian Dancers in the United States, 1910-1933”
(Unpublished PhD Diss., New York University, 1990), 57.

136
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 58.

84

The escalation of political tensions in Europe in the first decades of twentieth
century also triggered increasingly isolationist sentiments in the United States. Even as
French fashion designers Coco Chanel and Paul Poiret continued to influence high
fashion in the United States, many Americans became increasingly insular and opposed
to intervention in the conflict that raged in Europe between 1914 and 1918. They took
greater interest in cultural forms such as ragtime and jazz music than in avant-garde
European art.
Finally, Russian dancers were subject to the same discrimination that led to the
escalation of immigration restrictions in the 1910s and 1920s, particularly against Eastern
Europeans and people from the “orient.” The Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882 and 1923,
the emergency quota law passed by Congress in 1921 to limit immigration from Europe,
and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial of 1921 reflected an increasing level of xenophobia. The
first Red Scare between 1917 and 1920 also fueled anti-Russian sentiments in the United
States.
Regardless of these conditions, Anna Pavlova, a former star of the Ballet Russes,
left the company and embarked on a successful solo career in both the United States and
Europe. She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera on March 1, 1910 and returned to the
United States several times over the course of the next sixteen years. Unlike her Russian
peers, however, Pavlova, did not perform in the new modern style. She danced Romantic
ballets. Indeed, for her first performance in the United States she danced Coppélia, which
was first produced in 1870 in Paris and is often cited as the last Romantic ballet. The
story of an inventor, Dr. Coppélius, who invented a life sized doll that a local man fell in
85

love with and for whom he discarded his true love, Swanhilde, the ballet perpetuated the
narrative tradition of ballet common in the nineteenth century. It did not subscribe to the
new style of plotless, abstract ballet being performed in Europe that year by Diaghilev’s
company in the ballet Les Sylphides. Nor did it feature the exotic themes and sensual
performances in the ballets of Scheherazade and Cléopatre.
Pavlova may have been a foreigner, but she also seemed elegant, dream-like, and
fantastical, the archetype of the Romantic ballerina. She invoked grace, sophistication,
and beauty, and toured the United States in years when these qualities were in shortage.
As the United States emerged from violent conflicts in Cuba (1898) and the Philippines
(1902), thousands of Eastern European immigrants swarmed to America, assumed jobs in
grim factories and lived in poverty stricken slums, a development captured by the
photographer Jacob Riis in 1914, the same year that Pavlova returned to the United
States. Henry Ford’s newly affordable automobile, the model T, first produced in 1908,
revealed the increasingly mechanized nature of American society. And in 1914 the
assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria triggered the beginning of World
War I, where men died in filthy trenches, killed by horrific modern weapons.
Dancing in the long white tutu of nineteenth-century Romantic ballets, Pavlova,
like the ballerinas who came before her, floated across the stage. She was an image of
chastity and purity, an angel who hovered above the grim, blood soaked reality of life in
the 1910s. In her most famous role, The Dying Swan, Pavlova depicted a bird in the
throes of death. (See Figure 19) First performed in 1905 in St. Petersburg, one of the few
places where Romantic ballet continued to be performed and advanced, the ballet
86

featured the music of Camille Saint-Saëns and
the choreography of Michel Fokine. (Fokine’s
efforts to reform ballet were rejected in Russia
and only became prominent in the later works
he created for Diaghilev's company). The
Dying Swan featured a single performer, a
woman, dancing almost entirely on her toes in
a white tutu and fluttering her arms to give the
appearance of the wings of a bird. The ballet
lamented the death of beauty, portrayed agony,
and depicted a bird that ultimately succumbed
to the real world.
Pavlova presented an image of
femininity that contradicted the shrewish image of the suffragette. Images of Pavlova
dressed in pointe shoes and tutu and posed next to her partner Mikhail Mordkin, known
for his robust athleticism, assuaged societal anxieties pertaining to shifting gender
roles.
137
Pavlova decorated American stages at the same time that political cartoonists
vilified women who assumed roles typically held by men.
To preserve her gentility and grace, Pavlova also continued to present ballet as
“art.” Her career in the United States began in opera houses, and a contract with the
Metropolitan Opera restricted her performances to venues on a prestigious music

137
Richard Aldrich, “Season of Metropolitan Opera Comes to a Close,” New York Times, April 3, 1910.

Figure 19 Anna Pavlova, dressed as the Swan
in The Dying Swan, Medinah Temple,
Chicago, 1921, Anna Pavlova programs, 1915-
1923, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.
87

circuit.
138
Performing with an orchestra and a corps de ballet, Pavlova never lost the aura
of respectability tied to art -- even when giving one night stands across the country.
139

Press agents marketed her performances as “haute art,” “ocular opera” and “terpsichore
opera.”
140
Unlike the shocking and sensational ballets of the Ballets Russes, her art
celebrated purity and beauty.
What is often cursorily referred to as “classical” ballet in the twentieth century
actually included two very different modes of presentation in the 1910s and 1920s, and
both these forms of ballet influenced the post-war revival. The avant-garde qualities of
the Ballets Russes would reappear in the abstract ballets of George Balanchine in the
1950s, while the grace and Romanticism of Pavlova would become the defining
characteristics of the post-war ballerina. Pavlova’s and the Ballets Russes’ greatest
contribution to ballet in the United States was, however, their resurrection of the popular
tradition.

The Revival of the Popular Tradition, 1909-1929
Haute couture fashion trickles down from the salons of the wealthy to the stores
of the middle-class. Less affluent consumers wear these styles to demonstrate their
upward mobility and social consciousness, imitating the fashions of the elite and
modifying them for practical wear and to meet their own needs. In much the same way,

138
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 9.

139
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 2.

140
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 16.

88

the cultural practices of the elite influence popular tastes. Enterprising producers
appropriate aspects of high culture and make it available to curious audiences. In the late
twentieth century, three of the most well known opera singers in the world, Jose Carreras,
Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti toured the United States as the “Three Tenors.”
For the majority of the twentieth century middle and working-class audiences had not
attended opera. However, in the 1990s -- motivated by the collapse of communism, the
increasingly international nature of culture at the turn of the century, escalating hostility
towards big business, and increasing disparity between rich and poor -- these audiences
took a renewed interest in what was then perceived as the most exclusive form of high
culture – opera. Middle and working-class audiences challenged the supremacy of the
upper-classes by claiming access to elite culture forms. In the 1910s a similar process
unfolded as enterprising directors brought Russian dancers to the vaudeville circuit.
Within a month of Pavlova’s opening in the United States, the “Imperial Russian
Dancers” appeared at the Portola Cafe in San Francisco.
141
The impresario Charles
Frohman brought the dancers to the United States from London. Within two weeks of
their arrival, he engaged them to perform in the cast of the Broadway musical The Echo
(1910), which included brief acts and a pas de deux.
142
From there the dancers moved to
the vaudeville circuit, playing in over thirty cities, along with magicians, actors, and
singers.
143
Also in 1910, Percy C. Williams, the manager of Greater New York

141
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 26.

142
Ibid.

143
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 32.

89

Vaudeville, a circuit of high class houses in Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs,
became the first American manager to sign Russian dancers expressly for the purposes of
performing in vaudeville. Williams recruited one of Diaghilev’s original dancers,
Theodore Kosloff, and a group of his affiliated dancers, to perform a program that
included sections from Giselle, Les Sylphides, and Bacchanale.
144
That same year, Lydia
Lopokova, another Ballets Russes dancer, toured the vaudeville circuit.
145
Ballet had
become so common to popular theater that by 1914 it had become de riguer for the
influential producer and theater owner J.J. Schubert to have at least one Russian dancer in
his Winter Garden shows.
146

Ballet became even more present in these venues in the aftermath of World War I,
as public tastes in the United States shifted away from art and refinement towards an
appreciation of life and health. Confronted by mutilated American soldiers and the loss
of a generation of European men, Americans responded by celebrating fitness, health, and
especially entertainment. They enjoyed baseball, boxing, and the frenzied and euphoric
tunes of ragtime and Oscar Hammerstein II. They also took a greater interest in the
production of American culture. In Harlem, artists, writers, and musicians such as Duke
Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes experimented with American themes,
many drawn from their experiences within the black community. American women shed
the tight-laced corsets of the nineteenth century and adopted the persona of the “flapper,”

144
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 36.

145
Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, 190.

146
Levy, “The Russians Are Coming,” 98.

90

whose short bobbed hair, loose, unconstricting dresses, bound breasts, and boyish image
celebrated youth. By attending the “speakeasies” of the Prohibition era the flapper
rejected the mores of older generations. She drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, wore
lipstick, flirted with men, and took more sexual liberties.
As avant-garde art, the Ballet Russes recalled European culture and elitism. Its
reliance on choreography also curtailed the movement of the dancing body, which in
dance forms like tap and ballroom at least appeared to possess greater freedom. The
Romantic styled ballets performed by Pavlova suddenly seemed outdated, a celebration
of an antiquated mode of dancing. Pavlova celebrated the qualities of control, discipline,
femininity and elegance, which contradicted the freewheeling, androgynous, and defiant
nature of the flapper.
Meanwhile the number of Russian dancers seeking employment in the United
States increased. The dance boom of the 1910s produced an abundance of dancers,
troupes, attractions, venues, and styles, creating a highly competitive environment. The
Russian Revolution (1917) also triggered a diaspora of Russian dancers, many of whom
settled in the United States when World War I made travel in Europe difficult and
performance opportunities scarce.
147
Fortunately, popular theater and films began to feature ballet dancers. Tied to art
by Pavlova and the Ballet Russes, ballet displayed the bodies of women dancers, but did
so without offending audiences or rendering the productions too risqué. Ballet added
glamour and sex without being viewed as obscene. It also legitimated performances as

147
Levy, The Russians Are Coming, 333.

91

Figure 20 Marilyn Mille in Florenz
Ziegfeld’s Sally, Billy Rose Theatre
Collection, New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts.
appropriate entertainment for general audiences. Ballet especially added class to the
fledgling entertainment of film, which had not yet proven its respectability and merit.
Broadway musicals also drew many artists to New York. Indeed, between the
1919-1920 and 1929-1930 theater seasons more musicals opened than ever before,
climaxing in 1927-1928 with the production of fifty-one musicals.
148
Musical revues
emphasized spectacle, female sexuality, and comedy
and featured elaborate costumes and sets, making ballet
dancers ideal performers. These revues also employed
the variety format common to nineteenth-century
productions, making the integration of ballet relatively
seamless.
149
The pioneering director Florenz Ziegfeld
produced some of the most popular revues of the early
twentieth century and frequently employed ballet
dancers to perform ballet sequences in them.
150
Marilyn Miller, one of his most popular
performers, donned point shoes and a tutu for her role in Sally (1920), which depicted the
story of a chorus girl who married a millionaire.
151
(See Figure 20)

Ziegfeld also counted

148
John Bush Jones, Our Musicals, A Social History of the American Musical Theatre (Boston: Brandeis,
2004), 55.

149
Peter H. Riddle, The American Musical: History and Development (Niagara Falls: Mosaic Press, 2003),
22.

150
On the Ziegfeld Girl see, Linda Mizejewski, Ziegfeld Girl: Image and Icon in Culture and Cinema
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999).

151
Mizejewski, Ziegfeld Girl, 80.

92

among his dancers several students who had trained at the Metropolitan Ballet School, an
affiliate of the Metropolitan Opera Association. In 1921, after auditioning two thousand
women for twenty-four roles, he hired Queenie Smith, a veteran of both the Metropolitan
Opera and later the popular stage.
152

Smith’s career underscores ballet’s migration from formal venues to popular
theaters. She

began her ballet training around the age of ten at the Metropolitan Ballet
School, studying with the Italian ballerina Malvina Cavallazza Mapleson. She danced
roles in the ballets Coq d’Or and Aida at the Opera, but eventually moved to the
vaudeville theater, first appearing in Roly-Boly Eyes (1919) and later in Orange Blossoms
(1922). In addition to assuming speaking roles and sometimes performing comedy skits,
she often danced on her toes. Like many dancers of the era, Smith used her ballet training
to secure a successful career in the popular theater, where the demand for dancers was
much greater and where she could earn more money.

The expansion of the film industry in the 1910s and 1920s, when Hollywood put
out more films than in any other era in it’s history, created opportunities for dancers to
perform in both movie houses and within films. In 1914, Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel
began to augment silent films with live “prologs.” He hoped to bridge the divide between
live and recorded performance and to establish movie houses as family friendly venues.
“Classical” arts such as opera, orchestral works, and ballet helped accomplish this goal.
As a result, ballet dancers began to appear in the intermissions between Charlie Chaplin

152
"Stage Career of Queenie Smith: From Ballet Dancer in Opera to Fame as a Comedienne in Musical
Comedy," Boston Daily Globe, December 16,1923; Burns Mantle, “Mr. Ziegfeld's 'Follies' Don Their
Summer Garb: Chorus Beauties Hail from Near and Far," Chicago Daily Tribune, July 1, 1923.

93

comedies and westerns. They performed for audiences interested in laughter and gun-
fights, audiences who enjoyed dancing as a light-hearted entertainment and not as art. By
the 1920s, Russian dancers dominated the new performance genre. Seen by millions of
Americans, movie prologs brought ballet to more people than vaudeville, revues, or film
combined.
153
Hollywood films eventually employed so many dancers that Los Angeles was
sometimes referred to as the “dance capital” of America.
154
Directors such as Mack
Sennett and Maurice Tourneur demanded ensembles of women trained in ballet.

Tourneur, for example, required twenty women to perform a “complete little Russian
ballet” for the film The Glory of Love.
155
Sennett, though known primarily for his
slapstick comedies, demanded women trained in ballet for Salome vs. Shenandoah
(1919). Ballet dancers eventually became so common to Hollywood films that many
young dancers “doubled” for well known actresses who lacked ballet training but were
cast to play the roles of dancers.
Directors did not simply dress women as dancers and call them ballerinas. They
made an effort “to serve up only real dancing when a Terpsichorean condiment is added

153
Levy, The Russians Are Coming, 342-343.

154
Naima Prevots, Dancing in the Sun: Hollywood Choreographers, 1915-1937 (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1987).

155
Frederick Moore, "On With Dance in Filmland: Picture Producers Keep the Fair Trippers Busy; Dozens
of Them are Used for Atmosphere; Others Double in Roles of Terpsichore,” Los Angeles Times, March 7,
1920.
The Glory of Love does not appear to have ever been produced. I can find no record of it in movie
databases. It, nevertheless, is evidence of the demands Hollywood made of the dance industry.

94

to the cinema salad.”
156
This insistence on “technically correct” dancing suggests that
audiences enjoyed the physical performance of dancing as much as the visual spectacle.
They did not simply enjoy looking at beautiful women; they also enjoyed watching them
dance. The healthy, gracefully mobile, and athletic body of women dancers distanced
audiences from the recent destruction and dismemberment of bodies in warfare. The
insistence on “technically correct” dancing also reveals that audiences possessed
sufficient familiarity to distinguish between ballet and surface imitations of it. They could
distinguish between a trained ballet dancer and an imposter. Like the designers who
bring runway fashions to mainstream consumers in the twentieth century, these directors
also adjusted ballet to the tastes of their audience.

Popular Forms of Ballet in the 1920s
Ballet dancing has always incorporated new dance styles. The variety act nature
of popular productions in the 1920s appears, however, to have especially encouraged that
process. Unlike choreographers or opera directors who cater to audiences interested in
ballet as a dance genre, directors of musical revues had more freedom to depart from
“tradition.” In the 1920s they exploited ballet as a means of adding class to productions,
but at the same time realized that high art risked alienating an audience less interested in
entertainment as education and more interested in entertainment as leisure. The ballets
that appeared in these productions, therefore, often only loosely resembled the canon of
French and Russian movements.

156
Ibid.

95

George White’s Scandals of 1919 featured a dancer referred to merely as “La
Sylph,” a pseudonym which referenced the Romantic ballet La Sylphide. Although “La
Sylph” wore a tutu and danced on pointe, she also performed acrobatic tricks on toe, high
kicks, and contortionist movements.
157
Ned Wayburn, one of the most prominent
directors of dance on the stage in the early twentieth century, advocated “fancy dancing,”
which he defined as “a cross between the pretensions of ballet and the rhythmic vigor of
tap.”
158
Tap dancing, which featured African rhythms and evolved from slave dances, first
appeared in black minstrel shows in the nineteenth century. It represented a uniquely
American style of theatrical dance that evolved from the experiences of an oppressed
population. By incorporating tap, Wayburn’s “fancy dancing” dispensed with the
formality of elite, foreign ballet.
Wayburn’s dancers trained in musical comedy, tap, step, acrobatic, and
exhibition/ballroom dancing, as well as what he called “modern Americanized ballet.”
His ballets relied on a limited vocabulary of movements and only a dozen categories of
steps, which the dancers performed quickly and sharply, a style known in ballet
terminology as pizzicato. The basic steps of the ballets included: bourées (tiny steps
performed on pointe with the legs drawn up tightly together), piques (turns performed on
one leg), turns, pivoting échappés (low kicks), and fouettés (turns in which one leg whips

157
Charles Darnton, “Scandals of 1919: A Jazz Orgy,” New York Evening World, June 3, 1919; John
Cobin, “Drama,” New York Times, June 3, 1919.

158
Richard Kislan, Hoofing it on Broadway: A History of Show Dancing (New York: Prentice Hall, 1987),
46-48.

96

the body around – a trick performed at the conclusion of many turn of the century
Russian ballets).
Wayburn’s dancers studied several variations of ballet, such as “toe tapping,” a
form of “trick ballet” performed in pointe shoes that had tapping plates attached to the
heels. In the ballet “The Capital Steps” from The Passing Show of 1913 a dancer moved
down the steps in a series of piqué turns and performed a pendulum kick, in which the
dancer’s working leg moved back and front in a series of hops.
159
“Eccentric ballet”
featured exaggerated stretches and displaced the dancers’ hips and pelvis. Finally, in
“acrobatic ballet” a dancer might perform normal ballet footwork, but would do so in an
exaggerated backbend.
160
(See Figure 21)
These performances reveal that while
ballet added respectability to performances, it also
added spectacle and sensation. By raising dancers
onto hard boxed toes, pointe shoes both extended
the length of women’s legs and allowed them to
perform tricks. On toe women could complete
more turns and spin more quickly. Their jumps

159
Naomi Cohen-Stratyner, New Wayburn and the Dance Routine: From Vaudeville to the Ziegfeld Follies
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 3.

160
Cohen-Straytner, Ned Wayburn, 17.

Figure 21 (Left) Virginia Bacon in an acrobatic ballet pose.
Ned Wayburn, The Art of Stage Dancing (New York: Ned
Wayburn Studios of Stage Dancing, Inc., 1925), 137.
97

also appeared more daring. The acrobatics of the performance also gave audiences a
better view of the women’s bodies, which were exposed by skirts that spun out and up
during tricks.
In addition to appropriating new movement styles, ballet in the 1920s also began
to influence other dance forms. As a result, even when not viewing dances easily
recognizable as ballet, neither by the standards of today or their time period, audiences
nevertheless gained increasing familiarity with the aesthetics of ballet. Ballet, via its
infiltration of other dance genres, gained visibility throughout the period.
Performers trained in ballet frequently worked in other dance genres influencing
the style and presentation of those performances. In “precision dancing,” for example,
long lines of women executed steps in unison.
161
Immortalized today by the Radio Center
Music Hall’s Rockettes, precision dancing first became popular in the 1910s and
continued to appear in film and theater until the 1940s. Albertina Rasch, a ballet dancer
who trained at the Imperial Opera Company in Vienna and danced with both the New
York and Chicago Opera Ballets, trained young women in “fancy dancing,” which she
described as a “salable commodity” form of ballet.
162
Rasch recognized that the ballets
presented within musical revues and films required modification. She taught young
women to, for example, kick their legs in movements highly reminiscent of a grand
battement, a step in which the dancer raises one straight leg and quickly brings it back
down; Rasch’s dancers brushed their legs high in sweeping kicks. Rasch eventually

161
Kislan, Hoofing It, 46.
162
Ibid.

98

choreographed dances for the Broadway productions of Rio Rita (1927), The Band
Wagon (1931), and Lady in the Dark (1941), among others.
Precision dancing may have utilized ballet dancers because their training provided
them the musicality, flexibility, and control to perform the sequences. A reflection of the
exuberance, headiness, and grandiosity of the post World War I era, precision dancing
certainly required large casts of attractive women. The frequency with which ballet
dancers appeared in these dances, however, may also reflect a dearth of other
employment options; ballet dancing had so waned in importance at the opera and in
formal theaters that dancers turned to other forms of dance out of necessity.
Indeed, ballet so thoroughly shifted from the opera to the popular theater in the
1920s that when Leonid Massine, one of Diaghilev’s most successful and renowned male
dancers arrived in New York City in 1928, it was the only place he could find work.
Massine signed a six month provisional contract with S.L. Rothafel, the manager of the
Roxy Theater, a large cinema house. He choreographed the dance interludes between the
films. His duty was to produce dance routines that resembled vaudeville – numbers filled
with high kicking chorus girls in sequined costumes.
163
Massine wrote, “In Europe I had
made something of a reputation, but in America I was just another dancer.”
164
Russian dancers who attempted to tour with independent ballet companies failed.
Mikhail Mordkin danced with the Ballet Russes in 1909 and later as the partner of
Pavlova. Whereas Mordkin successfully toured the United States with his company the

163
Leslie Norton, Leonid Massine and the Twentieth Century Ballet (Jefferson: McFarland and Co., 2004),
111.

164
Norton, Leonid Massine, 108-109.

99

All Star Imperial Russian Ballet during the height of the Ballet Russes in 1911-1912, the
tour of his new company, the Mordkin Ballet, in 1926-1927 collapsed before completion
due to financial restrictions. The following season the tour lasted only two weeks.
165
Ballet in the United States thrived, but it was performed mainly in popular venues.

The Influence of the Great Depression
The advent of sound heightened the prominence of dance in the movies. In 1928
dance commentator Catherine Nevins commented in Dance Magazine:
With the Movietone, recording as it does, with perfect time, the correct music
for the dance, it cannot help but result in a far more artistic and interesting
spectacle. It is now possible that dancing, which has not played a particularly
momentous part in the world of the cinema, will take on a more compelling
and enjoyable appearance.
166

The first full-length “talkie,” The Jazz Singer (1927),
featured May McAvoy in a tutu and pointe shoes
performing a few simple ballet steps in front of a chorus
of similarly costumed women. (See Figure 22) However,
the onset of Great Depression in 1929 triggered a shift in
public tastes for theater and entertainment, leading
Americans to reject elite forms of ballet. Confronted by
a severe financial crisis, many Americans no longer

165
Charles Payne, American Ballet Theater (New York: Knoph, 1978), 124.

166
Catherine Nevins, “What Can Sound Pictures Do For Dancing?” Dance Magazine, November 1928, 16-
17.
Figure 22 May McAvoy posed for
still from The Jazz Singer (1927),
National Film Archive, London.
100

enjoyed the excesses of lavish musical revues by Ziegfeld and others. Frightened
and confused by job losses and the implosion of their economy, Americans for a
time disliked ostentatious displays of wealth, and so other dance forms gradually
replaced ballet in Hollywood and on Broadway.
Movie musicals, a form of escapism which became immensely popular in the
early 30s, especially showcased dancing.
167
In 1933 Fred Astaire made his

Hollywood
debut in Dancing Lady and Flying Down to Rio. In 1932 the fresh faced child prodigy
Shirley Temple debuted in Kid’ s Last Stand, and Bill “Bojangles” Robinson tap danced
through the films Dixiana (1930), King for the Day (1934), and The Little Colonel
(1935). In 1934 Fox attempted to capitalize on the fad for ice dance, producing One in a
Million (1936) starring the Olympic skating champion Sonja Henie, which was followed
by Ice Follies of 1939. Films by directors Arthur Freed and Busby Berkeley enlisted large
casts of women who performed elaborate geometric patterns and trick effects. Berkeley in
particular produced dance sequences that more closely resembled drills than dance. In
Whoopee (1930), Golddiggers of 1933 (1933), and The Folies Bergére (1935), he used
the camera to follow large casts of women through ornate geometric patterns.
168
Films that did portray ballet dancers

often cast them in a more negative light.
Beginning in the 1920s, films began to construe serious artists as pathological, tormented
or tragic figures who frequently faced disaster and untimely death. Dancers suffered for
their art. The films portrayed women dancers as unstable, unlucky -- or both -- and male

167
Jerome Delameter, Dance in the Hollywood Musical (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981), 17.

168
Arthur Knight, “Dancing in Films,” Dance Index 6 no. 8 (1947): 184.

101

dancers as sexually and morally perverse or psychotic. In The Midnight Sun (1926) the
ballerina protagonist reunited with the lover she nearly lost to a firing squad. The
ballerina in Stage Madness (1927) died when she realized that the rival dancer she framed
for the murder of their ballet manager was really her daughter. In A Woman’ s Way (1928)
an escaped criminal threatened a ballerina.
169

Similar films in the 1930s and early 1940s took on an even more impending sense
of doom. Grand Hotel (1932), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), The
Men in Her Life (1941), and, later, The Unfinished Dance (1947) portrayed women in
grave danger who faced tragic endings. Waterloo Bridge, starring Vivian Leigh, described
a young dancer who fell in love with an officer during an air raid in World War I. After a
series of mishaps -- failing to see her beau off to war, losing her job at the ballet, and
falsely learning that her lover was dead -- the ballerina became a prostitute and eventually
committed suicide.
170
Notably, the ballet dancers in these films all look like Romantic ballerinas. The
films associate them with the elite tradition of ballet and show the dancers in formal
venues dancing in the French/Russian style. The dancers also wear white tutus and
perform in toe shoes. (See Figure 23) These representations of ballet reveal that while

audiences enjoyed dancing, they had a different set of expectations for artists associated
with high culture. Audiences watched Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers perform joyous
exuberant dances in movies that had happy endings, but watched ballet dancers meet

169
Adrienne L. McLean, Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 68.

170
McLean, Dying Swans and Madmen, 79-84.
102

tragic ends. They only enjoyed ballet when presented in non-traditional “American”
forms.

Laughing at Ballet, 1929-1940
Ballet might have nearly disappeared from American culture in the 1930s but for
its ability to temper conservative attitudes towards sex. The 1930s saw a backlash against
the relative sexual freedoms of the 1920s. In 1930 the Hollywood film industry enacted
the Hays code to censor the sexual content of films, and began to actively enforce the
code in 1934. Films could only reference sex; they might show men and women sleeping
in separate beds, for example, and dressed characters modestly. As a form of art, ballet
circumvented these taboos and allowed women to show more flesh than otherwise
tolerated and to move in more sexual ways. Integrating ballet sequences into films and
shows, therefore, added a degree of socially accepted sensuality. Choreographers
Figure 23 Greta Garbo in a publicity still for Grand Hotel (1932),
National Film Archive London.
103

confronted a delicate balancing act; they needed to create ballets that sufficiently
referenced the highbrow tradition to appropriate this cultural respectability but that
departed sufficiently from that tradition to avoid alienating audiences wary of high
culture. They accomplished this by blending ballet with other dance styles and by using
parody and humor.
In Broadway Melody (1929) a dance called “The Wedding of the Painted Doll”
featured classic ballet steps such as fouettés and jetés, but also the toe-tapping “tricks”
first cultivated for the vaudeville stage.
171
Larry Ceballos, who created the dances for Al
Jolson’s second film The Singing Fool (1928) and for The Show of Shows (1929),
included buck, rhythm tap, and soft-shoe work, as well as steps and positions from
traditional ballet.
172
In The Goldwyn Follies (1938) Balanchine created two water ballets
for Vera Zorina and a concluding “dance off” between ballet and tap dancers.
173
That
this competition resulted in a draw and found tap, a dance first created by American
slaves, to be the artistic equal of ballet reflects general attitudes towards dance and
culture in the period.
Political turmoil in Europe and the impending war again produced isolationist
sentiments in the United States. Once again Americans rejected European art forms and
valued native dance traditions. The ballet-tap competition in The Goldwyn Follies (1938)
portrayed ballet as no more legitimate than other dance traditions. Critics praised ballets

171
Delameter, Dance in the Hollywood Musical, 23.

172
Delameter, Dance in the Hollywood Musical, 20-21.

173
Billman, Film Choreographers and Dance Directors, 54.

104

created by Balanchine for The Boys From Syracuse (1938), as possessing “a true
Broadway swing.” Even more telling, the choreography in Keep Off the Grass (1940)
was reviewed as “staged prettily and with no pretension.”
174
Pretension was now the
most problematic aspect of ballet.
The inclusion of humor and parody in the ballets of the 1930s represented another
key means of “Americanizing” ballet and dispelling associations with elitism and foreign
culture. Ballet parodies had been common in burlesque, vaudeville, and revue theaters
since the nineteenth century. Indeed, Trixie Friganza parodied Ana Pavlova in Ned
Wayburn’s The Passing Show of 1913, and Ziegfeld’s 1916 Follies included “The
Blushing Ballet,” which satirized Nijinsky, parodied the ballets Scheherazade and Le
Spectre de la Rose, and ended with a burlesque of an excerpt from Les Sylphides.
175

One the one hand, parodies such as these reveal that audiences possessed a high
degree of familiarity with ballet. Audiences wouldn’t understand the humor of parodies
without sufficient knowledge of the original subject. The tones of parodies are not,
however, necessarily positive. While teasing may reveal a fondness for a subject, it may
also reveal ambivalence. Parodies are forms of humor that don't take their subjects
seriously and can be dismissive and critical. Ziegfeld’s satire of Nijinsky in 1916
probably revealed the discomfort many audiences felt with his effeminate brand of

174
Burns Mantle, “The Boys From Syracuse: Scores More Hits Than Errors,” New York Daily Sun,
November 24, 1935. Richard Lockridge, “’Keep Off the Grass:’ With Jimmy Durante, Opens at the
Broadhurst,” New York Sun, May 24, 1940.

175
Stratyner, Ned Wayburn, 35.

105

masculinity. Ziegfeld’s parody of Scheherazade may have reflected the public’s distaste
for European culture and criticism of its fascination with the exotic and colonial.
The parodies of the 1930s reveal a similarly conflicted relationship to ballet and
disclose that audiences were accustomed to seeing ballet performed. Audiences laughed
at Fannie Brice in a tutu and pointe shoes in The Ziegfeld Follies (1934) because they
recognized her affectations and characterization as a travesty of earlier ballerinas. They
laughed at the Russian ballet teacher portrayed in Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s
play You Can’t Take It With You (1936), because they recognized him as a satire of the
Ballets Russes dancers who immigrated to the United States in the 1910s and 1920s.
They laughed at the dying swan in On Your Toes (1936), which featured the
choreography of George Balanchine, because they recognized an imitation of Anna
Pavlova.
176

Walt Disney’s full-length animated film Fantasia (1940), one of the most famous
ballet parodies of the twentieth century, adopted a more positive tone when depicting
Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite.” Flowers, fairies, plants, and marine creatures
came to life to celebrate the beauty of nature. In “Dance of the Flutes,” blossoms drifted
towards the surface of a brook. As they skimmed the water their petals flattened and
curved backward to reveal a troupe of tiny ballerinas in long trailing skirts.
177
Fantasia
reached children as well as adults, giving further evidence of the extent to which ballet
permeated American culture.

176
Richard Lockridge, “The New Play: ‘On Your Toes,’ a Spirited Musical, Opens at the Imperial
Theater,” New York Sun, April 13, 1936.

177
Walt Disney Presents Fantasia. (Walt Disney Productions: USA, 1977).

106

These parodies could also, however, adopt a critical tone. Though jesting, On
Your Toes criticized the formalism of the Russian tradition. A ballet entitled “La
Princesse Zenobia” parodied Scheherazade, which had been recently revived by dancers
affiliated with the Ballet Russes at the time of its debut, while it mocked the strict canon
of movements and exaggerated pantomime associated with the ballets of the imperial
courts.
178
You Can’t Take It With You criticized the affectations of Russian dance
instructors. The animal ballet in Fantasia, with ostriches, hippos, and elephants dancing
“gracefully” in the “Dance of the Hours,” criticized the hyper-feminine nature of female
ballet dancers, the effeminacy of male dancers, and the melodramatic nature of ballet.
The ostrich ballerina, who pirouettes
about stage on huge point- shoe-clad
toes, in a tutu, and with exaggerated
eyelashes, evoked the Romantic
ballerina. Hyacinth the Hippo’s
partner in her pas de deux, a much
smaller alligator, spoofed male
dancers and their secondary role to
women in ballets. Finally, the Hippo’s exaggerated size portrayed her as larger than life.
(See Figure 24) The “Dance of the Hours” revealed a growing wariness towards the older

178
John Mason Brown, “Mr. Wiman Presents ‘On Your Toes’ at the Imperial,” New York Evening Post,
April 13, 1936.

Figure 24 Hyacinth the Hippo in the Alligator Ballet from
Walt Disney’s Fantasia, 1940.

107

forms of ballet and a rejection of the archetypical image of the ballerina of the Romantic
era.
The ballet parodies of the 1930s challenged the status of ballet in the United
States. These parodies reveal that Americans refused to define ballet in strict terms, as
serious, high art. They insisted that ballet could be enjoyed as entertainment for leisure
and recreation. Ballet could legitimately appear alongside and within other dance styles.
It belonged in popular as well as elite venues and could be appreciated by American
audiences regardless of class or education.
At the same time that film and theater began to privilege popular forms of ballet,
the elite professional ballet community consisting of dancers, choreographers, and
patrons in the United States experimented with the production of a highbrow tradition of
“American” ballet. Because these dancers responded to many of the same political and
cultural concerns in the 1930s as film and musical directors, they further entwined the
highbrow tradition of ballet in this country with popular culture. The elite ballet
community adopted similar strategies of representation and made the categories of “art”
and “entertainment” even more indistinct.

The 1930s: Proletarian Art and American Ballet
The political chaos of 1930s Europe, and in particular the rise of Adolf Hitler and
fascism, triggered a mass exodus of many artists, intellectuals, and scientists to the
United States. Along with Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi, Theodore Adorno, Hannah
Arendt, Siegfeld Kracauer, and Piet Mondrian, ballet dancers George Balanchine,
108

Mikhail Mordkin, Vera Zorina, Andres Pavley, Serge Oukrainsky, and Alexandra
Danilova, costume designer Varvara Zhmoudsky (better known today as Barbara
Karinska), and composer Igor Stravinsky all immigrated to the United States.
179

At the same time, the financial hardships of the Great Depression produced a new,
and increasingly radical, art community in the United States. Made up largely of plebian
artists and intellectuals who grew up in working-class communities, these artists were the
second generation of the second major wave of immigration to the United States. They
were men and women schooled in the public education system and inspired by leftist
politics, particularly communism. They organized places, events, and clubs where
working men and women could participate in and experience culture - proletarian literary
clubs, workers’ theaters, Red dance troupes, and composers’ collectives. These artists
were the proletarian avant-garde of the Depression. They embodied the democratic ideals
of the New Deal and produced music, literature, plays, art, dances, and ballets designed
for the consumption of working-class audiences. They created what historian Michael
Denning has referred to as the Cultural Front, an era of proletarian art.
180

179
For additional information on renowned immigrants to the United States in the 1930s see, Anthony
Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise: German Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America, the 1930s to Present
(New York: Viking Press, 1997); Daniel Horowitz, Artists in Exile: How Refugees From Twentieth Century
War and Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts (Amherst: University of Massachusetts,
2004); Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American
Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997).

180
Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century
(New York: Verso, 1996), xv.

109

Together the young plebeians and recently displaced European artists produced an
extraordinary renaissance in the arts and entertainment in the United States.
181
They
drew from a tradition that began in Paris in the interwar years, when the international
avant-garde had been preoccupied with the expression of nationalism. Like the movies
and films of the 1930s that rejected arts reminiscent of Europe, the social elite, and high
culture, these artists and performers pursued the development of distinctly “American”
arts.
182

The social ills of the 1930s, the subject of concern for so much of the Cultural
Front, provided a rich source of inspiration. Langston Hughes wrote a play and poems
about the Scottsboro Nine -- the nine black young men falsely accused of raping two
white women in Alabama in 1931 who received poor counsel and representation in the
ensuing trial. Duke Ellington performed at benefits on their behalf. The composers Aaron
Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Norman Dello Joio, William Schuman, Lukas Foss and
Morton Gould created vibrant musical scores, which reached diverse audiences. In the
world of ballet, Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine nurtured ballet in the United

181
Ibid.

182
Kenneth E. Silver, Esprit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First World War,
1914-1915 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989); Romy Golan, Modernity and Nostalgia: Art and
Politics in France Between the Wars (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995); Sophy Levy, ed.
American Artists in Paris, 1918-1939: A Transatlantic Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004).
Ilyana Karthas has attributed the revival of classical ballet in France between 1909 and 1938 in part to
this movement. The reappropriation of ballet, which had been adopted and advanced by the Russians in the
nineteenth century, embodied renewed efforts to articulate a French cultural and national identity. Ilyana
Karthas, “Nation, Modernism, Gender and the Cultural Politics of Ballet” (PhD diss., Brown University,
2006).

110

States by founding a series of ballet companies. When ballet tours and performances in
elite venues failed, they too experimented with popular forms and themes.
Balanchine immigrated to the United States in 1933 following a brief stint as the
artistic director of Renee Blum’s Ballet Russes company (1931-1932) and the financial
failure of his own company, Les Ballets.
183
Kirstein, a wealthy American art patron,
Harvard graduate, and heir to the Filene’s Department Store fortune, convinced two
wealthy benefactors, Chick Austin, an art collector, architect, and director of the Hartford
Atheneum, and Eddie Warburg, a New England gentleman and friend of Kirstein’s since
college, to support Balanchine in establishing a ballet school in the United States.
184
On
December 29, 1933 he and Balanchine opened a studio in Hartford, Connecticut, forming
a relationship that would last for half a century and produce the School of American
Ballet and the New York City Ballet. From the Hartford School, Balanchine eventually
culled a group of talented young dancers to put together first a student demonstration and
later a company.
The “American Ballet” gave its first performance in Hartford, Connecticut in
1935 to a small audience. Shortly after, it embarked on an ill-fated tour that collapsed
when funds dried up in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The following year the Metropolitan
Opera Association invited the American Ballet to produce their ballets. Unfortunately,

183
Les Ballets performed in Paris and London in 1933 and received positive reviews, but failed to raise
revenues at the box office due to competition with Blum’s Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo. Lincoln
Kirstein, The New York City Ballet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 18-21.

184
When Kirstein first approached Balanchine about founding a native ballet company in the United
States, Balanchine supposedly insisted, “But first a school.” Jennifer Dunning, “But First a School”: The
First Fifty Years of the School of American Ballet (New York: Viking, 1985).

111

Balanchine's choreography for La Traviata, Tannhäuser, Carmen, and Orfeo ed Euridice
failed to capture the public’s fancy. According to Kirstein, the general responses to the
latter ballet were “titters, yawns, or weak, ironic applause.” The audience was “totally
unprepared for an interpretation which transformed vaguely familiar myth and music into
a heroicized domestic tragedy of artist, life, and work.”
185
The Metropolitan Opera
terminated their contract with the American Ballet following the Stravinsky Festival in
1937.
186
Balanchine's first endeavor with a ballet company in the United States – which
was tied to the wealthy elite and to opera – failed. He turned to Hollywood for
employment, finding success choreographing the dance sequences for The Goldwyn
Follies (1938), On Your Toes (1939), and We Are Not Alone (1940).
In 1936, Kirstein formed a second company, Ballet Caravan, which included
dancers Alicia Alonso, Todd Boleander, William Dollar, Eugene Loring, Michael Kidd,
and Erick Hawkins. Unlike Balanchine's American Ballet, Caravan appeared primarily in
movie houses.
187
The company that Kirstein referred to as a “pilot experiment,”
attempted to produce a new repertory created by native choreographers, musicians, and
designers and that dealt with national themes.
188
Kirstein criticized other contemporary
companies for passing off poor imitations of original Russian works, and believed that
American ballet companies should “admit to the futility of attempting to preserve the

185
Kirstein, The New York City Ballet , 44.

186
Lynn Garafola and Eric Foner, eds., Dance for a City (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 4.

187
Kirstein, The New York City Ballet, 49.

188
Ibid.

112

choreographic masterpieces of the past” and instead deal with “new and progressive
creations.”
189
Like so many other artistic projects of the 1930s, these new ballets
frequently drew from American folklore or scenarios familiar to American audiences.
Dance scholar and critic George Amberg wrote that the ballets “tended, somewhat self-
consciously, to stress and exaggerate their American character in the choice of plot and
subject matter.”
190

Lew Christenson set his ballet Filling Station (1938) in a gas station. The ballet
depicted the story of an attendant and his friends who were nearly robbed by gangsters.
Eugene Loring portrayed the experiences of a vicious bandit on the frontier in the
nineteenth century in his ballet Billy the Kid (1938). Agnes de Mille depicted the
romance of cowboys and cowgirls in the Wild West in her ballet for the Ballet Russe de
Monte Carlo, Rodeo (1942). The ballet dealt with a theme that was “American and
basic;” it was about “how to get a suitable man.”
191
(See Figure 25) These ballets situated
a European art within an American setting and portrayed distinctly American characters,
cowboys and gangsters, within American settings, rodeos and gas stations. The latter, a
gas station, served as a visual reminder of valued American qualities – independence and
transportation via the automobile. Like the ballets being produced on Broadway and in
film, these ballets reinvented ballet for the consumption of a more diverse audience.

189
Charles Payne, American Ballet Theatre (New York: Knopf, 1977), 17.

190
George Amberg, Ballet in America: The Emergence of an American Art (New York: Duell, Sloan and
Pearce, 1949), vii.

191
Omnibus Production, Ford Foundation TV Radio Workshop, CBS, Telecast December 21, 1952.
Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

113

Many of these new ballets also borrowed from other dance traditions. According
to Kirstein, Filling Station's style derived from vaudeville. Visually, it resembled comic
strips, set in an everyday but somewhat magical locale.
192
De Mille’s choreography for
Rodeo blended traditional ballet steps, such as turning pirouettes and jumping cabrioles,
with galloping movements that made the dancers appear to be riding horses. The ballet
also abandoned the traditional costumes affiliated with ballet – pointe shoes, buns, and
tutus – and showed women instead in street clothes, wearing slacks, with a long braid that
hung down her back, and in flat dance shoes.
Confronted by difficulties scheduling bookings for Caravan and believing that the
time was now ripe for a “permanent fair sized American company,” Kirstein approached
Balanchine in 1939 with the idea of forming an independent professional American ballet

192
Kirstein, The New York City Ballet, 50.

Figure 25 Rodeo (1942), choreographed by Agnes de Mille,
Photographer, Roger Wood, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.
114

company, the New American Ballet Company. Following their upcoming tour, Kirstein
would put all of Caravan's dancers at the disposal of Balanchine, who would serve as
artistic director of the new company.
193
In a telling act, Balanchine declined, choosing
instead to continue his work on Broadway, in film, and in other popular venues. In 1941,
he even accepted work choreographing a ballet set to the music of Stravinsky for the
elephants of Barnum and Bailey's circus.
194

Perhaps soured by his experience with the American Ballet, Balanchine seems to
have not yet believed that the time was right for a professional company dedicated solely
to the presentation of ballet. Reasons for his refusal to participate in the venture are not
clear. While personal conflict between the two men may have played some role in
Balanchine's decision, it seems more likely that the financial rewards and artistic security
of work within film and theater were simply too significant.
195
Popular culture continued
to offer a more dependable source of income than the professional ballet world.
In 1941, following Caravan's final 1939-1940 season, Kirstein and Balanchine did
collaborate in a good will tour of South America. At the encouragement of Nelson
Rockefeller, head of the United States Offices for Co-ordination of Commercial and
Cultural Affairs, they recruited thirty-five dancers to visit a range of cities, including Rio
de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, Bogata, and Caracas.

193
Martin Duberman, The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (New York: Knopf, 2007), 349.

194
The ballet debuted at Madison Square Garden April 9, 1942. "Circus Opens Amid New Brilliance," New
York Times, April 10, 1942.

195
Reasons for Balanchine's refusal to participate are not clear. Martin Duberman speculates as to the
extent that personal conflict between Balanchine and Kirstein may have played a role in his decision.
Duberman, The World of Lincoln Kirstein, 349-350.

115

The company disbanded in 1943 when Kirstein and several male dancers were drafted.
Kirstein and Balanchine would not rekindle their partnership until the conclusion of
World War II.

The 1930s: Sol Hurok and the Russian Ballet
Although many of the ballets produced during the 1930s reflected concerted
efforts to deal with “American” themes and to embrace popular traditions, they actually
met considerable resistance. American audiences, even as they saw ballet performed in
various forms on Broadway and in film, had also become accustomed to seeing
“Russian” ballet. Throughout the 1930s, several manifestations of Ballet Russes
companies toured the country. Performing highly stylized Russian ballet, they should
have failed. By other indicators, audiences should have viewed these companies as
displaying lavish, European, elite art. They should have disliked Russian ballet. They
didn’t. They had become so familiar with Russian ballet that they had come to believe
that “if it’s American, it can’t be ballet.”
196

In 1933 the well-known and successful impresario, Sol Hurok, resurrected the
highbrow ballet tradition in the United States. Following Diaghilev's death in 1929, the
Ballets Russes dissolved and his dancers settled around the world. A series of managers
tried to resurrect the company under several forms, each carrying with it some variant of
the Ballet Russes title. Because of frequent reorganization, changes in management, and
movement between companies by choreographers and dancers, the histories of the

196
Kirstein, The New York City Ballet, 49-52.

116

companies are very complicated. Rene Blum and Vassily de Basil founded the Ballet
Russe de Monte Carlo in 1933. In 1938, the company split: under the direction of Sergei
Denham, Blum and Leonid Massine formed Les Ballet de Monte Carlo, whose home
would be in Monte Carlo, Monaco until World War II forced them to relocate to the
United States, where the company became the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. De Basil
formed the Original Ballet Russes with Michel Fokine as choreographer.
197

The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, in its original formation under Blum and de
Basil, began touring under the aegis of the impresario Sol Hurok in 1933. Americans did
not immediately love the new company. In fact, when it first opened in New York, the
theater was only half full.
198
It was not Russian ballet itself that first drew audiences, but
rather the marketing of Hurok. A self-made Russian émigré, Hurok managed a number of
important twentieth-century artists, including Anna Pavlova, Isadora Duncan, and Mary
Wigman.
199
Hurok believed that American audiences would respond better to celebrities
than to an “unknown and heretofore unheard of company.”
200
People would come to
ballet to see a star, not to see a company. Thus Hurok focused media attention on
glamorous celebrities and Russian artists.

197
For more information on the Ballet Russes companies see, Jack Anderson, The One and Only: The
Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo (New York: Dance Horizons, 1981); Vicente Garcia Marquez, The Ballet
Russes: Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, 1932-1952 (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1990);
McCormick and Reynolds, No Fixed Points, 74-76; Kathrine Sorley Walker, De Basil's Ballet Russes (New
York: Atheneum, 1983). The recent documentary Ballets Russes (2005) traced the influence of these
dancers on ballet in the United States.

198
Norton, Léonide Massine, 139.

199
Sol Hurok, S. Hurok Presents the World of Ballet (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1955), 106.

200
Ibid.

117

Hurok recognized the emergence of a thriving celebrity culture in Hollywood.
Depressed by high unemployment, Americans in the 1930s escaped into the fantasy of
films, causing Hollywood to recover from the financial losses of the Great Depression
much faster than other areas of American life. Movie stars quickly emerged as
trendsetters whose fashions, hairstyles, and modes of behavior were quickly imitated by
audiences. Film stars earned more attention than politicians, writers, and business figures.
Recognizing the influence of these men and women on U.S. culture, Hurok tried to create
similar celebrities within the ballet world.
201

When no one ballerina stood out as the star of the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo,
Hurok focused publicity around a trio of young teenage girls - Irina Baronova, Tamara
Toumanova, and Tatiana Riabouchinska.
202
These “baby ballerinas” eventually attracted
such celebrity that their engagements produced clamors for tickets and long queues of
people - many of whom settled for a space in the standing room only section of the
theater.
203
In addition, popular magazines such as Collier's described dramatic backstage
scenes of weeping ballerinas. Newspapers documented rivalries between principal
dancers. One much publicized event concerned Alicia Markova and Serge Lifar. Lifar

201
On the Hollywood and celebrity culture in the 1930s see, Samantha Barbas, The First Lady of
Hollywood: A Biography of Louella Parsons (Berkeley: University of California Press,2005), 193-194.

202
Hurok, S.Hurok Presents, 117. Though Hurok claims in his autobiography to have the idea of marketing
the baby ballerinas, Katherine Sorley Walker claims instead this was Balanchine’s idea. Katherine Sorley
Walker, De Basil’s Ballets Russes, (New York: Atheneum, 1983), 15-16.

203
Norton, Leonide Massine, 139.

118

dropped Markova during a lift, injuring her foot. Leonid Massine later speculated to
Collier's that Lifar had done so intentionally.
204
Perhaps most sensationally, the split of the original company in 1938 coincided
with a protracted and much publicized legal case as to who owned the rights to many
ballets. Massine claimed ownership of the ballets he choreographed from 1932 forward,
while de Basil claimed that his contract as producer gave him the rights to the ballets. De
Basil won the rights to thirteen of the seventeen ballets under conflict.
205
By 1938 the de
Basil company alone had made five cross country tours of the United States.
206
The
highbrow ballet tradition continued on in the United States, but it relied on a culture of
celebrity, gossip, and tabloid fever to attract audience’s attention.

One other quality drew American audiences to Russian ballet. They enjoyed it as
a form of escapism. Even as Americans’ discretionary income dropped, Hollywood
produced larger, grander, and more expensive films. Eager for a respite from the poverty
of the Depression, audiences escaped into movie musicals. On Broadway,

George
Balanchine choreographed imaginative, surrealist, dream-like ballets.
207
His ballets in

204
Norton, Leonid Massine, 197.

205
For a detailed discussion of the court case see, Norton, Leonid Massine, 191 – 194. See also, Vincente
Garcia-Márquez, The Ballet Russes: Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo, 1932 – 1952 (New
York: Knopf, 1990), 177.

206
Reynolds and McCormick, No Fixed Points, 124.

207
Balanchine choreographed On Your Toes (1936), Ziegfeld Follies (1936), Babes in Arms (1937), Boys
from Syracuse (1938), Great Lady (1938), I Married an Angel (1938), Keep off the Grass (1940),
Louisiana Purchase (1940), Rosalina (1942), Song of Norway (1943), The Lady Comes Across (1943),
What’s Up (1943), The Merry Widow (1943), and Dream the Music (1944).

119

Babes in Arms (1937) were beautiful and beguiling fantasies.
208
The ballets in Boys From
Syracuse (1938) were a “surrealist wonder work.”
209
In the ballets of Keep Off the Grass
(1940) there was “always something happening to keep the mind off the war.”
210

Likewise, Russian ballet transported audiences to places of beauty. The dancers who
performed on stage possessed a control of their bodies and lives lacked by most of the
general public. Young, healthy, and surrounded by inconsequential drama, these dancers
faced personal rivalries, not struggles to put food on the table or to find a job.
Given that Hollywood films concurrently depicted ballet dancers as tragic figures,
Hurok may have consciously promoted the melodramatic and sensational stories
involving ballet dancers that appeared in the tabloids. Hurok may have recognized that
audiences associated ballet dancers with intrigue and that this intrigue would captivate
and draw audiences to performances. Alternatively, Hollywood directors and
screenwriters may have modeled the ballet dancers appearing in their films after real life
figures. Regardless of which caused the other, both phenomenon reveal at best
ambivalent and more frequently negative attitudes towards ballet.

208
John Anderson, “Babes in Arms:’ Youth - Both in Script and Person – Has Fling in Latest Production,”
New York Evening Journal, April 15, 1937.

209
“Jimmy Savo Bows On at the Alvin,” New York Journal-American, November 25, 1938.

210
Richard Lockridge, “’Keep Off the Grass:’ With Jimmy Durante, Opens at the Broadhurst,” New York
Sun, May 24, 1940.

120

Lasting Influences of Russian Ballet
While Russian dancers may not have invented American ballet, they did have
several important and lasting influences on ballet in this country. As early as her first
tours of the United States, Pavlova fascinated little girls – who viewed her white tutus
and angelic appearance with awe. Dance historian Olga Maynard wrote that young
women “went home bewitched from the theater where Pavlova danced, and tried to
summon from the depth of their household mirrors the same enchanted creations they had
beheld onstage.
211
Pavlova revived Romantic ballet in the United States and transformed
the ballerina of the late nineteenth century from a woman of questionable standing to an
image of respectable femininity.
Regardless of initial mixed reviews, the Ballets Russes traveled to more than fifty
cities, ranging from New York to Texas and Oklahoma and as far West as the Pacific
coast. Lincoln Kirstein, one of the most important patrons of ballet in the twentieth
century and the professional partner of George Balanchine, wrote that the Ballet Russes
“rocked a widespread minority of interested people all over America.”
212

Russian dancers affiliated with the Ballet Russes earned minimal wages, lacked
financial resources, and possessed few future prospects dancing in Russia. As a result
many of these artists stayed in the United States to open ballet schools.
213
Around 1920
Russian dancers Bronislaw Mieczkowski and Boris Petroff founded dance schools in San

211
Maynard, The American Ballet, 27.

212
McCormick and Reynolds, No Fixed Points, 112.

213
Wages decreased to such an extent that many dancers complained that they could barely sustain
themselves on tour. Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, 231.

121

Francisco.
214
Tamara Lawb, formerly a student of the Petrograd Ballet School, taught
students “the art of the Ballet Russe” in Sonoma, California.
215
In 1921 Michael Fokine
opened a successful school on Riverside Drive in New York. Around 1925 Mikhail
Mordkin opened his International School of the Dance at 108 Central Park South.
216
In
the late 20s, the Chicago Opera Company hired Pavlova’s former partner, Adolf Bolm, as
ballet master, and in 1926 Serge Oukransky and Andreas Pavley opened the Pavley-
Oukransky School of Ballet in Chicago.
217

In 1931 Alexis Kosloff, a Moscow trained dancer and former affiliate of the
Metropolitan Opera Company, conducted a dance camp in Woodstock, New York. Senia
Gluck Sandor, an American born dancer who performed with Adolf Bolm and who
choreographed dances for vaudeville productions in the 1920s, and his wife Felicia Sorel
also opened a dance school.
218
Finally, in 1934 George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein
established the School of American Ballet at 637 Madison Avenue.
From these schools emerged dancers who would galvanize the post-World War II
revival of ballet. Fokine trained Nora Kaye, who became prima ballerina of the American
Ballet Theater; Patricia Bowman, a founding member of Ballet Theater and a famed

214
"Display Ad 130 -- No Title," San Francisco Chronicle, January 18, 1922; Display Ad 17 -- No
Title," San Francisco Chronicle, August 13, 1920; “Dancer Offering Classical Steps: Boris Petroff Comes
to U. S. to Teach Art,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 1, 1920.

215
“School Ballet Unique Feature Of Sonoma Now," San Francisco Chronicle, June 26, 1921.

216
“Display Ad 83 -- No Title,” New York Times, May 24, 1925. Display ads begin to appear in New York
based papers in 1925.

217
McCormick and Reynolds, No Fixed Pointes, 114.

218
Greg Lawrence, Dance With Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
2001), 16- 18.

122

ballerina on Broadway; Jerome Robbins, Assistant Artistic Director of the New York City
Ballet and successful choreographer to dozens of musicals; Lincoln Kirstein, the primary
patron of the New York City Ballet; and John Taras, who danced for Balanchine, served
as his ballet master, and choreographed for the New York City Ballet, Ballet Theater, and
the Marquis de Cuevas.
219
Kosloff trained future Broadway and film stars Ann
Pennington and Marian Davies.
220
And, Sandor and Sorel trained Jose Limon and Jerome
Robbins
.221

Hurok’s campaign to cultivate interest in ballet did, however, have one negative
result; it strengthened long-standing perceptions in the United States that ballet was a
foreign art. By the 1930s ballet had become so synonymous with Russia that European
and American dancers adopted Russian sounding names. Hilda Munnings became Lydia
Sokolova; Sydney Francis Patrick Chippendall Healey-Kay became Anton Dolin; and
Lilian Alicia Marks became Alicia Markova. Edris Stannus adopted a French sounding
name, Ninette de Valois.
222
One of the difficulties that ballet dancers and companies
would face in reinventing ballet in the post-World War II era, would be dismantling these
assumptions and defining ballet as a legitimate American art form.
Hurok also had tremendous influence determining which companies succeeded in
the United States. The Mordkin Ballet lumbered on throughout

the 1930s, but became

219
Reynolds and McCormick, No Fixed Pointes, 115.

220
Ann Barzel, “European Dance Teachers in the United States,” Dance Index 3, nos. 4, 5, 6 (April-May-
June, 1944): 83.

221
Lawrence, Dance With Demons, 16- 18.

222
Linda Doeser, Ballet and Dance (New York: St Martins’ Press, 1977), 10.

123

increasingly dependent on the financial resources of one its dancers, the wealthy heiress,
Lucia Chase. When the company sold only 14% of the tickets available for its January
1939 performances, Chase withdrew her support and the company collapsed.
223
Confronted by financial collapse, Mordkin approached Hurok, seeking representation and
entrance into the network of community concert series.
224

The network system united cities and towns across the United States, linking local
managers who worked on behalf of their community with national managers who
represented various artists. National managers generally created a series of artists who
could be booked to perform at given theaters. Thus, when local managers booked artists
with Hurok Attractions, they could either book all of his performances with a single
national manager or negotiate bookings, requesting one performance in particular and in
exchange also booking one of the many other artists represented by the national
manager.
225
By electing not to represent the Mordkin Ballet, Hurok and Columbia
attractions isolated the company from the community network, making its success all the
more precarious.

Conclusion
Dance historian Jennifer Fisher has argued that the “lush and inventive movement
choices” of Fantasia (1940), “Unwittingly did a lot to prepare North Americans for ‘real’

223
Charles Payne, American Ballet Theater (New York: Knoph, 1978), 124.

224
Payne, American Ballet Theater, 124.

225
Payne, American Ballet Theater, 24.

124

ballet.” Fantasia supposedly introduced Americans to the aesthetics of ballet.
226
The
history of ballet in popular entertainments suggests otherwise; it suggests that these
aesthetics may not have been so new. American audiences had been viewing ballet –
albeit in different forms -- regularly for several decades prior to the film’s debut.
This history also shows that ballet did not, as Horowitz has claimed, “remain
rooted in a foreign sensibility.” It was not “popularized as an exotic visitation.”
227

Celebrated as elite and avant-garde in Europe and Russia, ballet in the United States
appropriated new dance forms and infiltrated popular entertainments and media. Russian
dancers transformed the American performing arts, but their art was also transformed by
that culture; they drew from a tradition of ballet dancing long present in American
popular culture. Confronted by an audience wary of elite culture, they dispensed with the
vestiges of pretension and ostentation still attached to European and Russian ballet.
By the onset of World War II, the world of ballet had grown immensely in the
United States. Ballet dancers appeared at the theater and in film. Dance schools thrived in
New York and Hollywood. Ambitious patrons, choreographers, and dancers organized
fledgling professional companies. Unfortunately, World War II impeded much of this;
the draft took male dancers overseas, and companies closed. The war also fundamentally
altered domestic culture. High art would come in the post-war world to carry much more
importance. It would provide legitimacy to a nation in search of cultural and political

226
Jennifer Fisher, Nutcracker Nation: How and Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the
New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 23-24.

227
Horowitz, Artists in Exile, 14.

125

authority, contribute to the social identity of the rapidly expanding middle-class, and
involve a much larger audience.
The makers of ballet in the post-war period would exploit its associations with art
and elitism but would cultivate a new and broader audience by drawing from the
lowbrow tradition. Americans reinvented ballet as a form of high culture with widespread
public appeal by blending it with popular dance forms, appropriating narrative qualities,
romanticizing the ballerina and celebrating her sexuality, and incorporating ballet into
other performance styles. It was the public's familiarity with ballet in all of its various
forms, their enjoyment in seeing it performed, and their interest in dance celebrities that
made ballet's popularity and success in the post-World War II era possible.

126

ACT II

127

CHAPTER 3
REVIVING BALLET IN THE POSTWAR ERA
Ask any two middle-aged Americans on the street to name ballet dancers and they
will most likely respond with Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov. These
“defectors,” Russian immigrants who abandoned the Soviet Union during the Cold War,
became the subjects of international fascination. Following his daring “leap to freedom,”
Nureyev toured the United States with the British ballerina Margot Fonteyn. For the
remainder of his career he attracted a cult-like following of devoted fans.
228
Baryshnikov
managed a successful career dancing for many of the most prominent companies in the
United States, appeared in several Broadway productions and major Hollywood films,
and continues today to appear in American television shows and to manage his own
company.
229

George Balanchine, the founder of the New York City Ballet and the next most
likely ballet dancer to be remembered by the general public in the twenty-first century,
made a much celebrated return to the Soviet Union in 1963, supposedly demonstrating to
Russian audiences the advances made in ballet in the United States. His influence
continues to loom over American ballet in the form of the New York City Ballet, the

228
For articles describing Nureyev’s defection see, “Red Dancer Flees ‘to Freedom’: Drama as Troupe
Leaves for London,” Evening Standard, June 16, 1961; Arnold L. Haskell, “Letter to the Editor: The Case
of the Runaway Dancer,” Dancing Times, October 1961; “Russian Ballet Dancer Asks for Asylum: Run to
Police at Paris Airport,” London: The Times, June 17, 1961; Harold C. Schonberg, “Russian Dancer Who
Defected Appears With Ballet in Paris,” New York Times, June 24, 1961.

229
On Mikhail Baryshnikov see, Gennady Smakov, Baryshnikov: From Russia to the West (New York:
Farrar Straus Giroux, 1981); Martha Swope, Baryshnikov on Broadway (Random House: New York, 1988).
In 2004 he played a Russian artist in the wildly popular HBO television series Sex in the City.

128

School of American Ballet, and his extensive and widely performed repertoire of
ballets.
230

Perhaps due to the celebrity of these Russians, historians of ballet tend to attribute
the ballet boom of the 1960s and 1970s too exclusively to the Cold War. Historian Tim
Scholl writes, “Looking back, the rigid division of East and West had an unintended
effect…the decades after the Second World War now seem like a Golden Age in the
dissemination of culture, especially for dance.”
231
In examining the cultural export
programs of the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA) in the 1950s, historian
Naima Prevots argues that Eisenhower asked Congress to “enlist the performing arts in
the Cold War.”
232

Even scholars dealing with the more broadly defined subject area of post-war
culture tend to over-emphasize the relationship between culture and politics.
233
Historian
Stephen Whitfield traces the influence of Cold War politics on several aspects of post-war
culture, including film and television.
234
Most recently, historian David Caute examined
the “ideological and cultural contest” between the United States and the Soviet Union. In

230
On George Balanchine see, Richard Buckle, George Balanchine: Ballet Master: A Biography (New
York: Random House, 1988); Robert Gottlieb, George Balanchine: The Ballet Maker (New York: Harper
Collins, 2004); Anna Hogan, ed. Balanchine: Then and Now (Lewes: Sylph Editions, 2008); Bernard
Taper, Balanchine: A Biography: With a New Epilogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).

231
Tim Scholl, “Guns and Roses, or, Dancing Through the Cold War,” Ballettanz, http://www.ballet-
tanz.de/en/jahrb-text02.html (accessed June 21, 2010).

232
Naima Prevots, Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War (Middleton: Wesleyan
University Press, 1998), 8.

233
See for example, Frances Stoner Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and
Letters (New York: The New Press, 1999).

234
Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991).

129

a gesture that recognized the centrality of Russian dancers to this era, he titled his 2003
monograph, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Diplomacy During the Cold
War.
235

These scholars draw a direct, linear connection between dance activities in the
United States and the Cold War, often at the expense of considering how other social and
cultural anxieties factored into the ballet revival.
236
The Cold War undoubtedly played a
significant part in heightening interest in culture in the United States in the late 1950s and
1960s but, as the marketing and fundraising materials of the nation’s three most
prominent ballet companies, the New York City Ballet, Ballet Theatre, and the Ballet
Russes de Monte Carlo attest, it was not the only factor.
Fundraising letters solicit money from patrons by exploiting their concerns,
interests, tastes, and fears. Likewise, advertisements sell objects by construing their
consumption as either necessary or at the very least advantageous. Examining these
materials does not reveal what caused the ballet revival, but it does reveal the political
and social concerns -- including but not limited to the Cold War -- that publicists for
ballet companies and writers in popular literature believed would best sell ballet to
audiences. Examining these materials reveals why people turned to culture during this
period. It also reiterates the centrality of ballet to the broader cultural revival of the post
war era, a period when, as many scholars have shown, interest in all forms of performing

235
David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Diplomacy During the Cold War (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003).

236
Jane de Hart Matthews argues that antiradicalism and the symbolic significance of public patronage
played an important role in the assault on modern art in the 40s and 50s. Jane de Hart Matthews, “Art and
Politics in Cold War America,” American Historical Review 81 no. 4 (October 1976): 763.
130

and visual arts increased.
237
Finally, examining these materials distinguishes ballet from
other analogous cultural forms, showing that the reliance of ballet on the agile, strong,
graceful, and increasingly female body made it a particularly apt medium for expressing
post-war concerns.

The Origins of the Ballet Boom: People and Companies
In the first four decades of the twentieth century, the Russian Revolution, World
War I, and later World War II propelled many scientists, intellectuals, musicians and
artists to immigrate from Europe and Russia to the United States.
238
Hitler’s rise to power
in 1933 amplified that exodus, causing the center of the Western art world to shift from
Paris, where novice artists had once flocked to study and to establish professional
reputations, to New York.
239
John Peale Bishop, the poet and managing editor of Vanity
Fair, claimed in 1941, “the presence amongst us of these European scholars, artists,

237
William Baumol and William Bowen, The Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma (New York:
Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), 432. On opera in the post-war period see also, John Dizikes, Opera in
America: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 485; Karene Grad, “When High
Culture Became Popular Culture: Classical Music in Postwar America” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2006),
2, 6; Lynn Spigel, “High Culture in Low Places: Television and Modern Art, 1950-1970,” in Welcome to
the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs ed. Lynn Spigel (Durham: Duke University Press,
2001), 270.

238
Joseph Horowitz, Artists in Exile: How Refugees From the Twentieth-Century War and Revolution
Transformed the American Performing Arts (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 8-9.

239
For additional information on immigrant scientists, artists and intellectuals to the United States see,
Anthony Heilbut, Exiled in Paradise: Germany Refugee Artists and Intellectuals in America, the 1930s to
the Present (New York: Viking Press, 1933); Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved,
Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997);
Horowitz, Artists in Exile, 9-10.
In the years between World War I and II, Paris hosted a dynamic international community of avant-garde
artists. Irish author James Joyce, American author Ernest Hemingway, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky,
Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, French composer Erik Satie, and American performer Josephine Baker, for
example, all lived in Paris during these years. Sophie Levy, ed. A Transatlantic Avant-Garde: American
Artists in Paris, 1918-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).

131

composers is a fact.” As one historian has written, “The very presence of so many figures
in the history of the arts was a fecund experience.”
240

These immigrants did not, however, cause the culture revival. To argue that the
trans-Atlantic migration of artists from Europe and the Soviet Union to the United States
caused the culture revival of the post-war period would be to treat the cultural revival as
the result of a geographic shift in the art world. This explanation also denies the
authenticity of artistic creation within this country -- a significant oversight given the
creation of innovative new works that experimented with American themes and modes of
expression. Rather, the cultural revival emerged from the development of an artistic
community in New York, of which immigrants were central participants, that encouraged
artistic exploration.
The artists of abstract expressionism, for example, experimented with path-
breaking modes of artistic production, forming what has been called “The New York
School.”

Jackson Pollack experimented with splattered canvases and later Andy Warhol
parodied American consumer culture. In the ballet world, immigrant dancers and patrons
Alexandra Danilova, George Balanchine, Serge Denham, Mikhail Mordkin, and Leonid
Massine joined American born artists and patrons Jerome Robbins, Agnes de Mille, Lucia
Chase, and Lincoln Kirstein in organizing the ballet community in the United States and
forming the nation’s first permanent ballet companies.
In 1938, following conflicts with Colonel Vassili de Basil and Michel Fokine, a
European banker, Serge Denham, organized the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo under the

240
Dore Ashton, The New York School: A Cultural Reading (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 137- 139.
132

artistic direction of the then most famous ballet dancer in the world, Leonid Massine.
When World War II restricted Denham’s Ballet Russe to the Western hemisphere, the
company established itself permanently in the United States. For the next twenty-five
years, Denham’s Ballet Russe toured North and South America. The company collapsed
in 1962 due to a lack of patronage and funding and an inability to compete with better
organized companies.
241
De Basil’s Original Ballet Russe toured internationally,
occasional performing in the United States until 1947 when the company dissolved.
242

Two years later, in 1940, just prior to the American entry into World War II,
strained relations between the dancers, patrons, and managers of Mikhail Mordkin’s
company, the Mordkin Ballet, resulted in the company’s dissolution into two companies
and the formation of Ballet Theatre, known since 1956 as the American Ballet Theatre,
and now one of the most renowned ballet companies in the World.
243
Mordkin remained
the sole choreographer of his own company, while Richard Pleasant, a press agent who
left his work in Hollywood to manage the Mordkin Ballet, and a wealthy heiress, Lucia
Chase, organized Ballet Theatre.
Ballet Theater was a unique venture. Unlike most of its predecessors in the
twentieth century, which worked under the artistic guidance of a single choreographer,
Ballet Theatre employed multiple choreographers and promoted a “gallery of the dance”

241
Denham’s Ballet Russes collapsed in 1962, the same year that the Ford Foundation allocated millions of
dollars to the New York City Ballet, privileging it above several other companies.

242
For information on the formation of the Ballet Russes companies see, Chapter 2, pp. 115-116, footnotes
197-198.

243
Charles Payne documents the history of the Mordkin Ballet and the early years of Ballet Theatre.
Drawing upon interviews from the company’s management and dancers, he gives a highly descriptive and
personal account of the company’s origins. Charles Payne, American Ballet Theater (New York: Knopf,
1978).
133

that featured “masterpieces of all artistic eras, from all countries, together with potentially
great ballets created by contemporary choreographers of all nationalities.” Reflecting
trends throughout the art world, Ballet Theatre employed many foreign artists, including
Anton Dolin, Michel Fokine, and Andre Eglevsky, while also consciously nurturing
American artists, dancers, choreographers, composers and designers. These artists
included dancers Alicia Alonso, Nora Kaye, Agnes de Mille, and Jerome Robins,
musicians Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland, and set designer Oliver Smith.
244

Ballet Theatre gave its first performance on January 11, 1940 at Rockefeller
Center in New York City. John Martin described its first performance as a “brilliant
success.”
245
Unfortunately, box office receipts did not prove as optimistic. By the end of
the first season, average sales for each performance reached only fifty-six percent of the
maximum audience capacity, not nearly enough to cover the operating expenses of the
company.
246
The United States had not yet fully recovered from the Great Depression; in
1940 over eight million Americans remained out of work. It would be another four years
before the prosperity of the post-war period would provide Americans the discretionary
income to attend the theater.
247
In the interim the United States government encouraged
citizens to save rather than spend, to use extra income to purchase war bonds and to
support the war effort.

244
“1964 Presentation of Ballet Theatre Foundation, Inc,” Dance Clippings File, “Ballet Theatre
Foundation,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

245
John Martin, “Ballet Theatre Makes Bow Here,” New York Times, January 12, 1940.

246
Payne, American Ballet Theatre, 105.

247
John Bush Jones, Our Musicals Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theater (Boston:
Brandeis University Press, 2003), 123.
134

Violence in Europe also led many Americans to favor escapist entertainments
over serious art, making audiences skeptical of ballet. Even New York Times dance critic
John Martin preferred performances that celebrated humor and beauty over those that
required thought or analysis. Of Ballet Theatre’s first performance, Martin liked two
ballets. He described the Romantic styled ballet Les Sylphides, first choreographed by
Michel Fokine for the Diaghilev Ballet, as having “opened the evening in the best of all
possible manners.” The ballet, like the patriotic film extravaganzas of the early 1940s --
films such as Stage Door Canteen (1943) and Hollywood Canteen (1944) -- lacked a
plot.
248
Mikhail Mordkin’s Voices of Spring, first choreographed in 1938, featured the
popular comedic ballerina Patricia Bowman in a “delightfully expert comedy role.” The
company’s third ballet, The Great American Goof, however, produced a different
response.
A new ballet choreographed by Eugene Loring, The Great American Goof
depicted a young man and his interactions with a series of characters.

Each of the
characters in the ballet, which was based on a book by William Saroyan, represented
some aspect of society; the Dummy stood for “the tradition of the ordinary,” the
Policeman for “orderly idiocy,” and the Woman for “bright potential.”
249
Martin disliked
the symbolism of the ballet, writing, “The ‘Goof’ is nothing that can be swallowed at a
gulp; it demands a concentrated attention that the average balletomane is unaccustomed

248
Tim Dicks, “This History of Film in the 1940s, Part 1,” The Film Site,
http://www.filmsite.org/40sintro.html (accessed June 24, 2010). See also, Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust:
American Cinema in the 1940s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

249
George Amberg, Ballet in America: The Emergence of an American Art (New York: Duell, Sloane, and
Pearce, 1949), 95.

135

to giving.”
250
A critic and an established fan of ballet, Martin nevertheless wanted to sit
back and enjoy the show. His response to The Great American Goof reflected a pervasive
wariness among the American public for formal ballet.
Ballet activities in the United States began to escalate as early as 1938 when
professional dancers and choreographers began to organize the nation’s first ballet
companies. Unfortunately, these activities did not yet indicate the support of a broader
American audience. Between 1940 and 1946, however, the companies would confront a
series of fiscal and institutional limitations that would force them to extend their
fundraising efforts to reach new patrons and to produce an abundance of marketing
materials to help cultivate interest in ballet in this country.

Fiscal and Institutional Limitations, 1940-1946
On November 1, 1941 Ballet Theatre signed with the management of the
influential impresario Sol Hurok, who had managed the successful tours of the Ballet
Russes in the 1930s. Five years later, Ballet Theatre filed a Demand for Arbitration with
the State of New York, citing misrepresentation and breach of contract, asking for release
from their contract with Hurok. The conflict that arose between Ballet Theatre and Hurok
in the preceding five years reveals several of the hurdles that prevented companies from
growing.
Ballet Theatre believed that Hurok’s dual commitment to the Ballet Russes de
Monte Carlo conflicted with their interests. In 1942, Hurok had booked the two

250
John Martin, “Ballet Theatre Makes Bow Here,” New York Times, January 12, 1940.
136

companies concurrently at the Metropolitan Opera, referring to the performances merely
as a “Season of Ballet.” Ballet Theatre believed Hurok had a vested interest in the
production of Russian ballet and that this interest conflicted with Ballet Theater’s
expressed goal of promoting the development of an American ballet. One affidavit noted,
“By exploiting the impersonal term ‘Russian Ballet,’ Hurok Attractions, Inc. has been
able, and expects to continue to be able in future, to hire such attractions at lower prices
and thus to compete favorably with such attractions as The Ballet Theatre Company.”
251

Hurok also supposedly steered dancers away from the company. Ballet Theatre
claimed that he encouraged principal dancers Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin to demand
salaries high enough that the company could only hire them for a limited number of
performances. This enabled Hurok to sponsor an independent touring troupe, the
Markova-Dolin Company, which then performed a few days and weeks in advance of
Ballet Theatre in several cities, including Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Salt Lake City.
Hurok then used his contractual right of approval to force Ballet Theatre to employ
Markova and Dolin. By not accepting “the substitutes for such principal artists proposed
by The Ballet Theatre, Inc. and [by not agreeing] upon substitutes acceptable to both
parties as required by said contract,” Hurok prevented the company from hiring other
dancers to fill Markova and Dolin’s positions. Ballet Theatre concluded that Hurok had
“attempted to subvert and defeat… the purposes of The Ballet Theatre, Inc.”
252

251
The Ballet Theatre, Inc, a New York Corporation vs. Hurok Attractions, Inc., a New York Corporation,
Folder 4876, Box 72, American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

252
Ibid.

137

While it seems unlikely that Hurok intentionally sabotaged Ballet Theatre’s
performances, as he incurred the company’s financial losses, his conflict with Ballet
Theatre reveals a highly competitive environment in which managers exerted tremendous
control over performance opportunities in the United States and in which companies
struggled to distinguish themselves as unique. Similarities between the repertoires and
their casts of dancers and choreographers -- who frequently moved between companies,
making turnover common and conflicts frequent -- rendered competition even more
stringent. Agnes de Mille, for example, joined Ballet Theatre at its onset and
choreographed the successful ballet Three Virgins and a Devil in 1941; she then
choreographed one of her best known works Rodeo for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo
in 1942.
The Ballet Theatre/ Hurok conflict culminated during the 1946-1947 season. On
May 12, 1946 Ballet Theatre formally severed ties with Sol Hurok and arranged its own
performance at the Broadway Theatre.
253
In response, Hurok engaged de Basil’s Original
Ballet Russe to fulfill his obligation to the Metropolitan Opera -- a performance that had
originally been scheduled on behalf of Ballet Theatre.
254
One month earlier, Denham’s
Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo opened its national tour with fifteen performances at City

253
“Ballet Theatre Quits Hurok Fold: Resuming at the Metropolitan, Group Announces It Will Continue
Independently,” New York Times, April 22, 1946; John Martin, “The Dance: Communique: The Ballets
Meet on the Field of Battle,” New York Times, October 6, 1946.

254
“Ballet in Midair,” Newsweek, July 15, 1946, 86.

138

Center.
255
The three most prominent ballet companies in the United States were
performing in New York at the same time.
The year 1946 also marked the formation of Lincoln Kirstein and George
Balanchine's first post-war endeavor. A private subscription organization that provided
paying members with access to performances, lectures, and workshops, Ballet Society
was an ambitious project with six primary goals: supporting new presentations, co-
operating with groups around the country, publicizing books and literature on dance,
producing and distributing dance films, publicizing albums of dance music, and awarding
fellowships to dancers and choreographers.
256

John Martin described the 1946-1947 ballet season as a “fairly bloody war” in
which “nobody seems likely to win.”
257
Newsweek Magazine wrote, “Though those ten
years [the 1930s] have enormously sharpened the American appetite for ballet, a new
problem makes managers reach for their sleeping pills with one hand, while balancing
their checkbooks with the other. Can the United States support so much ballet?”
258
These
comments underscored a problem that plagued the ballet companies from the time of
their formation until the 1960s when major philanthropic organizations and the federal
government become involved in the support of the arts; a lack of funds.

255
John Martin, “The Dance: Season’s Opening,” New York Times, September 1, 1946.

256
Lincoln Kirstein, The New York City Ballet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 81.

257
John Martin, “The Dance: Communique: The Ballets Meet on the Field of Battle,” New York Times,
October 6, 1946. See also, “Music: Feather Feud,” Time, October 14, 1946, 70.

258
“Ballet in Midair,” Newsweek, July 15, 1946, 86.

139

Unlike in European nations, where professional ballet companies received state
subsidies, with the exception of the era of the New Deal, when the Civil Works
Association and the Works Progress Association employed musicians, painters, and other
artists, prior to 1965 the United States federal government never provided regular funds
to the operation of art organizations in the United States.
259
Opera, ballet, symphony, and
art museums relied heavily on charitable donations from private patrons. Unfortunately,
particularly following the financial crisis of the Great Depression, patronage to these
organizations began to wane.
In 1946 Time Magazine described the crisis, “….ballet like opera, is so financially
top-heavy that breaking even …is a major triumph. The cost of ballets must, on the
whole, still come from angels….”
260
“Angels” continued to support ballet in the 1940s:
Julius Fleischman, heir to the Fleishman yeast fortune, backed the Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo, wealthy financier, Baron Frederic d’Erlanger, supported the Original Ballet Russe,
Lincoln Kirstein, the son of the founder of Filene’s Department Store, supported the New
York City Ballet, and Lucia Chase, the daughter of Irving Hall Chase of Ingersol Watches
and the widow of Thomas Ewing Jr., President of Alexander Smith Carpet, supported
Ballet Theater. These “angels” were not, however, capable of keeping up with the
escalating production costs of the 1940s and the post-war period.
Ticket revenues failed to meet the costs of new ballet productions and, as a result,
the companies incurred high deficits. According to Sol Hurok, performances by the two

259
William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 1969), 59-63.

260
“Ballet in Midair,” Newsweek, July 15, 1946.

140

Ballet Russes companies over a ten week period at the Hollywood Theater in New York
in 1941 incurred a deficit of $70,000.
261
During its first weeks under Hurok’s
management, even after reducing the number of intended productions, Ballet Theater
incurred losses in excess of $60,000.
262
Even Ballet Society, which attracted “the best
audience in New York,” found that the costs of producing ballets outweighed the intake
from subscriptions, which never covered more than a small percentage of the operating
costs of the organization.
263
The operating expenses of several contemporaneous arts organizations, though
only roughly comparable, offer another glimpse into the financial strains faced in the arts
sector. Between 1843 and 1964 the costs per concert of the New York Philharmonica
increased at an annual rate of two and half per cent per year, while the price index went
up only one per cent. In other words, over one hundred and twenty-one years individual
performance costs rose five times as much as the wholesale price index.
264
In the post-
war period, from 1947 – 1964, the costs per performance for eleven major orchestras rose
at an average rate of 3.2. per cent and for the Metropolitan Opera at 4.4 per cent. For the
Met, this meant that total costs per performance doubled every sixteen years; in 1964 the
costs associated with producing a single performance were twice what they were at the

261
Sol Hurok, S. Hurok Presents the World of Ballet (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1955), 132.

262
Sol Hurok, S. Hurok Presents the World of Ballet, 146.

263
“Ballet for a City,” Newsweek, October 25, 1948, 95.

264
Baumol and Bowen, Performing Arts, 186-187.

141

conclusion of World War II.
265
Ballet, unlike these other performance genres, shouldered
the added and considerable expenses of touring.
By forcing ballet companies to turn to new patrons and to commodify ballet for
the consumption of a new, larger, and less elite audience, the financial strains and
institutional limitations of the early 1940s propelled the ballet revival of the post-World
War II period.
266
Ballet companies did not create the ballet revival. Their marketing
materials did, however, construe ballet to be meaningful to post-war audiences. Ballet
publicists and journalists dealing with ballet in popular literature exploited four pervasive
anxieties in the United States. The first dealt with the role of the United States in the post-
war world order, the second with consumption and the materialization of American
culture, the third with the preservation of democracy in the United States, and the fourth
with the Cold War. By redefining ballet to resonate with audiences and to have political,
social and cultural currency, ballet companies played a central role in shaping public
attitudes towards ballet in the United States.

1940-1947: International Involvement
Early on, both Ballet Theatre and the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo suggested that
the United States bore a responsibility to protect the world’s cultural resources.
Supporting ballet companies supposedly helped preserve a valuable cultural activity.

265
Baumol and Bowen, Performing Arts, 197.

266
Art historian Erika Doss has argued that between 1930 and 1950 the professional art organization
Associated American Artists (AAA) played a significant role in marketing modern American art as a
middle-class commodity. Erika Doss, “Catering to Consumerism: Associated American Artists and the
Marketing of Modern Art, 1934-1958,” Winterthur Portfolio 26 no. 2/3 (Summer-Autumn, 1991): 143.

142

Chaotic conditions in Europe, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo claimed, threatened to
“dislocate and even to dismember organized forms of art.” In consequence they surmised,
“It is generally agreed that America is destined to play a leading role in preserving the
world’s culture.”
267
In 1940 Ballet Theater claimed, “A ballet performance tonight…
indicates clearly what the future position of America will be in the arts if the European
war continues to anything approaching the point of annihilation.”
268
Both advertisements
reflected a shift in public sentiments towards greater involvement in international cultural
activities.
Prior to the war, many Americans favored a policy of isolationism. As late as
1937, when conflict in Europe continued to escalate, two-thirds of the people surveyed by
a Gallop poll viewed the American entrance into World War I as mistake. Most
Americans continued to advocate a policy of non-aggression. However, as the war
progressed, and particularly following the censorship of American cultural products by
Germany and Japan, the American government began to play an increasingly active role
in the promotion and dissemination of American culture overseas. Through programs
such as the Cultural Division of the State Department, the Office for the Coordinator on
Inter-American Affairs, and the Office of War Information the government tried to keep
the world open to American influence.
269
As American involvement in the conflicts in

267
“Ballet Takes Root in American Soil,” Folder 4301, Box 61,American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

268
Draft of publicity document circa 1940, Folder 4720, Box 69, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

269
Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-
1945 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982), 203.
143

Europe and the South Pacific escalated, so too did domestic patriotism. Ballet companies
exploited the nationalist sentiments produced by a war torn world.
Another common tactic the companies employed involved describing the United
States as an artistic refuge and the ballet companies as havens for displaced artists. Ballet
companies supposedly represented “melting-pots,” places where artists from all over the
world could work with creative freedom. Ballet Theater noted in 1940 that “the
exponents of the European art forms, as well as the best American artists” were “seeking
an opportunity in America to continue their artistic development and to give their gifts to
the American people.” Artists from Russia, Poland, England, France and Norway formed
a company “in accordance with American ideals.” Ballet Theatre consisted of the most
distinguished artists in the field.
270
“Like America itself,” the company claimed, “we
borrowed from European traditions, became a melting pot for the talents of all lands, and
offered freedom of opportunity to all artists.”
271

By emphasizing the United States as a “melting pot” and a place of artistic
development and creative freedom, the companies positioned the United States in
opposition to the fascist and socialist governments of war time enemies, and later to the
communist governments of the post-war period. The United States provided freedoms
unavailable in other areas of the world and, therefore, nurtured creativity and artistic

270
Draft of publicity document circa 1940, Folder 4720, Box 69, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

271
“Ballet Theater: Advance Story,”“Ballet Theatre to Play Summer Season At London Royal Opera
House,” May 1, 1946, included in the document, “Remarks of Miss Lucia Chase, Co-Director of Ballet
Theatre, at Ballet Theatre Luncheon, Wednesday, May 1, 1946 at Waldorf-Astoria Hotel,” Folders 4723-
4726, American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.
144

advances. Pride in the “melting pot” quality of ballet companies also reflected a change
in American attitudes towards immigration, which in the 1920s had become increasingly
restrictive. In the 1940s, when the United States repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act
(1943) and legalized the immigration of displaced persons in 1948, these laws began to
subside. Americans celebrated the United States as a political and artistic refuge.
After the conclusion of the war, the companies appealed to their patrons to
recognize the new role the United States would play in the post-war order. In searching
for a governing trustee, Ballet Theatre managers entreated one patron:
In the crisis that rends the world today, it is to the United States that most
of Western Civilization must look to nourish and support the Arts. The
spiritual and artistic hunger of the world as well as its physical need, is
evident everywhere. The plans of many European countries to re-establish,
in the face of almost insuperable obstacles, great artistic efforts …. bear
mute witness to this fact.
272

Like the calls of ballet companies in 1940 to protect artistic resources, these claims
adopted a heavily paternalistic tone; the rest of the world must “look” to the United States
to nourish and support the arts. Ravaged by spiritual and physical, as well as artistic
hunger, these nations lacked resources; though they valiantly struggled to re-establish art,
they needed the United States’ assistance.
Having entered World War II late in 1941, following several years of bloodshed in
Europe, the United States played a critical role in ending the war. The combined United
States/Allied offensive brought an end to violence in Europe in 1944, and the deployment
of the atomic bomb by the United States in Japan in 1945 ended (albeit tragically) the war

272
Unsigned letter from Ballet Theatre Foundation to Mr. Thomas J. Watson, June 3, 1947, Folder 4298,
Box 61, American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.
145

in the Pacific. In the years to follow, the United States adopted an increasingly prominent
role in international affairs, committing in 1948 to channeling millions of dollars into the
recovery of Western Europe through the Marshal Plan. Just as the United States led the
world in these affairs, so too, the ballet companies suggested, should it lead the world in
the preservation of art and culture.

Consumer Anxieties
Designed to rejuvenate the European economy, the Marshall Plan challenged
many basic European principles of commerce, mainly a populist tradition in which the
national government played a critical role in preventing economic and social obstacles
from limiting the advancement of ordinary men and women. Based on the premises of
capitalism, the Marshal plan intended to raise the standard of living in Europe by
promoting a free market, industrial production, and consumption. The plan assumed that
European citizens would prefer opportunities to satisfy individual wants and desires via
consumer goods to the security of a socialist state. It embodied the tenants of the
American economic system. In short, the Marshall Plan pitted the American free-market
model of economic growth against European models based on the promotion of economic
146

growth via national recovery, full employment, and protected markets. The European
model valued the social citizen and the American model the sovereign consumer.
273

Having survived the hardships of the Depression and the rations of the war years,
Americans took a renewed interest in the postwar period in consumption. The denial of
material goods by totalitarian European governments in the 1930s made ownership in the
United States a symbol of the successes of democracy and capitalism.
274
Thus, postwar
American culture advocated spending, even construing it as contributing to the national
good. A 1946 Gallop Poll found that most Americans favored spending over saving.
275

Americans eagerly purchased kitchen supplies, household items, automobiles, and TVs,
creating an image abroad of the United States as a land preoccupied with material goods,
an image expressed most clearly by the Soviets during the Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen”
debates in 1959.
The system of commerce favored by most Western European nations focused
instead on the national state and looked on the emphasis placed on the individual in the
American system with suspicion and disdain. European nations adopted a more socialist
perspective on civic responsibility and subsidized cultural activities. Prior to the war they

273
Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 338-339, 342. On the relationship of American culture to
European culture see also, Penny von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the
Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans
Have Loved, Hated, and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books,
1997).

274
Daniel Horowitz, Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture. 1939-1979
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 22.

275
Elaine May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books,
1988), 147. On attitudes towards consumption see also, Lizbeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic: The
Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003).
147

led the Western world in artistic creation and in the production of luxury items,
machinery, and crafts. They viewed the American emphasis on consumer culture as
threatening to debase and degrade taste, craftsmanship, and civility and to undermine the
more erudite and supposedly dignified culture of old world Europe; the crass
consumerism of American culture threatened to degrade refined “high” culture. As one
historian has claimed, the “torch of civilization had been passed” to the United States, the
outcome of which “posed the risk that Western civilization would be thoroughly tainted
by the materialism peculiar to American society.”
276

The clash that arose between the European and American models of commerce
raised questions about the nature of American society: Had Americans become overly
materialistic? Had American culture come to overemphasize the merits of consumer
goods? Much of the intellectual community in the United States came to believe the
answers to both questions were yes. Spending threatened rather than advanced American
culture.
In particular, a group of scholars that had immigrated to the United States in the
decade prior, and that came to be called the “Frankfurt School,” voiced sharp criticisms
of the potentially deadening effects of mass culture on American intellectual and artistic
life. They perceived the nation’s affluence as leading to conformity and resignation.
Commodity based culture produced “a debased, trivialized heterogeneous society, visible
most clearly in the affluent middle-class suburbs.” The scholars of the Frankfurt School
“recoiled from a society embracing a crass commercial culture which they believed

276
De Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 19-21, 78.

148

threatened the high culture embodied in great works of art.”
277
Throughout the 1940s,
1950s, and 1960s these concerns continued to ferment, eventually seeping into the more
widely read works of scholars such as David Potter, Vance Packard, and Betty Friedan.
Descriptions of ballet in American popular literature in the 1940s and 1950s and
in the fundraising materials of ballet companies from the same period suggest that these
concerns extended beyond the elite intelligentsia. Americans enjoyed the wealth of the
post-war period and their newfound purchasing power, but their fervent concern for and
defense of American culture suggested underlying and festering anxieties. In 1947
Newsweek, for example, reported on “l’affaire ballet,” an incident which involved the
Ballet de Champs-Elysées and American producers. After a month of failed negotiations,
a representative of the company returned to Europe. Earlier that same year a similar
fiasco involved twenty-five opera singers. Newsweek feared that the ballet representative
would take with him a negative impression of the American arts scene that would
“further smear America.”
278

Notably, “L’affaire ballet” did not smear America, it further smeared America.
The affair tarnished the reputation of an arts scene already viewed with disdain and
skepticism. The banal story of the French company, of failed negotiations between
company directors and theater managers, interested audiences not because of some
titillating personal argument, but because the reputation of culture in the United States

277
Horowitz, Anxieties of Affluence, 11.

278
“Music and Dance: Balletomanes,” Newsweek, April 7, 1947, 82-83.
149

was important to them. Readers of Newsweek worried how the event would reflect on the
American arts scene.
Further evidence of pervasive concerns for culture in the United States, that same
year the President’s Commission on Higher Education reported that, “one of the tasks of
American democracy is to heighten and diffuse esthetic sensibility and good taste.” The
study of the arts should aim at “awakening or intensifying the student’s sensitivity to
beauty in his everyday surroundings, at developing bases for discrimination and
interpretation.” The lack of education in the arts in the United States was a “signal
defect” of not only American culture but of “most other areas of our national life as
well.”
279
Education, taste, discrimination, interpretation, and appreciation of culture had
suddenly become critical to the national well-being.
Recognizing students and youth, the future of the nation, as particularly politically
and socially meaningful, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo appealed to patrons on behalf
of their education programs. In seeking funds from the Ford Foundation, Denham noted
that the company had been trying to “cultivate good taste and appreciation of healthy
entertainment, among the younger generation.” He continued, “A great proportion of our
audiences are children, and it has always been the policy and philosophy of our
organization to contribute to their cultural growth by bringing healthy entertainment
based on great classical traditions.”

Closure of the company would be “very detrimental

279
Charles R. Howell, “A National Arts Program,” Educational Theory Journal 5, no. 3 (October 1953):
260.

150

to the artistic and educational evolution of this wonderful country.”
280
One of the Ballet
Russes de Monte Carlo’s most significant contributions to the United States, Denham
claimed, was the education of its youth and the promotion of culture within the next
generation.
Ballet companies also suggested that supporting ballet demonstrated that
Americans appreciated beauty and valued more than material goods. Ballet Theatre
reiterated American commitment and ability in art, writing in 1950, “Each dollar you
send is a ballot of belief in our culture and in the fact that we, as Americans, have
something valid to say in any art form.”
281
In 1952 the Acting Deputy Assistant
Administrator for the Educational Exchange Service described the necessity of
demonstrating that American commitment to culture equaled that of other nations:
As you are doubtless aware, the high level of American cultural achievement
is misunderstood by foreign countries, the belief being widely held that this
country’s concern is solely with the development of its material resources
while the cultural arts so highly valued abroad, are not of general interest to
Americans.
282

The magazine Musical America proclaimed in 1955 that American ballet companies who
performed abroad “proved more effective than tons of printed propaganda [in] dispelling

280
Letter from Sergei Denham to Chester Davis (Ford Foundation), July 11, 1951, Folder 3165, Box 32,
Sergei Denham Records of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, *ZBD-492, Jerome Robbins Dance Division,
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

281
Ballet Theatre Broadside. “D’Ya Ever Want to Jete?” 1950, Folder 4729, Box 69, American Ballet
Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

282
Francis J. Colligan, Acting Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Educational Exchange Service of the
International Information Agency, March 21, 1952, Folder 15, Box 1, Morton Baum Papers, *LPA Mss
1992-001, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

151

the ideas that might have lingered in the minds of some Frenchmen that America is still
groping in their cultural backwoods of a pioneering nation.”
283

In addition to outwardly expressing concerns with the reputation of the nation
abroad, a nation “misunderstood by foreign countries,” these comments also echoed
domestic concerns; they emphasized the importance of change, of supporting ballet and
culture as a means showing that “we” Americans “had something valid to say” and did
take an interest in culture. Ironically, given that these claims argued the need to prove the
United States as concerned with more than consumption and material goods, the
comments paradoxically commodified ballet; ballet companies provided entertainment
for a fee, and each dollar spent on consuming ballet challenged accusations of
materialism. The emphasis ballet companies placed on “Americans,” an undifferentiated
category of people within a nation of economic, racial, and religious diversity,
underscored another assiduous concern, this one pertaining to the maintenance of
democratic principles within the nation.

Domestic Anxieties
“Americans” defined the ballet audience as inclusive of anyone during a period of
racial and class strife, when non-white Americans demanded the rights and freedoms they
had fought for overseas and when men and women once considered working-class and
blue-collar increasingly claimed middle-class status. Particularly in the South, where Jim

283
Christina Thoresby, “American Salute to France Called More Effective Than Printed Propaganda,”
Musical America, July 1955, page numbers unclear, Clippings File, “New York City Ballet,” Jerome
Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

152

Crow laws segregated black and white Americans in most public spaces, racial injustice
called into question the egalitarianism of the nation. Working-class men and women
resisted the cultural authority of the elite and fought “real and symbolic struggles for
power,” using film, television, spectator sports and rock and roll to “transform marginal
class experiences into a mass culture offering leadership and guidance to all classes.”
284

In short, Americans in the postwar period became increasingly aware of, whether they be
in support of or against, a lack of democracy in the United States.
In celebrating the “masses” as their audience, ballet companies supposedly made
culture available to all. In 1945 Sergei Denham claimed of the Ballet Russe de Monte
Carlo, “We have struck such an interesting life here [New York City]… Here there is such
a democratic undercurrent. Here you have the tremendous crowds of these people who
can hardly afford it, but who come anyway – from the Bronx, Flatbush, Jackson Heights,
and New Jersey.”
285
Denham referenced the recently formed United Nations (1945), an
international organization committed to the preservation of peace and organized around
an assembly made up of representatives -- a structure distinctly similar to the American
form of government -- describing the company as a Société de Nations that promoted
cooperation and diversity.
286
Ballet Theater focused on geographic diversity, priding

284
George Lipsitz, Class and Culture in Cold War America: “A Rainbow at Midnight” (New York:
Praeger, 1981), 1, 192.

285
“The Dance: Ballet Russe de Gotham,” Newsweek, September 24, 1945, 111

286
Letter from the Ballet Foundation to the Ford Foundation, June 12, 1951, Folder 3164, Box 32, Sergei
Denham Records of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, *ZBD-492, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
153

itself in having reached more than three million people in the United States.
287
The
company “brought ballet to scores of American cities and to smaller communities where
it has often provided the only opportunity for the enjoyment of the performing arts.”
288

Companies also celebrated their adherence to democratic principles, something
American magazines believed absent in foreign countries. Once ballerinas in France and
the Soviet Union achieved high stature, their places in companies were supposedly
assured and permanent. Ballerinas were wined and dined by royalty, Czars, and wealthy
patrons and received jewels and favors. Life Magazine even described Russian ballerinas
as “patronized heavily by kings and dukes who like[d] ballerinas for reasons other than
their dancing…,” thereby recalling long standing beliefs that ballerinas engaged in sexual
relationships with theater-goers.
289

To the contrary, dancers in American companies had the opportunity to advance
quickly – from the corps-de-ballet, to solos, to principal roles – all through the merits of
hard work, a core American principle. Ballet Theatre noted:
Casting is governed by the rule: choose the dancer best suited for the role and
encourage every dancer to prove he or she is the one best suited. As a result
no choreographer feels pressure to use a particular dancer and stars grow up
from within Ballet Theatre’s ranks, with no frustration or curb to the ambition
of the humblest member of the corps de ballet.
290

287
“American in Character,” undated, Folder 4286, Box 61, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

288
Ballet Theater Fundraising letter, October 10, 1951, Folder 4311, Box 61, American Ballet Theater
Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.
289
“The Ballet: It Fills America’s New-Found Liking For Classical Dance and Spills Over Into Musical
Comedy,” Life Magazine, March 20, 1944, 75.

290
Ballet Theatre Press Book, Season 1947-1948, p.13, Clippings File, “American Ballet Theatre,” Jerome
Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

154

The company’s repertory included more than five hundred roles. Therefore, the dancers
also had many opportunities to serve as alternates and understudies to the established
dancers.
291
In a country where racial discrimination prevented career advancement, the
emphasis on hard work assured audiences of the sustenance of at least some core
American and democratic values.
In addition to appeasing social concerns about class and race inequity in the
United States, the emphasis companies placed on democracy also resonated with Cold
War concerns. Given that communism emphasized equality and shared resources, by
bringing ballet to diverse audiences ballet companies also defended capitalism from
accusations of elitism. Private organizations in the United States accomplished what the
government controlled in the Soviet Union. The support of major philanthropic
organizations, most founded by successful tycoons, businessmen representative of
corporate America, in the 1950s and 1960s doubly pointed to the merits of capitalism.
Americans profited from the wealth raised by a few individuals, they had access to
companies supported by the profits of a capitalist society. Capitalism made culture
available.

Cold War Anxieties
The cultural politics of the Cold War placed a premium on all forms of cultural
achievement, but on ballet especially. As the 40s came to a close, the “Iron Curtain”
descended on Eastern Europe. During the winter of 1947, when mass starvation,

291
Ibid.
155

unemployment, tremendous inflation, and coal shortages ravaged much of Eastern
Europe, the Soviets moved rapidly to exert political influence in unstable governmental
regimes. Using “a battery of unconventional weapons to nudge itself into the European
consciousness,” the Soviet Union attempted to “soften up opinions in its favour.” Culture
quickly emerged as one of the communist nation’s most powerful tools of political
persuasion. In 1945, while the Russians staged an impressive production of Gluck’s
Orpheus for the opening night of the State Opera, Soviet propaganda described the
United States as culturally barren, a “nation of gum-chewing, Chevy-drinking, Dupont-
sheathed philistines.”
292
The United States responded to the Soviet cultural offensive by sponsoring a
series of cultural exchange programs. In June 1947 the House of Representatives passed
the Smith-Mundt Act, which recognized “the impelling necessity of a ‘culture, education
and information war’ against ‘Soviet propaganda.’” Signed into law by Truman in 1948
as the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act, the program sought to
employ media such as print, radio, film, and exhibitions to produce a favorable image of
the U.S. abroad.
293
In 1947, when Congressmen Charles Howell proposed the
construction of the Smithsonian, he also described the “gigantic propaganda offensive
which Soviet Russia is conducting against the United States in the field of cultural

292
Saunders, The Cultural Cold War, 17-19.

293
Caute, The Dancer Defects, 24.

156

affairs.” Howell felt that “ways must be found to ‘trump’ the Soviet effort in the cultural
field.”
294
In 1954 Congress allocated funds in support of President Eisenhower’s
Emergency Fund for International Affairs. In addition, in 1958 President Eisenhower’s
Special Assistant on East-West Exchanges, William S.B. Lacy, and the Soviet
Ambassador to the United States, Gregory Z. Zarubin signed an agreement entitled
“Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics on Exchanges in the Cultural, Technical, and Educational Fields,” which
eventually became referred to as the Lacy-Zarubin agreement. Through tours of South
America, Asia, Europe, and the Soviet Union, American artists would act as cultural
ambassadors.
295

Beginning in the early 1950s various American cultural groups embarked on
international tours. The musical Porgy and Bess for example toured Europe in 1955. At
the invitation of the Soviet Minister of Culture, the cast spent nearly three weeks in
Russia. Under the aegis of Eisenhower’s International Exchange Program, the Boston
Symphony Orchestra toured Europe and the Soviet Union in 1956. That same year the
impresario Sol Hurok organized the tour of the Moiseyev Dance Company, which
performed highly stylized Russian folk dances, in the United States.
296
In 1958 a
Louisiana born and Texas raised American, Van Cliburn, won the prestigious

294
Howell, “A National Arts Program,” 264.

295
Prevots, Dance for Export, 69.

296
Prevots, Dance for Export, 70.

157

Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. He returned to the United
States to a tinker tape parade in New York City, while his album became the first classical
album to reach platinum status. The exportation of U.S. culture overseas supposedly
helped to dispel “America’s image as a Nation of boobs in the arts.”
297
Ballet companies employed rhetoric that played on these concerns. Representing
the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the Ballet Foundation appealed to the Ford Foundation
in 1951 for funds, imploring them to reconsider an earlier rejection of support:
I should have thought that the maintenance of peace, and the lessening of
world tensions both in present crisis situations and from a long-range
standpoint, must depend chiefly on the development of good-will between the
American people and the Russian people. We respectfully suggest that the
work of the Ballet Russe De Monte Carlo, Inc. should be considered by the
Ford Foundation not as an art project, but as an important aspect of fostering
friendly feelings among the American people for the finest traditions of
Russian culture.
298
Likewise, in 1952 Ballet Theatre claimed that one of its aims was to “counteract the
Communist-inspired belief that America is a country without culture and without an
artistic soul.”
299

Cold War era cultural politics climaxed in 1961 when Rudolf Nureyev defected
from the Soviet Union while on tour with the Bolshoi Ballet in Paris. Newspapers
described his daring escape from communism. Fleeing the KGB, flinging himself into the
arms of Parisian security, abandoning his family in Russia, choosing the West over life

297
Rasa Gustaitis. “U.S. Cultural Export Declared Low Graded,” Washington D.C. Post-Times-Herald,
September 10, 1963.

298
Correspondence, Watson Wasbburn of Ballet Foundation., June 30, 1951, Folder 3165, Box 32, Sergei
Denham Records of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, *ZBD-492, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

299
Lucia Chase, Fundraising Letter, November 15, 1952, Folder 4313, Box 61, American Ballet Theater
Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.
158

under the Soviet Union, Nureyev seemed to represent a rejection of the communist state –
a symbol of the freedoms of capitalist society.
300

George Balanchine's

return to Russia with the New York City Ballet in 1963 also
attracted considerable media attention. Identifying himself as an American, Balanchine
represented the renegade Russian artist who, nurtured by life in the United States,
attained artistic excellence.
301
Journalists described his endeavor in Russia as a
tremendous success. The company performed his new contemporary ballets, such as
Agon and Episodes, to an audience more accustomed to The Sleeping Beauty and A
Midsummer Night’ s Dream. According to the New York Times, the New York City Ballet
dared the Soviets to “scorn [Balanchine] as a gifted Russian son gone wrong in a
decadent capitalistic world.” “They came about as close as they could to proclaiming him
a prophet, which, of course, he is.”
302
Newsweek Magazine quoted the ballerina Melissa
Hayden as stating, “The U.S.S. R, which had always considered itself the cradle of ballet,
and Americans as crass capitalists, completely capitulated to Balanchine and the New
York City Ballet.”
303
The New York City ballet had conquered the home of classical
ballet.

300
Rudolf Nureyev will be discussed in much greater detail in chapter seven of this dissertation.

301
Balanchine identified himself as an American. Rosalind Massow, “Ballet: Are We Now the World’s
Best?” Parade , July 28, 1963, page number unknown, Clippings File, “Balanchine,” Jerome Robbins
Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

302
Allen Hughes, “Soviet Acclaim: The Balanchine Style Excites Russians,” New York Times, December 6,
1962.

303
Rasa Gustaitis. “U.S. Cultural Export Declared Low Graded,” Washington D.C. Post-Times-Herald,
September 10, 1963.

159

The Culture Boom
Consumer, domestic, international, and Cold War anxieties culminated in
producing what scholars sometimes refer to as a “culture boom” in the post-war period.
Indeed, the total number of opera performances in the United States increased from under
nine hundred in 1942-43 to 2,500 in 1949-1950 and 4,233 in 1959-1960.
304
Americans
spent as much as one hundred million dollars annually on classical records, attended
concerts by artists like pianist Van Cliburn, took music lessons, and built concert halls as
never before.
305
The U.S. government sponsored campaigns such as “buy American art
week,” New York department stores Macy’s and Gimble’s sold famous paintings on
credit and with financing, and the total number of art galleries in New York rose from
forty at the beginning of World War II to one hundred and fifty in 1946.
306
In 1961
Fortune Magazine identified over five thousand theater groups, twenty-thousand
dramatic workshops, seven hundred opera groups, two hundred dance companies, and
1,200 symphony orchestra groups.
307

Even in the midst of the cultural Renaissance, the popularity of ballet stands out
particularly prominently. According to the Readers Guide for Periodicals and Literature,

304
William Baumol and William Bowen, The Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma (New York:
Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), 432. On opera in the post-war period see also, John Dizikes, Opera in
America: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 485.

305
Karene Grad, “When High Culture Became Low Culture: Classical Music in Postwar America” (PhD
diss., Yale University, 2006), 2, 6.

306
Lynn Spigel, “High Culture in Low Places: Television and Modern Art, 1950-1970,” in Welcome to the
Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs ed. Lynn Spigel (Durham: Duke University Press,
2001), 270.

307
Alvin Toffler. “A Quantity of Culture,” Fortune, November 1961. Cited in, Grad, When High Culture
Becomes Low Culture, 72.
160

between 1947 and 1955 the number of articles dedicated to ballet in the popular press
increased 190%, from eighty-three articles to one hundred and fifty-eight. The Kamin
Dance Book Shop in New York, one of the largest and most well known specialty book
stores dealing with dance in the United States, began a mailing list that soon reached over
20,000 people.
308
In New York City opportunities to attend ballet performances increased
from one hundred and ten in 1951, to two hundred and thirty-three in 1955, to two
hundred and twenty-four in 1960, to three hundred and forty in 1964.
309
The total number
of professional ballet companies in the United States also increased from seventy-eight in
1959, to ninety-five in 1960, to one hundred and sixteen in 1964.
310

Ballet companies also toured the United States with greater frequency. The 1947-
1948 season included performances of Marina Svetlova and Company, the Slavinska-
Franklin Ballet, the Robert Joffrey Ballet Theatre, the Chicago Opera Ballet, and the
companies associated with Alicia Markova and Anton Dolin and with Nana Gollner and
Paul Petroff.
311
In 1952 major dance companies visited twenty-eight American cities,
giving a total of forty-six performances. Two years later they reached forty-six cities and
gave eighty-eight performances. By 1963 they toured two hundred and fifty-one cities
and gave two hundred and seventy-seven performances.
312

308
John Kobler, “The Exciting Rise of Ballet in America,” Holiday, November 1952, 106-107.

309
Baumol and Bowen, Performing Arts, 435.

310
Baumol and Bowen, Performing Arts, 433.
311
“Ballet Slump,” Newsweek, September 22, 1947, page number unknown, Clippings File, “Ballet
Theater,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

312
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 435.

161

The Royal Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Kirov Ballet, Danish Ballet, Les Ballets de
Paris, Paris Opera Ballet, National Ballet of Canada, and Inbal, a ballet company from
Israel, also toured the United States. In 1949 the Sadler’s Wells Ballet (which later
became the Royal Ballet) initiated what Newsweek Magazine called “the largest
transatlantic migration in ballet history.” Selling more than $170,000 in advance ticket
sales, the British company began its four week stay in the United States at the
Metropolitan Opera House and broke box office records visiting Washington D.C.,
Richmond, Virginia, Philadelphia, Chicago, East Lansing, Michigan, and Detroit. The
tour of the Saddler’s Wells Ballet included twelve productions, fifty tons of scenery,
costumes, and properties, and sixty dancers. The company presented full length ballets
such as The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake, and Cinderella, which was a change from the
tradition in the United States of performing single acts from the ballets. The tour was a
tremendous success.
313
When the company returned a year later in 1950, it reportedly
brought in $100,000 each of the seventeen weeks it toured the United States, visiting
some thirty cities.
314
During its 1957 tour, the company gave one hundred and twenty-
eight performances over the course of twenty-one weeks to an estimated half million
people in North America.
315

313
“Ballet Invasion,” Newsweek, October 17, 1949, 86.

314
“Furor for Fonteyn,” Newsweek, November 11, 1950, 88; “Return of Sadler’s Wells,” Newsweek,
September 18, 1950, 82.

315
“The Ballet the U.S. Cheers,” Newsweek, November 18, 1957, page number unknown, Clippings File,
“Royal Ballet,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

162

The tremendous popularity of ballet among all of these other cultural forms raises
important questions: Why ballet? How did ballet differ from other art forms? Why did
ballet, more so than opera, classical music, modern dance, or modern art, attract so much
attention in the post-war period?

Ballet Bodies
In 1962 the Stanford Research Institute conflated the performing arts and the
visual arts, estimating that “120 million people attend art-oriented events.”
316
By
defining culture in general, sweeping terms, the Institute revealed important information
about the pervasiveness of the culture boom in the United States. Unfortunately, this
definition of “culture” also overlooked the distinctive qualities of individual artistic
mediums. Based on the aural experience of listening, classical and symphonic music
entertains different sensory experiences than the visual medium of modern art, even than
the combined visual and aural experience of attending the opera. In addition to requiring
audiences to listen and see, dancing focuses on the control and strength of a moving
person. Representations of dance focus on the body. As a corporeal art, dancing,
therefore, provides unique insights into the concerns of its viewers, to the qualities most
prided in the post-war period.

316
“Long Range Planning Service,” Stanford Research Institute, 1962, p. 2. Papers of August Heckscher,
White House Staff Files, 1962 – 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. Cited in,
Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse, 270.
163

The political rivalries of the post-war
period placed a high premium on strength
and agility. Vigorous, robust, healthy
American bodies were a physical testimony
to the advantages of life in the United
States. According to popular literature,
ballet dancers epitomized these qualities.
They were not merely artists, but rather
athletes for whom professional success
depended on the cultivation of a strong
body. Articles such as

Life Magazine's 1949
expose “Ballplayers and Ballerinas Have a
Lot In Common,” drew parallels between
dancers and professional athletes.
Photographs showed images of ballerinas superimposed over images of ball players,
comparing a pitcher’s stance to that of a ballerina drawn up on her toes in fifth
position.”
317
(See Figure 26) An article in 1952 described the New York City Ballet as
“like a top football team.”
318
Ballet even required a blend of skill and strength that

317
“Ballplayers And Ballerinas Have A Lot in Common,” Life Magazine, Apri11, 1949, 23.

318
“Tops in the Dance: New York’s Brilliant Ballet Becomes an Ambassador of U.S. Culture,” Life
Magazine, May 12, 1952, 90.

Figure 26 “Speaking of Pictures,” Life Magazine,
April 11, 1949, 23. Glen Benson, a Brooklyn
Dodger tryout and Mary Ellen Moylan of the New
York City Ballet.
164

Figure 27 Walt Davis works his jumping technique.
“Ballet Helps Texan Make Big Jump,” Life
Magazine, July 13, 1953, 56.
rendered it useful to professional
sportsmen; the six foot eight inch
Olympic high jump athlete, Walt Davis,
turned to ballet to improve his
performance.
319
(See Figure 27)
In addition to strength, these
images and articles also associated ballet
with agility and team spirit. They
described dancers as highly skilled, as
possessing the ability to move and
maneuver with ease, to soar (literally and figuratively) to new heights. Members of a
team, ballet dancers contributed to the efforts of a collective performing company. Their
careers involved independence and individualism, qualities lauded in the United States
since the colonial period, but also cooperation and collectivisism, qualities that resonated
with the Soviet-American, and Euro-American rivalries that pitted capitalism against
communism and socialism.
Other key attributes frequently associated with American ballet dancers included
sacrifice, endurance and stamina. Compared to dancers in Russia, the “young and lovely”
“ballet beauties” of the United States faced harsh lives. Russian women supposedly
traveled with a retinue of servants, stayed at estates and palaces, wore ornate jewelry on
stage while they danced, and were the mistresses of czars. They were part of an informal

319
“Ballet Helps Texan Make Big Jump,” Life Magazine, July 13, 1953, 54-57.
165

aristocracy. American ballerinas, on the other hand, supposedly led a “less cloistered
life,” never reaching the “champagne-in-slipper stage” of their Russian colleagues. They
were “pretty earthy people” who worked hard and ate heavily.
320
As another journalist
reported, American ballet dancers “lead a hard life.” They were always hungry, were paid
very little, but willingly scrimped on material things in order to pursue their devotion to
ballet.
321
Earning very little, they spent what they had on room and board, makeup,
tights, and ballet slippers.
322
They were dedicated and capable of working hard. In other
words, ballet dancers represented the anti-thesis of materialism; their concern was with
the production of their art, not the accumulation of things or wealth.
Ballet dancers also resonated with several Cold War era concerns. Associated with
Russian dancers, particularly Pavlova, Nijinsky, and the Ballet Russes companies in the
United States, ballet represented an arena in which Soviet-American rivalries could play
out. By mastering ballet, American artists and companies demonstrated superiority over
the Soviet system. Ballet was more than art; it embodied competition. It was a
competitive art vested with political significance.

320
“Ballet Beauties: American Company Has Young and Lovely Dancers,” Life Magazine, November 3,
1947, 99.

321
“Ballet Girls On Tour: Young Dancers Lead A Hard Life, But They Love It,” Life Magazine, December
3, 1945, 12

322
“Ballet Beauties: American Company Has Young and Lovely Dancers,” Life Magazine, November 3,
1947, 99.
166

Figure 28 Edwina Seaver with Mari Jeanne leaping
in front of her. “Ballet Goes American,” Life
Magazine, November 11, 1940, 59.
Ballet also presented American
women as delicate, graceful, and
beautiful, the opposite of the bulky, hard-
working Soviet women so commonly
described in American popular literature.
In 1940

Life Magazine photographed
several healthy, well muscled young
women, often caught midair, performing
elegant leaps. (See Figure 28) With their
long loose hair often flowing down their backs, the women demonstrated more than just
flexibility and athleticism; they also represented graceful poised femininity. These were
young women who, as one byline claimed, devoted their whole life to ballet, and used
their spare time to study other areas of culture. The education of twelve-year-old ballerina
Edwina Seaver included “rigorous physical discipline.” She executed “strenuous ballet
steps” and mastered “intricate muscular control.” At the same time, she also trained her
ear, studied the piano, and painted watercolors.
323
A symbol of American youth and
femininity, Edwina Seaver worked hard, appreciated and studied culture, and possessed a
healthy body; she was elegant, educated, and disciplined.
Curiously, given the association of ballet with eating disorders in the twenty-first
century, popular literature in the 1940s and 1950s also frequently described dancers as
possessing ravenous appetites. They supposedly spent their rare moments away from

323
“Ballet Goes American,” Life Magazine, November 11, 1940, 59-62.
167

ballet thinking about food.
324
They consumed large quantities of red meat, and they dined
on hamburgers, bologna sandwiches, and malted milks.
325
Life Magazine even noted that
some “cynics” attributed the vigor of American dancers to their consumption of steak.
326
By emphasizing access to food, and particularly meat, these articles not only further
codified dancers as athletes, but also reminded readers of the bounty available in the
United States, so frequently lacking in Europe and the Soviet Union. The emphasis on
control and hunger, of possessing hunger but controlling the desire to eat, may also have
echoed domestic concerns pertaining to the containment of female sexuality.
327

Finally, ballet gave physical form to an emerging national identity that
counterbalanced strength with gendered qualities like benevolence. In the wake of World
War II Americans began to imagine the United States not as aggressive, but as responsive
– a benign and involuntary leader.
328
In the context of the nation's tremendous economic
and political power, a presence which produced conflict and resentment in many areas of
the world, the portrayal of the nation as feminine and cultured had profound meaning.
“Uncle Sam” was replaced by a conception of the nation as passive, sensitive, and
female. Americans were benevolent, graceful, and moral. They didn’t seek out

324
“Ballet Girls On Tour: Young Dancers Lead a Hard Life, But They Love It,” Life Magazine, December
3, 1945, 129-130+.

325
“Ballet Beauties: American Company Has Young and Lovely Dancers,” Life Magazine, November 3,
1947, 99.

326
“Tops in the Dance: New York’s Brilliant Ballet Becomes an Ambassador of U.S. Culture” Life
Magazine, May 12, 1952, 90-91.

327
Containment and female sexuality with be discussed in greater detail in chapter 6.

328
Marilyn Young, “The Age of Global Power,” in Rethinking American History in a Global Age ed.
Thomas Bender (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 274-294.
168

confrontation. Rather, they adopted a defensive stance, responding reluctantly to acts of
aggression. As a symbol of American culture, the ballerina embodied the refinement and
elegance that Americans sought to claim as a central part of their national identity.

Conclusion
An American who opened a magazine in the 1940s and 1950s and read about
ballet, or who opened a fundraising letter and read its appeals for donations, did not think
to themselves, “Americans need to trump the Soviets. I should support ballet.” Their
interest in ballet was far more complicated. Over the course of two decades the
representation of ballet in American culture shifted, responding to the political and social
milieu of the era. A physical art form, ballet more so than other cultural mediums, visibly
manifested contemporary concerns. Ballet became current; it came, due in large part to
the efforts of ballet companies formed during the artistic Renaissance in New York during
and after World War II, to resonate with Americans. They took interest in ballet because it
stood for many of the qualities they desired: beauty, control, strength refinement,
elegance, and culture.

169

CHAPTER 4
THE AMERICAN BALLET COMMUNITY:
PARTICIPATION AND APPRECIATION
In 1977 actresses Ann Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine, Russian ballet defector,
Mikhail Baryshnikov, and budding New York City Ballet dancer, Leslie Brown, starred in
the Academy Award winning film, The Turning Point. Now a cult favorite among ballet
students and fans, The Turning Point portrayed the careers of two dancers. One
successfully pursued a career dancing for one of the foremost companies in the world,
and the other retired at a young age to have a family and run her own dance studio in
Texas. Earning eleven Oscar nominations, The Turning Point’ s tremendous success and
wide-spread popularity provides several insights into the status of ballet and the nature of
the ballet community in the United States in the postwar period.
329

First, The Turning Point underscores the glamour associated with ballet in 1977.
In the film a beautiful young woman (Brown) auditions and is accepted to dance at a
highly competitive school and for a demanding dance company. She studies with
charismatic Russian dance instructors, one of whom is played by the famous retired
Ballet Russes dancer, Alexandra Danilova. She is charmed by a fascinating and seductive
male partner (Baryshnikov). The world of ballet revealed in this film is a place of beauty,
rivalry, intrigue, and seduction. It is, according to a contemporary preview, “an

329
For information on the cast and production of The Turning Point, movie trailers, and a list of nomination
and awards see, the Internet Movie Database, “The Turning Point,” Internet Movie Database,
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076843/ (Accessed June 14, 2010).
170

extraordinary view of a world so glamorous, so exciting, so demanding that only a few
can survive.”
330

The Turning Point also, however, depicts a country where ballet schools thrive.
Upon getting pregnant, Deedee (MacLaine) moved to Texas with her husband, also a
dancer, and opened a ballet school. Among her many students, she trained her son and
daughter. Emilia (Brown), her daughter, eventually moved to New York City to study at a
prestigious ballet school attended by women from across the country. The United States
is a country where Deedee’s daughter could receive ballet training at a high enough level
to earn a professional career dancing with a world-renowned company and where her son
could, though risking some social stigma for participating in an art increasingly
associated with girls, rush from baseball practices to ballet lessons.
The Turning Point recognized the ubiquity of ballet schools in the United States,
the frequency with which women -- occasionally young men -- studied ballet, and the
emergence of a national and well-connected ballet community. At the same time, the film
also defined participation in the culture boom of the post-war era in broad and inclusive
terms, pointing to a major flaw in early conceptualizations of that culture boom.
In 1966 economists William Baumol and William Bowen published the results of
an extensive survey of the performing arts in the United States and defined the culture
boom very differently. Baumol and Bowen challenged contemporary reports that
described the culture boom as wide-reaching and expansive. Four years prior the Stanford

330
Preview located at, the Internet Movie Database, “The Turning Point,” Internet Movie Database,
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi4143644953/ (Accessed June 14, 2010).

171

Research Institute deduced that consumer spending on the arts had increased one hundred
and thirty percent between 1953 and 1960, “twice as fast as spending on all recreation,
and better than six times as fast as outlays for spectator sports or admissions to
movies.”
331
Two years after that, Alvin Toffler, a regular contributor to Fortune
Magazine who commented on labor issues, claimed that the arts in the United States had
been “liberated from their prison cell and brought into the sunlight.”

According to Toffler,
attendance at the symphony reached “phenomenal” levels, theaters bubbled with vitality,
and spending on and donations to the arts rose seventy percent between 1954 and
1964.
332
By these accounts, the 1950s and 1960s were a period of unprecedented and
wide-spread growth in the arts in the United States.
Baumol and Bowen argued that the scope of the boom was far less expansive than
suggested by Toffler and the Stanford Institute. They concluded that the culture boom
applied to only a very narrow segment of the population. Audiences across all the
performing arts possessed high levels of education and income. In ballet, roughly sixty-
four percent of men and sixty-three percent of the women who attended performances
were professionals; fifty-four percent of men and thirty-six percent of women possessed
graduate training; eighty-nine percent possessed an income over $5,000; and the median

331
Arnold Mitchell, “Marketing the Arts,” (address delivered at the Stanford Research Institute, Menlo
Park, California, November 8, 1962). Cited in, William Baumol and William Bowen, The Performing
Arts: The Economic Dilemma (New York: Twentieth Century Fund, 1966), 37.

332
Alvin Toffler, The Culture Consumers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1964). Cited in, Baumol and
William Bowen, The Performing Arts, 36.

172

family income of arts patrons was $10,947, more than twice the median family income of
Americans in 1960, which was $5,976.
333
Baumol and Bowen also found that arts audiences were almost exclusively
“white- collar.” In conducting interviews with an audience attending the Alvin Ailey
Dance Theatre, they found that only seven percent were “blue-collar.” Three other
surveys of similar performances identified zero members of the audience as blue-collar.
The larger results of the Ailey survey were due to the company’s large black following.
334

Based on these findings, Baumol and Bowen deduced that the primary participants of the
culture boom were professional white, well-educated, and wealthy Americans.
Two problems arise in evaluating Baumol and Bowen’s conclusions. First, the
economists didn’t explain how interviewers assessed the class background of
audiences.
335
Few Americans in the post-war period, even factory workers, perceived
themselves as “working” or “laboring” class. A 1940 Roper Poll found that seventy-nine
percent of Americans identified themselves as “middle-class.” Thus a survey that relied
on self-identification of class background would have produced questionable results.
336

Second, Baumol and Bowen failed to recognize the participation of Americans in cultural

333
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 458-459. For additional information on the make-up of arts
audiences in the 1960s and 1970s see, Paul DiMaggio and Michael Useem, “Cultural Democracy in a
Period of Cultural Expansion: The Social Composition of Arts Audiences in the United States,” in
Performers and Performances, ed. Jack B. Kamerman and Rosanne Martorella (New York: Praeger
Publishers, 1983), 199 – 225.

334
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 85.

335
Ibid.

336
John Gilkeson, Middle Class Providence, 1820 – 1940 (New Haven: Princeton University Press, 1986),
3. On class antagonisms in the 1940s see also, George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in
the 1940s (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994).

173

activities at a local level. Although they recognized an “increasing grassroots interests in
the arts,” they focused their research primarily on major professional institutions in
metropolitan areas.
337
Baumol and Bowen dealt minimally with the many regional and
community based organizations that appeared across the United States in the post-war
period. By failing to consider Americans who lacked the means to attend performances
or to donate money to their support, Baumol and Bowen especially ignored the
participation of non-white Americans, particularly black-Americans, in the culture boom.
They overlooked the involvement of thousands of American men, women, and children.
Recent historical scholarship has begun to expand Baumol and Bowen’s definition
of participation. In her PhD dissertation on classical music, historian Karene Grad
identifies the widespread consumption of classical music via records and television.
338

Likewise, historian Lynn Spigel reveals the dissemination of modern art to the American
public via television and media.
339
These scholars identify consumption as an important
means of expressing interest in and engaging with high culture. Examining the growth of
ballet in the United States in the same period further expands this definition. It recognizes

337
Baumol and Bowen based their conclusions on data collected in the Twentieth Century Fund Alliance
Surveys, conducted between September 1963 and March 1965. The survey examined audiences for dance
performances by Alvin Ailey Dance Theater, Merce Cunningham, Martha Graham and her Dance
Company, New York City Ballet, Alwin Nikolais Dance Company and Paul Taylor Dance Company. For
opera it examined performances by the Brooklyn Opera Company, the Houston Grand Opera Association,
the New York City Opera, and the Opera Group of Boston. For classical music the survey examined a
slightly broader pool of performances, including twelve “major orchestras” such as the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and two metropolitan
orchestras, the Oklahoma City Orchestra and the Portland Symphony Orchestra. Baumol and Bowen, The
Performing Arts, 449 – 453.Comment on regional ballet, p. 8.

338
Karene Grad, “When High Culture Became Low Culture: Classical Music in Postwar America” (PhD
diss., Yale University, 2006).

339
Lynn Spigel, “High Culture in Low Places: Television and Modern Art, 1950 – 1970,” in Welcome to
the Dream House: Popular Culture and Postwar Suburbs ed. Lynn Spigel (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2001), 270.
174

students who took ballet lessons, mothers who sewed costumes for their daughters,
fathers who built sets for recitals, local businesses that sponsored festivals, and
participation in regional companies and festivals as forms of involvement in the culture
boom. In short, tracing the expansion of ballet in the United States in the post-war period
demonstrates the pervasiveness of the culture boom, the centrality of regional arts
programs, and the wide-reaching nature of the culture boom.
* * * *
As The Turning Point suggests, by 1977 ballet thrived in all regions of the United
States. Students living near any major city and often in much smaller communities could
take ballet lessons. They performed in recitals, attended dance camps, participated in
ballet festivals, took master classes with professional ballet dancers, attended lectures and
panels by the nation’s foremost choreographers, and became members of regional ballet
companies. The ballet community in the United States was expansive, wide-reaching, and
inclusive, dramatically different from its configuration four decades prior.
At the onset of World War II, only major metropolitan areas, particularly New
York and Los Angeles, could sustain ballet schools. Ballet companies toured the United
States, but often gave only a few performances in each city. What little knowledge most
Americans had of ballet came almost entirely from the experience of viewing it in
popular theatrical productions, at the movies, or in sporadic performances by celebrated
individuals like Fanny Elssler, Ana Pavlova, and Vaslav Nijinsky. Most Americans
viewed ballet from afar, as spectators. By the mid-60s, however, many Americans
actively participated in ballet.
175

In the two and half decades between World War II and the establishment of the
National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, a national, well-connected, and broad reaching
ballet community involving thousands of Americans developed in the United States.
Whereas before the war that community included professional dancers, choreographers,
and instructors, wealthy patrons, and students living primarily in cities such as New York,
Boston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, the community now included patrons and fans
from throughout the United States, children, particularly little girls, and amateur and
regional ballet companies. The community of ballet in the United States expanded and
became increasingly diverse.
Once prevalent in burlesque, vaudeville, and film productions in the United States
and a central component of American popular culture, ballet dancing had retreated into
elite venues in the early twentieth century. In the 1940s and 1950s it reemerged – this
time as a form of high culture with a popular following. Ballet stood for elite, highbrow
culture but appealed to audiences to an extent only comparable to its heyday in the
nineteenth century.

Professional Ballet Companies and the Identification of New Patrons
The extension of the ballet community across the United States began with the
fundraising activities of the nation’s two most prominent ballet companies, Ballet Theatre
and Ballet Society, the membership based organization that became affiliated with the
City Center of New York in 1948 and produced the New York City Ballet. Due to dire
financial strains, both organizations immediately pursued new avenues of funding.
176

From the 1930s onward major arts institutions in the United States looked to
expand their base of support. Patronage to the Metropolitan Opera Company, one of the
nation’s preeminent arts institutions that had for twenty years operated without any
deficit, lost $14,743 in 1929. A year later, that deficit increased to $322,231.
Subscriptions to the opera decreased five percent in 1930 and thirty percent in 1932.
According to the opera’s director, Guilio Gatti- Casazza, “The wealthy subscribers
formed the bulk of subscribers who cancelled,” while the general public’s rate of
subscription remained about the same.
340
The opera would only survive if it could garner
support from new patrons. As a result, in 1935 the Metropolitan Opera Guild redirected
fundraising efforts from wealthy patrons and corporations to the general public.
Undoubtedly influenced by the proletarianism of the 1930s and the emphasis on public
art, the Metropolitan Opera tried to take opera out of the hands of the “wealthy few” and
put it into the hands of an “appreciative public.” Gatti-Casazza and opera singer
Geraldine Farrar even appealed directly to the public on the radio for support.
341

In 1946 Kirstein and Balanchine attempted to raise funds for ballet by forming a
membership based organization designed to support ballet. Self-described as the “parent
and supporting arm of the New York City Ballet,” Ballet Society sought to “collect and
disseminate to its members, through periodic newsletters and conferences, information
regarding pending legislation, civic projects, types of local support to be solicited, new

340
John Dizikes, Opera in America: A Cultural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 435 -
436.

341
Dizikes, Opera in America, 435 - 436.

177

works, and matters of general concern to the world of dance.”
342
Ballet Society had six
primary goals: supporting new presentations, co-operating with groups around the
country, publicizing books and literature on dance, producing and distributing dance
films, publicizing albums of dance music, and awarding fellowships to dancers and
choreographers. Upon its first mass mailing in 1946-1947 Ballet Society attracted eight
hundred individuals.
343
A year later Ballet Theatre formed a similar non-profit educational trust, the Ballet
Theater Foundation. The Foundation hoped “to stimulate interest in those who have not
hitherto been friends of the Ballet… and to generally widen the base of popular support.”
The Foundation initially consisted of an elite group of artists, philanthropists,
entrepreneurs, and socialites – some of the most influential and active members of the
New York community. The Foundation was cofounded by Mrs. Wales Latham, a New
York Society matron who worked with the British war relief agency, Bundles for Britain,
and Common Cause, focusing on the revitalization of democracy in the United States and
Europe, and Carleton Smith, a professor of economics and trade, and a war time
journalist, musicologist, and philanthropist. Other early supporters of the Foundation
included composers Aaron Copland, John Alden Carpenter, and Leonard Bernstein; stage

342
Memorandum, “Discussion at the Meeting of Ballet Society, Inc.,” October 10, 1960, Folder 64, Box 2,
New York City Center Records, 1948-1968, MGZMD 38, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.

343
Lincoln Kirstein, The New York City Ballet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973), 81.

178

designer Jo Mielziner; architect Henry Clifford; renowned lawyer John F. Wharton; and
society ladies Mrs. Louisine Tcherepnine and Mrs. Alexander McLanahan.
344

The Foundation targeted two audiences. First, it pursued members from among
men and women of national standing, whose prestige in the business and financial worlds
would instill confidence in prospective donors. It sought to identify “key people in cities
all across the country with whom we can work to establish permanent Ballet Foundation
committees and who will support the ballet on a continuing and ever broadening basis.”
Potential members included the chairmen of Metropolitan Life Insurance, International
Business Machines, and Pepsi-Cola, as well as Nelson Rockefeller and James W.
Gerhard.
345
Second, the Foundation targeted the general public, hoping to reach them by
forming a nation-wide theater guild similar to that of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.
On October 18, 1947 John Martin and Walter Terry drew national attention to
Ballet Theatre’s proposed venture, publishing articles announcing the Foundation in the
the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. They described the Foundation’s
agenda to “reach the general public.” In the weeks following the first public
announcement, letters in support of the Foundation poured into New York. Respondents
expressed a sincere interest in supporting ballet and in joining the national guild. They

344
On members of the Ballet Theatre Foundation see, File 4289, Box 61, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
For information on Latham and Smith see, Contemporary Authors Online (Gale, 2007). Reproduced in
Biography Resource Center (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale, 2007).

345
See patronesses list, Folder 4280, and patrons, Folder 4289, Box 61, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

179

requested additional information, and they noted that they hoped to contribute to the
company.
346

Operating under the premise that most Americans preferred to donate money to
organizations which benefited their own community, local branches of the Foundation
planned charitable events for community patrons. In 1949 the Cincinnati branch of the
Foundation sponsored a ball, which featured a floor show performed by members of the
company at the Hall of Mirrors at the Netherland Plaza Hotel.
347
Drawing attendance
primarily from the wealthy elite, the “ball” hinted at a tension within the Foundation. The
Foundation’s fundraising efforts, though supposedly aimed at a general public, remained
above the means of many fans, who simply were unable to make large financial
contributions.
Letters to the Foundation described the desires of interested fans to “contribute in
some small way” and at times expressed frustration at being unable to meet the
organizations starting membership.
348
One woman wrote:

346
See, Richard Yates to Ballet Theatre Foundation, May 1947, Folder 4294, Box 61; Oma Hartstock to
Ballet Theatre Foundation, May 20, 1947, Folder 4294, Box 61, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

347
“Ballet Theatre Foundation News: An Informal News Letter to Members of the Foundation,” June 15,
1949, Folder 4306, Box 62, American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

348
John Schaffner to Ballet Theatre Foundation, May 19, 1947, Folder 4294, Box 61, American Ballet
Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

180

As a balletomane who would rather watch ballet than eat, I fully agree with
you that it is important that a first-rate company such as yours be supported
adequately, and no doubt the best way is by the very people who come to see
you. But have a heart! I would be very happy to contribute, say $2.00 to your
organization …. but I am afraid that I, and I am sure, many others like me,
cannot afford to pay $10.00 which is your lowest stipulation. True you offer
attractive returns for your membership, but perhaps you would work
something out for smaller amounts of money.
349

This woman’s letter revealed that interest in ballet existed at many socio-economic levels
in the United States and that interest in ballet transcended the upper classes and wealthy.
The Ballet Theatre Foundation would continue to pursue “immediate
contributions from special people.” These patrons would “work to establish permanent
Ballet Foundation committees” and would work to “support the ballet on a continuing
and ever broadening basis.”
350
The Foundations also, however, would seek to draw
support from a much wider audience. In 1950 still reeling from the cancellation of the
1948/1949 of Ballet Theatre, Lucia Chase proposed building financial support for the
company from what might be called “the bottom up.”
351

Chase recommended a series of tactics designed to involve middle and working-
class Americans in the support of the ballet. A mailing list known as a “broadside,” which
consisted of addresses collected from such sites as book clubs and magazine subscription
lists, would initially recruit minimum donations of one dollar. Other efforts to reach

349
Letter from Mrs. Helen Geller to Mrs. Natalie Paine, October 15, 194, Folder 4294, Box 60, American
Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts.

350
An Outline of a Plan to Raise Money for Ballet Theatre,” by Lucia Chase, 1950. Folder 4307, Box 61,
American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.

351
Ibid.

181

popular audiences might include announcements on the radio, car cards and one sheets,
discussion in free newspapers, and television appearances. The Foundation would also
sponsor educational programs designed to cultivate new interest in ballet. By cooperating
with community organizations, women’s clubs, and chambers of commerce, the
Foundation would coordinate lectures, exhibitions, and children’s matinees. Adult
programs would focus on high school students in cities where the company performed.
Traveling exhibitions on the history of the company would be accompanied by lectures
by the dancers. In addition, students would compete to raise funds for the company, with
high yielding students receiving tickets to the ballet and admittance back stage. These
programs would nurture a young audience who would support the company in the
coming years.
352

Chase believed that individuals who supported the ballet financially gained a
sense of participation in its community and culture and would support the company in
attendance as well as funding. The contemporary impresario Sol Hurok reiterated these
viewpoints, claiming, “Ballet, in order to exist, must draw its chief support from the mass
of theatregoers, from the general amusement-loving public, those who like to go to a
‘show.’”
353
The “many smaller contributions from the many loyal supporters of Ballet

352
Ibid.

353
Sol Hurok, S. Hurok Presents the World of Ballet (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1955), 145.

182

Theatre” formed both the “backbone of the fund” and “moral support to the dancers and
directors in their endeavor to produce the best in ballet for Americans.”
354

The Ballet Theatre programs were only modestly successful in procuring funds.
By 1949 the Ballet Theatre Foundation had recruited only three hundred and twenty-three
members and collected only $63,000.
355
The Foundation did, nevertheless, play an
important role in the formation of the ballet community. It succeeded in drawing public
attention to ballet. In the absence of monetary donations, many people promised to attend
performances and to recruit friends to join them. For example, one letter stated:
It is with real regret that this impecunious young couple must refrain from an
immediate contribution to the Foundation. High Cost of Living, you know –
but we’ll be sure to line up our friends at the box office, and to do what we
can until our capacity to contribute to cause [sic] for which we feel so deeply
increases. Please accept, at least, our best wishes for success in your
venture.
356

Letters such as this reveal that the Foundation made patrons feel a part of a community.
United behind a “cause,” they were part of a larger network of fundraising and support.
Recognizing their financial limitations, the “impecunious couple” above promised to do
what they could to support ballet – they brought friends.
The Ballet Theatre Foundation intended to open branches in Chicago, Boston,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toledo, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Fort Worth,

354
Ballet Theater Foundation Fundraising letter, October 10, 1951, Folder 4311, Box 61, American Ballet
Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

355
Untitled document, Folder 4305, Box 61,, American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome
Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

356
Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Karish to Ballet Theatre Foundation, October 1947, Folder 4294, Box 61,
American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.

183

Houston, Los Angeles, Dayton, Columbus, Louisville, and South Bend. Company
managers hoped that by the 1958-1959 season local chapters of the Foundation would
exist in all cities on the company’s tour.
357
Regardless of their financial failures, the
Foundations helped to cultivate interest in ballet.
In 1948 Ballet Society expanded its audience from members to the general public
by becoming affiliated with the recently renovated City Center of New York. Following
its debut on December 11, 1943, the City Center hosted the New York Philharmonic and
later presented performances by the New York City Opera, the New York City Theatre
Company, and, between 1944 and 1948, the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
358

When Ballet Theatre rejected the Center’s invitation to become a constituent, the
dancers of Ballet Society began performing on Monday and Tuesday nights. The Opera,
which provided an additional source of employment to the dancers, performed on the
more preferential evenings of Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
359
However, when
the company continued to fill only fifty percent of the theater, competing with the
impending debut of the Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo at the Metropolitan Opera, the
Director of the Center, Morton Baum, recommended giving a one week season apart from
the Opera. City Center provided Ballet Society’s dancers stable employment, freed the
company from the demands of touring, from the high financial costs associated with

357
Ballet Theatre Foundation Report, Folder 4296, Box 61, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

358
The Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo abandoned City Center in 1948 for the more prestigious Metropolitan
Opera House. Jack Anderson, The One and Only: The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo (New York: Dance
Horizons, 1981), 139.

359
“Ballet for a City,” Newsweek, October 25, 1948, 95. See also, Kirstein, The New York City Ballet, 88.

184

transporting dancers, sets, costumes, and musicians and from the harsh and exhausting
physical demands those tours placed on dancers. By creating a season of ballet apart from
the opera, City Center also led to the formation of the New York City Ballet.
360
The
New York City Ballet’s affiliation with City Center also meant that company directors
could direct outreach programs in other directions, particularly towards drawing students
from the many ballet schools that emerged throughout the United States in the 1940s and
1950s.

An organization similar to the Ballet Theatre Foundation supported the Ballet
Russes de Monte Carlo. A non-profit tax exempt membership corporation, self described
as a “tax-exempt educational trust,” the Ballet Foundation, of whom Sergei Denham was
the President and Managing Director, sponsored Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo
productions. Though much less is known about the Foundation, its existence shows that
the Ballet Theatre Foundation and Ballet Society were not alone in their efforts to
cultivate interest in ballet in the United States and to seek new patrons.
361

Suburb, Schools, and Students
Ballet represented one of several forms of dance popular in the 1940s and 1950s.
Dance Magazine frequently included articles and cover photographs dealing with ice

360
The building that became City Center was constructed twenty years prior and originally served as a
meeting hall for the members of the Ancient Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. It was renovated
under the term of Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia and seated 2,750 people. “History,” New York City Center,
http://www.nycitycenter.org/content/about/history.aspx.

361
The Ballet Foundation to the Ford Foundation, June 12, 1951, Folder 3164, Box 32, Sergei Denham
Records of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, *ZBD-492, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.

185

skating, Spanish dancing, ballroom dancing, tap dancing, social dances, and even roller
skating. Readers could learn to perform the “Dopey,” a popular social dance, by studying
images and reading directions.
362
Adults took ballroom dancing lessons at Arthur Murray
Studios across the country. Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Ginger Rogers danced beautiful
sequences in many films. And after winning medals in the 1928, 1932, and 1936
Olympics, the Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henning embarked on a successful career
in Hollywood films bringing increased visibility and attention to ice dance. Large shows
engaging casts of hundreds of skaters filled arenas such as in the production of Ice Follies
(1944) at Madison Square Garden. Frequently referred to as ballets, ice dances often
appropriated the aesthetics of ballet, dressing performers in costumes reminiscent of the
white tutus of the Romantic era.
363

Advertisements in Dance Magazine in the 1940s reveal a change in the popularity
of the dance forms practiced in the United States In, March 1937, seventeen of the
schools that advertised in Dance Magazine offered non-ballet related dance forms, while
only eight schools explicitly advertised ballet. The following month twice as many ads,
eighteen versus nine, existed for non-ballet related dance schools as for ballet schools.
This balance began to tip in the years framing World War II. In January, 1939, there were
twenty-eight dance schools listed to twenty ballet schools. By December, 1943, ballet
surpassed these other dance forms, constituting eighteen of the thirty-three schools
advertising in the magazine. And by December, 1950, in a reversal of the numbers of

362
“Everyone’s Doin’ the Dopey,” Dance Magazine, May 1944, 18-19, 33.

363
“1944 Ice Follies,” Dance Magazine, December 1943, 17; Robert Ingram, “The Golden Gate Ice
Ballet,” Dance Magazine, December 1943, 10-11, 28.
186

schools listed in 1937, ballet schools outlisted other dance schools, twenty-four to ten.
While these results could reflect change in the readership and constituency of the
magazine, as the primary trade magazine for dance in the United States and one of the
few widely circulated sources of information on dance in this country, Dance Magazine’ s
advertisements can also be interpreted as indicating a change in the kind of dancing
favored and in demand by the nation’s youth.
Several qualities may have distinguished ballet from these other dance forms.
Based on precision and control, ballet may have helped to calm fears of unleashed power
and atomic war. The beauty and grace of ballet may also have provided an appealing
contrast to the bloodshed of World War II and later the Korean War. With its promise of
grace and poise ballet, even more so than other forms of dance, seemed an ideal activity
for young women.
Indeed, the sectors of the ballet community to increase most dramatically in the
United States during the 1940s and 1950s consisted of young women and girls, their
siblings, and their parents. Surveys of articles addressed to children or dealing with
children in Dance Magazine between the late 1930s and the 1950s reveal a gradual shift
towards younger audiences. The March 1937 issue of Dance Magazine contained no
articles addressed towards children and the April 1937 issue contained only one article
dealing with dance camps and including photos of children and teenagers.
364
But by
August 1950 the intended readership appeared to change. Dance Magazine included
articles on a young ballet student in Sweden, “Sweden’s Little Princess,” another article,

364
Dance Magazine, March 1937, April 1937.

187

Figure 30 Advertisement,
“Anthony Costumes," Dance
Magazine, February 1958, 94. By
the late 50s most costume
companies marketed to children.
Figure 31 Advertisement,
“Califone,” Dance Magazine,
January 1958, 67
“Young Dancers in Action,” and a section written specifically for young dancers.
365
By
1958 the magazine featured articles like “The Training of Soviet Dancers” and “A
Valentine Story: The Love Match, A Valentine of Young Dancers.” The latter article
included several photographs of young women and girls dancing and left the objects of
love referred to in the “match” unidentified.
366
In either case, ballet clearly represented an
appropriate and desirable quality for girls.
Advertisements that in the 1930s usually featured adult women, now increasingly
included children, who appeared in 1958 in ads for Daisytog's leotards, Califone
phonographs, and Anthony Recital Costumes.
367
(See Figures 29, 30, and 31)

365
Holger Lundbergh, “Sweden’s Little Princess,” Dance Magazine, August 1950, 19; “Young Dancer
Section,” Dance Magazine, December 1950, 34-36.

366
Mary Skeaping, “The Training of Soviet Dancers,” Dance Magazine, January 1958, 84-86, 88; “A
Valentine Story: The Love Match: A Young Valentine of Lovers,” Dance Magazine, February 1958, 54-56.

367
Advertisement, “Daisytogs,” Dance Magazine, January 1958, 7; Advertisement, “Califone,” Dance
Magazine, January 1958, 67; Advertisement, “Recital Costumes,” Dance Magazine, January 1958, 84.
Figure 29 (Left) Advertisement,
“Selva and Sons,” Dance
Magazine, April 1937, inside
over. Notice that this
advertisement, much like many
others during the same period,
does not feature children.
188

Dance Magazine also included ads for many products designed for girls – costumes,
coloring books, dolls, and ballet slippers.
368
Advertisements focused more explicitly on
appealing to young audiences. Leo's Ballet Slippers, for example, featured a pink cartoon
cat against a black background with the catchphrase “Nimble as a Kitten.”
369

Part of this shift in the intended readership for ballet may be accounted for by the
dramatic increase in the youth population of the United States during the years of the
Baby Boom when the American birth rate increased from 2.4 children per woman in the
1930s to 3.2 children per woman in the 1950s, thereby creating a thriving youth
market.
370
Economic prosperity meant that teenagers remained in high school longer and
possessed more means to engage in the consumer marketplace.
371
Youth literature,
additional evidence of the post-war focus on children, produced dozens of novels dealing
with the trials and tribulations of studying ballet and becoming a ballet dancer. Books
such as Gloria: Ballet Dancer (1946) by Gladys Malvern, Jennifer Dances (1954) by
Eunice Smith, Dancer’ s Daughter (1955) by Constance White, Masquerade at the Ball
(1957) and A Dream of Sadler’ s Wells (1955) by Lorna Hill, Ballet for Drina (1958) by
Mabel Allan, Little Ballerina (1958) by Dorothy Grider, and Ballet Dance for Two (1960)

368
“Ballerina Doll,” Dance Magazine, November 1958, 92; “Herbert Dancewear,” Dance Magazine,
October 1958, 83.

369
Advertisement, “Leo’s Advance Theatrical Shoe Co.,” Dance Magazine, December 1958, back cover.

370
Lucy Rollin, Twentieth-Century Teen Culture by the Decades: A Reference Guide (Westport:
Greenwood Press, 1999); William H. Young with Nancy K. Young, The 1950s: American Popular Culture
Through History (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004). On the Baby Boom see, Elaine May, Homeward
Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 121.

371
On the youth market more generally see, Young and Young, 25, 28, and 237.

189

by Jean Ure also, however, reveal the codification of ballet as a girl’s activity. The books
appealed directly to the interest of women and girls, describing their dreams, aspirations
and friendships.
372

Articles such as Life Magazine’ s exposé into children’s ballet schools reinforced
ballet as a girl’s activity. Little girls dressed in pale tights, short skirts, and ballet slippers
and eagerly waited to enter a ballet studio. Miniature cherubic angels, these tiny dancers
reflected the romanticization of youth in the post-war period, as parents eagerly protected
their children from the dangers of growing up too early and attempted to preserve the
purity of youth.
373
Given the conservative backlash against the liberal gender roles of the
War era, when women entered the workforce and assumed new social responsibilities, the
hyper femininity of the ballerina also shored up destabilized gender roles. Comments
such as, “To mothers weary of watching their young sprawl over door sills and collide
with the parlor furniture, the charming young dancers pictured here should prove
enviable models of poise,” celebrated idealized feminine qualities - purity, grace,
elegance, and poise.
374
Finally, particularly during the Cold War, ballet cultivated an

372
Mabel Allen, Ballet for Drina (New York: Vanguard, 1958); Dorothy Grider, Little Ballerina (Chicago:
Rand McNally, 1958), Lorna Hill, A Dream of Sadler’s Wells (New York: Holt, 1955); Lorna Hill,
Veronica at Sadler’s Wells (New York: Holt, 1954); Lorna Hill, Masquerade at the Ball (New York: Holt,
1957); Gladys Malvern, Gloria: Ballet Dancer (New York: J. Messner, 1946); Eunice Smith, Jennifer
Dances (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1954); Jean Ure Ballet Dance for Two (New York: F/Watts, 1960);
Constance White, Dancer’s Daughter (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1955).

373
On the idealization of childhood in the post-war period see, Steven Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of
American Childhood (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 2004), 275-309.

374
“Children’s School of Ballet,” Life Magazine, July 26, 1948, 107.

190

image of feminine beauty and refinement designed to challenge images of bulky, manly,
Russian women.
375

Unfortunately, as ballet became increasingly associated with women, the stigma
attached to male ballet dancers increased. Whereas good girls engaged in domestic and
elegant activities, good boys participated in rugged, outdoor activities. In general, with
the exception of taking piano lessons, learning to play a band instrument, or singing in a
choir or glee club, any indication of interest in the arts by boys in the post-war period
tended to meet strong societal disapproval.
376

Due in part to its intimate association with emotional expression and with its
display of the physical body, ballet was deemed an especially effeminate and
inappropriate activity for men. Articles in the 1940s and 1950s that defended the
masculinity of male dancers by describing them as manly, rugged, and heterosexual
demonstrate the persistence of these taboos in the post-war era. John Martin, for example,
described the male dancer Jose Limon as a “strong and mature man in command of all his
powers,” who possessed a “heroic vision.” Limon was a true artist, a man who came to
ballet at a late age after studying to be a painter. He was a refined and well-cultured man,

375
Victoria Vantoch draws similar conclusions in examining the image of the Airline stewardess during
this era. Victoria Vantoch, “Ambassadors of the Air: The Airline Stewardesses, Glamour, and Technology
in the Cold War, 1945-1969,” (unpublished, PhD diss., University of Southern California, 2008).

376
Walter Terry, Great Male Dancers of the Ballet (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1978), 2-4.

191

but as Martin ardently pointed out, he was also a strong, robust, and fit man with a hearty
appetite and no hint of vanity.
377

The popularity of ballet was also part of a broader emphasis on recreation and
health in the 1940s and 1950s, particularly for youth. The Kraus-Weber test results of the
1950s indicated that American children were less physically fit than European children,
resulting in a temporary emphasis on physical-fitness producing activities in school
programs.
378
In 1956 President Eisenhower responded by establishing the President’s
Council on Youth Fitness (Executive Order 10673). Though largely ineffectual at
producing change, the council kept the issue of youth health in the public mind.
Eisenhower’s successor, the young and seemingly robust John F. Kennedy, advanced the
initiative, writing an essay for Sports Illustrated titled “The Soft American.”
Kennedy believed that sports not only embodied traditional American values, but
also cultivated athletic strong American bodies, which he believed was central to the
strength of the nation.
379
On the cover of the U.S. Physical Fitness Program, Kennedy
claimed, “A nation is merely the sum of all its citizens, and its strength, energy and
resourcefulness can be no greater than theirs.”
380
He created the White House Committee

377
John Martin, “The Dancer as an Artist: Jose Limon, Who Returns to Broadway This Week, Has
Brought New Range to Ballet,” New York Times, April 12, 1953. P. Bunzl describes Jacques D’Amboise as
a “rugged family man and natural athlete” who could “easily have won his fame in big time sports.” P.
Bunzl, ed. “Let’s Make Ballet a Manly Art,” Life Magazine, June 21, 1963, 64-69.

378
For additional information on sports and the Cold War see, Kathryn Jay, More Than Just a Game:
Sports in American Life Since 1945 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 45-78.

379
“JFK in History: The Federal Government Takes on Physical Fitness,” Historical Resources, John F.
Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, ttp://www.jfklibrary.org, (accessed July 24, 2010).

380
“U.S. Official Physical Fitness Program,” Historical Resources, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library
and Museum, ttp://www.jfklibrary.org, (accessed July 24, 2010).
192

on Health and Fitness and an annual Youth Fitness Congress. Kennedy’s initiatives
towards the improvement of physical health and fitness so permeated U.S. culture that in
1962, his younger sister, Eunice Shriver, extended those efforts to the intellectually
challenged, founding Camp Shriver, the precursor to the Special Olympics (1968).
Newly erected suburbs that housed the families of the baby boom generation also
created a demand for recreational services, sports facilities and art programs.
Construction of single family homes increased from 114,000 in 1944 to 1,692,000 in
1950, and nearly forty million Americans moved from the nation’s urban centers to the
“crabgrass frontier” of the suburbs.
381
Little League Baseball, Pop Warner Football, Pee
Wee and Midget Hockey, and swimming, wrestling, skiing, track and field, and high
school physical education programs channeled juvenile and teen energy -- the subject of
much angst in American culture -- into positive outlets.
382

Unfortunately, the new emphasis on sports and physical fitness did not equitably
extend to women. Even as women became increasingly involved in team sports,
athleticism continued to be identified primarily with men. Sports were “manly.” Even the
All-American-Girls Baseball League of the 1940s reinforced traditional gender
prescriptions by mandating stringent and highly feminine dress codes.
383
Women were

381
Brink Lindsay, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 80. Citing, Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The
Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).

382
Richard Swanson and Betty Spears, History of Sport and Physical Education in the United States 4
th
ed.
(Madison: Brown and Benchmark, 1995), 287.

383
Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Televised Sports
(Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1996), 221.

193

supposedly better served by participating in feminine athletic activities that included
cheerleading and many forms of dance.
Actual estimates of the number of women enrolled in ballet in the United States
vary widely. In the mid-1950s, the Ballet Theatre Foundation claimed that as many as
two to three million students took ballet classes in the United States. While this number
was probably an exaggeration -- since the Foundation used it to convince potential
patrons to support Ballet Theatre -- even Holiday Magazine’ s more conservative estimate
of 100,000 students studying in 10,000 schools indicated a significant increase in interest
in ballet and among American children and the availability of ballet classes for them to
attend.
384
Perhaps most tellingly, few women who grew up in the 1950s do not remember
either taking lessons themselves or knowing friends who took ballet classes. Karin
Huebner’s mother took ballet classes in Manhattan Beach, California in the 1940s. Two
decades later her daughter took classes in a well established school in Fresno.
385

Young women’s interest in ballet resulted in the establishment of ballet schools
across the country. Retired members of the Ballet Russes alone accounted for schools in
Washington D.C., San Francisco, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Tusla, Brooklyn, Dallas,
Houston, Seattle, Hollywood and Tampa.
386
The School Directory of Dance Magazine

384
John Kobler, “The Exciting Rise of Ballet in America,” Holiday, November 1952, 106-112.

385
Interview, Karin Huebner, Los Angeles, January 7, 2010.

386
During these years retired members of the Ballet Russes companies also established many ballet
schools. Frederic Franklin taught in Washington DC; Alan Howard in San Francisco; Sonia and Robert
Lingreen in Phoenix; Yvonne and Miguel Terekhov in Oklahoma City; and Moscelyne and Roman Jasinsky
in Tulsa. Other Ballet Russes dancers opened schools in Brooklyn, Dallas, Houston, Seattle, Hollywood,
and Tampa.

194

listed additional schools in Chicago, New Orleans, Detroit, Vicksburg, Kansas City, and
Salt Lake City.
387

Franchise Schools and Scholarship Programs
Given a dearth of live performances (ballet companies only visited many cities
once or twice a year), many dancers and fans felt isolated from the professional ballet
community in New York. An associate of Ballet Theatre’s franchise school in Oklahoma
City noted that “with the Ballet Theatre’s long absence from the city we do feel the need
of ‘reassurance’ from time to time that we really are a part of it [Ballet Theatre].”
388

Ballet Theatre and the New York City Ballet, therefore, promoted a sense of participation
in the New York community by corresponding and working with local schools,
conducting auditions, and offering scholarships, and sharing professional resources.
From its inception in the 1940s, Ballet Theatre served as an important source of
information to many aspiring dancers. The company, for example, directed interested
young women to schools and instructors near where they lived. When the mother of a six
year girl wrote in search of an instructor, Ballet Theatre recommended her to teachers in
Cleveland and Akron, Ohio.
389
Following the opening of its first school in New York

387
School Directory, Dance Magazine, December 1950, 50.

388
Letter to Lucia Chase, January 11, 1957, Folder 4935, Box 72, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

389
Correspondence from Executive Secretary, Faye Clark to Martha Keech, December 19, 1946, Folder
4936, Box 72, In the same folder see also, Mrs. W. Aitken to Ballet Theatre, April 27, 1949; Joy Goldman,
December 18, 1944; Julie Hefferman, June 8, 1945; Astrig Apkarian, January 22, 1947; John Vinckx,
January 25, 1947; correspondence to Robert Parsons, April 20, 1947. American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

195

City in 1950, Ballet Theatre also developed affiliated relationships with schools in
Denver, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, and Cleveland. Ballet Theatre hoped that in
addition to procuring additional income for the company, these “branch” or “franchise”
schools would advance ballet in their given regions.
390
In exchange for the recognition
associated with the Ballet Theatre title, the schools would pay a percentage of it’s gross
income to the Foundation.
Ballet Theatre customarily asked for ten percent of the profits of the school.
However, correspondence between Ballet Theatre and the schools suggests that these
terms may have been negotiable. Cleveland, for example, asked to pay five percent the
first year and seven and half percent and ten percent the second and third years. Denver
suggested that Ballet Theatre instead take a percentage of the increase in the schools
profits since the previous year. And in March, 1958 the Cleveland School requested that
the percentage of the profits they owed Ballet Theatre be reduced, complaining that “…
at the present time the school could not stand a ten per cent of the gross – as after paying
current expenses there is very little left.”
391
That none of the franchise school could
afford to pay the desired cost of the affiliation suggests one of two things about ballet in
their given communities: either the ballet schools failed to attract enough students to

390
“Correspondence with Lucia Chase, “March 13, 1958,” Folder 4935, Box 72, American Ballet Theater
Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.

391
Correspondence to Lucia Chase, May 5, 1958 and November 11, 1954, Folder 4935, Box 72, American
Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts.

196

maintain their schools or that the income from tuition simply did not produce high
enough profits.
As many of the franchise schools described a high demand within their community
for ballet, the latter option is more likely. A representative of a school based in Houston
noted:
It is our client’s wish to enlarge her school, adding resident teachers as well
as inviting guest teachers to be a part of the faculty throughout the years.
There is a crying need in this part of the country for a school fashioned after
the large, New York dance schools……. Our client feels that such a school
could be quite successful in Houston, as so many of the students in this area
are most anxious for intensified, professional training; but are either too
young to come to New York, or have not the money to make a trip. We are
most interested in seeing some of your catalogues; and would like some
information regarding the handling of a franchise from the Ballet Theatre
School.
392

According to this account, not only did ballet schools thrive in the 1950s, but they also
expanded. Thus it is likely that ballet schools involved many students from lower income
households and therefore could not raise tuitions to produce the desired profits.
Affiliates of the Oklahoma City School lamented that the one “big
disappointment” in their project was that they were not able “regardless of the magnitude
of effort of some of us, to make direct contributions” to the support of the company.
Even the Denver Ballet School, the most successful of Ballet Theatre’s branch schools,
ultimately struggled to meet the financial obligations of their commitment to Ballet
Theatre. Early on the school’s outlook had seemed optimistic. Correspondence with
Lucia Chase reported, “The school is going well. I foresee it as a good source of revenue

392
Letter to American Ballet Theatre, June 3, 1955, Folder 4935, Box 72, American Ballet Theater
Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.
197

as well as an interest builder for the Ballet Theatre in the future.” However, by 1959 the
school’s contributions remained so insufficient that Ballet Theatre withdrew its affiliation
with the school.
393

Though they failed in their financial objectives, these schools succeeded in several
important ways. The Ballet Theatre affiliated schools raised the level of training available
in surrounding communities, advanced the population’s knowledge of ballet, and
cultivated new audiences. The Director of the Denver Ballet School claimed that her
school was the “number one factor” in the “very great increase in serious thought of
ballet as an art form.” The school educated the population, showing them that Denver
could contribute to the national movement.
394
The school also aimed to increase
attendance to Ballet Theater performances while on tour by five hundred to a thousand
people.
395
Though somewhat self-aggrandizing, the Director inevitability spoke some
truth. The school interacted with not only its students, but also their parents, family,
friends, and neighbors. Moreover, local schools had to raise their standards in order to
compete with the Denver Ballet School.
Schools also benefited from occasional visits by members of the professional
company who earned extra income by teaching classes during tour layovers. For
example, a teacher in Pacific Grove, California, wrote that she planned to bring thirty-

393
Correspondence to Lucia Chase, May 5, 1958 and November 11, 1954, Folder 4935, Box 72, American
Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts.

394
Letter to Lucia Chase, May 15, 1959, Folder 4935, Box 72, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

395
Letter to Lucia Chase, November 11, 1954, Folder 4935, Box 72, American Ballet Theater Records,
(S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

198

five pupils and adults to a performance. She requested that if a guest teacher was not
available, Lucia Chase and principal dancers Alicia Alonso and Igor Youskevitch meet
with the students.
396
By the early 1960s Ballet Theater received proposals to become
affiliated with additional schools in several major cities, including Los Angeles (1953),
Baltimore (1953), Jacksonville (1957), Kansas City (1960), San Francisco (1961), and
Springfield (1961).
397

In 1958 Ballet Society received several grants from the Ford Foundation that
encouraged interaction with schools across the country. The Foundation funded a
program designed to make an “objective survey” of dance schools and to “correlate
information on the content of the curriculum, the size of the schools, the quality of
teaching and teachers, and the capacity of the students.”
398
Additionally, $100,000 would
support the recruitment, training, and support at the School of American Ballet of talented
students living further than one hundred miles from New York. Another $150,000 would,
over the course of the next three years, enlarge “opportunities for professional finishing
of outstanding regional students of ballet.” The San Francisco Ballet, with whom the

396
Letter to Lucia Chase from Dorothy Dean of Dorothy Dean School of Dancing in Pacific Grove, CA.,
February 7, 1954, Folder 4935, Box 72, American Ballet Theater Records, Jerome Robbins Dance
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

397
Letter dated October 16, 1957, Folder 4935, Box 72, American Ballet Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD
49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

398
Minutes of the First Meeting of the Board of Directors, Ballet Society, November 2, 1959, Folder 62,
Box 2, New York City Center Records, 1948-1968, MGZMD 38, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

199

New York City Ballet had recently formed an exchange program, also received
$50,000.
399

Although auditions ultimately relocated many of the most talented students to
New York, they did not weaken local ballet communities. Representatives of companies
traveled throughout the United States. Ballerina Diana Adams, for example, traveled to
Ohio and Missouri, while in May 1960, Violet Verdy was scheduled to visit additional
schools while touring with the Metropolitan Opera Association.
400
During the first year of
the Ford Grants, George Balanchine himself traveled to twenty-four schools in the United
States. The auditions required professional dancers to interact with local teachers and
students. By granting students the opportunity to further their training, the auditions also
created a point of entry into the New York and professional dance community.
In addition to promoting student education, the New York City Ballet worked to
advance professional companies outside of New York. In 1958 Lincoln Kirstein applied
for funds from the Ford Foundation to support Ballet Society, outlining a three-part
program that included an international, domestic, and educational program which would
make the resources of New York City Ballet available to new artists.
401
Balanchine

399
Letter Joseph McDaniel (Secretary Ford Foundation) to Lincoln Kirstein, August 31, 1959, Folder 69,
Box 3, New York City Center Records, 1948-1968, MGZMD 38, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

400
Memorandum of Discussion, Ballet Society Inc., May 24, 1960, Folder 63, Box 2, New York City
Center Records, 1948-1968, MGZMD 38, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts.

401
Letter Joseph McDaniel (Secretary Ford Foundation) to Lincoln Kirstein, August 31, 1959, Folder 69,
Box 3, New York City Center Records, 1948-1968, MGZMD 38, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

200

already maintained a working relationship with Lew Christensen, the director of the San
Francisco Ballet School.

Three brothers, Harold, Lew, and William Christensen, supported the nation’s
west coast dance community. Adolf Bolm founded the San Francisco Ballet Company in
1933. In the years to follow Serge Oukrainsky and later William Christensen each
directed the company and served as its principal choreographers. Harold Christensen,
then a member of the San Francisco Ballet company, assumed directorship of the
affiliated school in 1944. In 1951 Lew Christensen, a renowned dancer and
choreographer, replaced his brother William as Director of the Ballet Company.
Lew Christensen had professional contacts and affiliations with the New York
City ballet community. He had not only been a dancer and toured with Kirstein’s Ballet
Caravan, but he also choreographed Pastorella with José Fernandez. Will Christensen
went on to establish the first dance department in an American university at the
University of Utah in Salt Lake City. In 1952 Christenson proposed an exchange program
between the San Francisco and New York City Ballets. The companies permitted each
other to perform works from their repertoires and traded dancers. The relationship
particularly benefited the San Francisco Ballet, whose repertoire grew significantly with
the addition of Balanchine’s works. The Ford Grant allocated an additional $50,000 to be
spent on the San Francisco Ballet School. By helping to cultivate a ballet community in
San Francisco, Balanchine and the New York City Ballet opened up options for students
on the West Coast incapable of traveling to New York on the West Coast.
201

As students and teachers became more conscious of their place in the larger ballet
community, they also became more active in ballet at a local level. Between World War II
and 1965 many men, women, and youth also became active in amateur and semi-
professional opera, theater, and musical groups. During these years high school, college,
amateur and professional opera companies increased from seventy-seven in 1941 to
seven hundred and fifty-four in 1963-1964 (of which only thirty five to forty were fully
professional).
402
By 1965, only fifty-four symphony orchestras exclusively employed
professional musicians; an additional 1,401 companies involved local amateur
musicians.
403
Summer theaters also doubled between 1946 and 1962, reaching one
hundred and sixty.
404
According to the Ford Foundation, by 1966 thirty-three American
cities and “almost as many smaller ones” hosted symphony orchestras.
405

Moreover, across the country private individuals and performing arts
organizations came together to coordinate managerial, administrative, and promotional
activities for constituent art groups. Working to develop audiences in their communities
and to coordinate the schedules of organizations, eight councils formed between 1945 and
1950, but that number increased to two hundred and fifty in 1965. With a few exceptions,
these councils did not engage in fundraising activities; they organized and united patrons,

402
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 39. See also pps. 50, 432.

403
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 39. Citing, “The Rockefeller Panel Report,” in The
Performing Arts: Problems and Prospects (New York: McGraw Hill Book Co., 1965), 13-14.

404
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 23.

405
“The Ford Foundation: Millions for Music-Music-for Millions,” Music Educators Journal 53 no. 1
(September, 1966):83.

202

educated audiences, and helped to popularize the performing arts outside of urban
areas.
406

The community of ballet in the United States expanded dramatically and access to
ballet and art more generally widened. The history of ballet in the post-war period is,
therefore, also the history of the democratization of art in the United States in the
twentieth-century. Ballet invited the children of the baby boom generation -- most of
them part of the new emerging middle class -- to participate in activities associated with
the rich.

The Regional Ballet Movement
The Regional ballet movement played an especially important role in the
expansion of the ballet community. In 1943 Dance Magazine defined a “civic ballet” as
“one of the most promising developments in the world of dance” and as “bringing the
serious dance into the life of their communities and teaching them not only appreciation
of the dance art but giving the young dance artists in the groups the joy and development
of participation on a local dance company.”
407
Ultimately, “civic” and “regional”
companies (also sometimes called “ballet guilds”) referred to groups of non-professional
and semi-professional students who presented community performances. Unlike

406
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 325.

407
Mary Lewis, “Enter the Civic Ballet: No. 1, The Akron Ballet Company,” Dance Magazine: Teachers
Edition, December 1943.

203

professional companies, regional and civic ballet companies did not tour and were
decidedly non-profit organizations.
408

The first Civic Ballet was founded in 1934 in Atlanta, Georgia by Dorothy
Alexander. By 1958 at least fifty cities in American supported some seventy regional or
civic ballet companies. For example, between January and June of 1958 Dance
Magazine’ s monthly column entitled “Presstime News” mentioned local companies in the
following cities: Ann Arbor, Atlanta, Birmingham, Dallas, Dayton, Detroit, Erie,
Houston, Jacksonville, Louisville, Miami, Mobile, Palm Beach, Philadelphia,
Sacramento, Westchester, and Woonsocket.
409
These companies were only a small
sampling of ballet oriented organizations across the country. The Annual Directory of
Dance Attractions identified seventy regional dance companies (a category not exclusive
to ballet) in 1962. Two years later that number increased to ninety-seven.
410
Ballet thrived
not only in New York and California, but also in Florida, Texas, Alabama, and Kentucky.
Though drawing large audiences, these regional ballet companies did not compete
with the tours of more prestigious companies. In fact, they nurtured the community’s
interest in ballet. When Ballet Theatre performed in Cleveland, Ohio over one hundred
and fifty affiliates of the Akron Ballet Company attended, drawing participants from the
Art and Music Departments of Akron University, as well as local teachers, students, and
parents. Women’s clubs, the Donor’s Society, the College Club, and the Civic Opera

408
Doris Hering, “New Roots for American Ballet,” Dance Magazine, September 1958, 27-29.

409
Dance Magazine, January –June 1958.

410
Baumol and Bowen, The Performing Arts, 433.

204

Company sponsored the company’s performances.
411
Altogether, the company formed a
significant community interested in ballet. A local newspaper commented on the Akron
Ballet Company, “There has been a tremendous revival of interest in the ballet in
American cities, and our own dance group has demonstrated at previous appearances as
well as those yesterday that it has a definite place in the city’s entertainment life.”
412
This
feature on the Akron Ballet Company was the first of a series of articles in Dance
Magazine to cameo local companies.
Regional ballet companies engaged not only the participation of dancers, but also
entire communities. Women baked and sold cakes to raise money. Businessmen
constructed sets in their spare time. Committees organized publicity campaigns, ran fund
raising campaigns, sold tickets, sewed costumes, and organized the dancer’s
transportation. One dance critic wrote:
Through the medium of civic or regional ballet companies, the dance is
becoming a more vital part of the lives of American people – those who live
outside of the large urban centers where the touring professional companies
concentrate their longest seasons. And nothing could be more
encouraging…for an art has meaning only when it is actually part of peoples’
lives.
413

In short, the performances of local ballet companies became a “shared experience.”
414

411
Mary Lewis, “Enter the Civic Ballet: No. 1, The Akron Ballet Company,” Dance Magazine: Teachers
Edition, December 1943, 8, 30.

412
Ibid.

413
Doris Hering, “New Roots for American Ballet,” Dance Magazine, September 1958, 27-29.

414
Ibid.

205

Increasingly, regional companies also contacted similar organizations in their
surrounding communities. For example, on November 29, 1959, the Tri-City Ballet of
Schenectady, New York hosted a performance of regional ballet featuring the Scranton
Ballet Guild. The Tri-City Ballet reported to Doris Herring, the Regional Ballet Editor of
Dance Magazine, that they also planned to perform in Albany, giving performances for
both the general public and for children. Joining the Tri-City ballet would be Peter
Nelson of Ballet Arts and the Alonso-Youskevitch Ballet Company. Together these
dancers would perform the dances of the Bluebird, the Rose Adagio, and the Fairy
Ensemble from The Sleeping Beauty.
415
Networking between ballet companies eventually
culminated in more expansive festivals.

Ballet Festivals
Beginning in 1956, Regional Ballet Festivals brought surrounding companies
together to participate in collaborative workshops, master classes, and recitals. Regional
ballet festivals drew civic and regional ballet companies together to form an extended
ballet community. Dorothy Alexander, the director of the Atlanta Ballet, organized the
first festival in 1956 which generated the Southeastern Regional Ballet Association.
Alexander borrowed the idea from similar festivals sponsored in Canada between 1948

415
Letter from Business Manager of Tri-City Ballet to Doris Hering, December 6, 1959, Folder 156, Box 7,
National Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division,
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

206

and 1954.
416
Her festival attracted seven companies from Atlanta, Birmingham, Tampa,
Miami, Charlotte, and Jacksonville and included representatives from New Orleans,
Winston-Salem, Nashville, Detroit, and Washington D.C. The association’s mission was
to respond to the absence of an organization “to represent the views and to deal with the
problems of the non-professional and semi-professional performing dance companies in
the Southeastern part of the United States.” It set out to “coordinate and regulate the
activities of such non-professional and semi-professional dance companies.”
417

Companies participating in the festival consisted of twelve dancers and an artistic head/
choreographer, a “bona-fide dance teacher of an established reputation and easily
determined achievements.” The association also desired companies to have been in
existence for at least two years and to have given at least two public performances during
that period.
418

One attendee of the Southeastern Festival, Alex Ramov returned to his home town
of Scranton, Pennsylvania inspired to put together a similar festival in his region of the
country. He used the news columns of dance magazines to locate ballet companies in the
Northeast and organized a meeting of the Wilkes-Barre Ballet Guild where attendees

416
On the history of ballet in Canada during this era see, Cheryl Aileen Smith, “'Stepping out': Canada's
early ballet companies, 1939--1963 (Manitoba)” (unpublished PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2000).

417
Folder 197, Box 7, National Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome
Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

418
Ibid.
207

discussed options and eventually formed the Northeastern Regional Ballet Festival
Association, whose first performance was held in May, 1959.
419

In the ensuing years regional festivals popped up across the nation. The Northwest
Regional Ballet Festival was held in 1959, the Southwestern Regional Ballet Association
and Pacific Regional Ballet Association in 1963 and 1966 respectively, and the Mid-
States Regional Ballet Festival in 1972. By 1963 it became necessary to form the
National Association of Regional Ballet (NARB) to coordinate the activities of the
individual associations. NARB eventually received a major grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts in 1972.
420

Typical ballet festivals included several companies participating in group classes,
workshops, and panel discussions and culminated in a performance in which each
company gave a short presentation. The May 1959 Northeast Regional Ballet Festival
attracted four companies: the Holiday Theatre of Newark, New Jersey, the Classical
Ballet Concert Group of Ottawa, Canada, the Cleveland Civic Ballet Company, and the
Wilkes-Barre Ballet Guild. Pre-festival activities included a reception for company
directors, their guests, and invited guests, a cocktail party for honored guests,
benefactors, and company directors, and two master classes with Tatiana Grantseva, the

419
Doris Hering, “Northeast: New Area for Regional Ballet,” Dance Magazine, July 1958, 40.

420
Jack Anderson, “Regional Ballet Morning, Noon and Night,” Dance Magazine, September 1976, 48 –
61.

208

Ballet Mistress of the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, and Robert Joffrey, the director of the
Robert Joffrey Theatre Ballet and American Ballet Center.
421

A year later the same festival increased dramatically. Five times more companies
attended, with the Westchester Ballet Company of Ossining, New York, New England
Civic Ballet of Boston, Severo Ballet of Detroit, Dayton Civic Ballet Company, Erie
Civic Ballet, Detroit City Ballet, Tri-City Ballet, Ann Arbor Ballet, Bethlehem Ballet,
Schenectady Civic Ballet and Cleveland Ballet Center Company joining the original
guilds from Wilkes-Barre, Ottowa, Newark, and Scranton. Two hundred and five dancers
participated in performances scattered over the three day festival. Honored guests at this
second annual festival included Ruthanna Boris, Ted Shawn, George Balanchine, Anatole
Chujoy (the editor of the popular dance magazine Dance News) and Doris Hering.
422

By the early 1960s festivals had grown in size and popularity to such an extent
that local organizations cooperated in sponsoring the events. For example, the May 1962,
Northeastern Regional Ballet Festival, held at a high school in Schenectady, New York,
nevertheless garnered assistance from the Albany League of Arts, Rensellaer County
Council for the Arts, Schenectady Museum, Tercentenary Celebration Committee, and
Downtown Merchant’s Bureau of Schenectady’s Chamber of Commerce. Local radio
stations broadcast more than sixty spot announcements and ten to fifteen minute

421
Official Agenda Northeastern Regional Ballet Association, May 2-4, 1959, Folder 153, Box 6, National
Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.

422
Letter to Doris Herring, Dance Magazine, May 20, 1960, Folder 154, Box 6, National Association for
Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts.

209

interviews were dedicated to discussing the festival. Local newspapers ran fifty plus
articles on the subject. Schools within a hundred mile radius received letters informing
them of the festival’s purpose. And, finally before more than four hundred people, three
hundred and twenty-five of whom were dancers, Governor Rockefeller gave the official
welcome.
423

In May of 1963 the festival progressed to more impressive quarters. The fifth
annual Northeastern Regional Ballet Festival moved from a high school auditorium to the
Henry and Edsel Ford Auditorium in Detroit, Michigan, a move which reflected the
tremendous growth of the regional ballet movement. Constructed in 1956 in the Detroit
Civic Center, the Ford Auditorium seated 2,926 people and featured a thirty-five foot
deep and 120 foot wide stage with professional lighting and sound equipment.
424

The accomplishments of regional ballet festivals in furthering ballet in the United
States were significant. Early on the festivals played an important part in developing and
strengthening professional ballet standards. The 1958 Southeastern Ballet Association
festival in Birmingham, Alabama, included a roundtable discussion of topics relevant to
the civic ballet and community, the organization of a civic ballet, and the civic ballet in
performances. These festivals attracted major figures in the world of ballet, such as
Robert Joffrey, George Balanchine, and Alexandra Danilova. Moreover, Robert Joffrey
and Nathalie Branitzka (a one-time soloist of Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe de Monte

423
Fourth Festival, Northeastern Regional Ballet Festival, May 4-6, 1962, Folder 156, Box 6, National
Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.

424
Northeastern Regional Ballet Festival, May 2-5, 1963, Folder 15, Box 6, National Association for
Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts.
210

Carlo) gave master classes. Doris Hering moderated a symposium whose honored guests
included dance critics Anatole Chujoy and John Martin, the publicity director of Dance
Magazine, a representative from the ballet shoe and clothing manufacturer, Capezio, the
editor of Dance Magazine, and Ted Shawn as well as Joffrey and Branitska.
Associations also provided their members access to facilities such as a library of
classical and contemporary choreography, scenery, settings, costumes, and scenic
designs. Ballet companies such as Ballet Theatre also offered services to the associations.
Male dancers from Ballet Theatre, for example, could be engaged for fixed rates, and
guest teachers could be hired to tutor repertoire works and to choreograph new works.
425

Moreover, the festivals raised young dancers’ consciousness of their peers’
experiences in companies and schools and promoted social interactions. For example,
through the “Young People’s Symposium” at the Northeastern Regional Ballet Festival
(1960) students learned that two thirds of other young dancers took company classes
prior to rehearsals and that most students took pointe work and adage in addition to
regular classes. These meetings provided students a place to express concerns and
frustrations, such as the lack of opportunities available to them to choreograph and have

425
Dayton, Ohio, May 4-7, 1961, Folder 155, Box 6, National Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S)
*MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

211

their works produced.
426
Interspersed among classes, rehearsals, performances, and
lectures were teas, dinners, lunches, parties, rummage sales, raffles and banquets.
427

Photographs from this era show young dancers back stage mingling, playing with
makeup, and stretching side by side with other students. As many of the letters written to
Ballet Theatre indicate, amateur American dancers wanted to participate in the ballet
community; they wanted to feel a part of the community. By forming relationships with
dancers outside their hometowns both students and teachers established themselves as a
part of the national ballet culture.
Finally, the festivals drew public attention to ballet. The 1965 welcome packet to
the Southeastern Regional Ballet Festival in Memphis, Tennessee wrote affably, “No one
is being asked NOT to appear between the Theatre and Hotel in Pink Tights…. If the
Memphians are curious as to why so many pink legs, let them buy a ticket to the Gala
Performance and come find out!”
428
Outside of pink tights and bun clad dancers, the
increasingly large number of cooperating organizations also heightened the festivals’
visibility.
In addition to these festivals, a range of other organizations worked on behalf of
advancing ballet instruction and strengthening the community. Other associations
included national and local branches of Dance Masters of America, the New York Society

426
Minutes of the Young People’s Symposium, Folder 154, Box 6, National Association for Regional
Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

427
Folder 199, Box 7, National Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome
Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

428
Welcome packet, Southeastern Regional Ballet Association (1965), Folder 201, Box 7, National
Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S) *MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.
212

of Teachers of Dancing, Dance Educators of America, the Chicago National Association
of Dance Masters, and Dancing Teachers of Southern California.
429
As early as 1944 the
Teachers Edition of Dance Magazine described teacher training programs and summer
dance camps designed to refresh the minds, bodies, and spirits of dancers Summer
vacation particularly refreshed teachers “mentally, physically and spiritually,” as well as
affording them the “opportunity for teachers to meet other members of their profession.”
For young students and teenagers, the festivals provided not only inspiration, but also
friendships with dancers in other communities.
430

Perhaps it was George Balanchine who said it best when he described the
importance of the meetings held at Regional festivals. He noted, “We must organize
ourselves into a big club so that we can demand something important. We will build
theaters all around for music and dance. Dancers do not need much. We demand a floor.
We want shoes. We can dance almost naked…. We should all join together. That makes
many people.”
431
Balanchine recognized these meetings as helping to develop not only
community and professional standards but also an industry – an organized infrastructure
of students, dancers, and teachers committed to advancing ballet.

429
, Dance Magazine, January –June 1958.

430
“The Dance On a Summer Vacation,” Dance Magazine: Teachers Edition, June 1944, 4-5.

431
Dayton Ohio, May 4-7, 1961, Folder 155, Box 6, National Association for Regional Ballet Records, (S)
*MGZMD 113, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

213

Race, Class, and Participation in Ballet
A lack of records identifying the backgrounds of ballet students makes evaluating
the racial and economic make-up of the community difficult. Ballet classes were a form
of leisure and a luxury activity. Thus, students had to come from families with sufficient
financial incomes to pay school tuitions. The affluence of the post-war period meant that
many Americans possessed the means to do so. Disposable personal incomes rose
nationally from $70 billion in 1939 to $150 billion in 1945, and the percent of the
population possessing a discretionary income doubled between 1947 and 1961.
Moreover, expenditures on recreational activities increased 108% during the same
period.
432
The class antagonisms of the period, however, make distinguishing between
students from working-class and middle-class backgrounds difficult.
Having fought to sustain democratic principles during World War II, working-
class Americans demanded the reorganization of society to provide equal access to many
cultural opportunities. They utilized film, television, spectator sports and rock and roll to
“transform marginal class experiences into a mass culture offering leadership and
guidance to all classes.”
433
Americans were hyper aware of class distinctions. As a result,
one must view the conclusions of Alvin Toffler, who so famously described the culture
boom as widely pervasive and far reaching, skeptically. As a labor activist his viewpoints
probably expressed and reflected the desire to claim that working classes, regardless of

432
May, Homeward Bound, 147 -148; Daniel Horowitz, The Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American
Consumer Culture, 1939-1979 (Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 48.

433
Lipsitz, A Rainbow at Midight, 192.
214

their actuality, did participate in culture. This heightened sense of class consciousness
suggests that ballet, a symbol of wealth, would have appealed to working class families.
Letters written to Ballet Theatre in the 1940s suggest that the daughters of many
middle and lower income families wanted to study ballet. One fourteen year old, Barbara
Myers, wrote:
Since seeing Alicia Alonso and your performance in the Ballet Theatre in Los
Angeles I have become very interested in the Ballet Theatre…. My mother
takes a very sincere interest in my dancing and would love to send me to a
better school but since my father is in the service and now in Korea we are
not able to afford it. I would like any information or advice from you
concerning scholarships or ways possible to attend the Ballet Theatre School
for my one ambition is to be a ballerina.
434

Myers not only already studied ballet, but wanted to study at a more advanced level. Her
mother, already financially strapped and shouldering the responsibility of raising a child
with an absent father, supported her interest in ballet and set aside money to pay for her
lessons.
On first glance, the involvement of black Americans in ballet in the United States
in the post-war period appears minimal. Articles, advertisements, and photographs in
trade publications like Dance Magazine in the post-war period rarely dealt with black
ballet dancers or showed black students attending dance camps or ballet schools.
Moreover, photographs of regional ballet festivals nearly always showed groups of white
girls. Only occasionally did brief expóses deal with prominent black dancers. Instead of
ballet, Americans tended to associate black dancers with tap dancing, a genre of dance

434
Letter to Lucia Chase from Miss Barbara Myers, Undated, Folder 4936, Box 73, American Ballet
Theater Records, (S)*MGZMD 49, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.
215

derived from the minstrel shows of the nineteenth century and influenced by the
experience of slavery. Sammy Davis Jr. furthered this association in the 1950s.
Finally, professional ballet companies remained largely segregated. As late as
May 2007, with the exception of dancers with affiliated with companies founded with the
explicit intention of drawing non-white dancers, few black women have achieved
principal status in major American ballet companies. Janet Collins became premier
dancer of the now defunct Metropolitan Opera Ballet in 1951; Raven Wilkinson, a pale
skinned black woman who “passed” as white, became the first black member of the
Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo in 1954; and Rosemary Stevens became the first African
American ballet dancer at the Radio City Music Hall in 1964.
435
Arthur Mitchell, who
later founded the first black ballet company in the United States, the Dance Theatre of
Harlem, became the first black member of the New York City Ballet in 1955. On the
surface black dancers involvement in professional ballet companies in the United States,
therefore, appears minimal.
The highly segregated nature of American society in the United States in the
1940s and 1950s makes interpreting these findings difficult. Jim Crow laws, particularly
in Southern states, required black and white Americans to use different bathrooms,
drinking fountains, and doorways and to sit in different areas of buses, restaurants, and
other public settings. The sprawling suburbs that quickly arose outside cities limited
black families to particular neighborhoods, and the Supreme Court did not order

435
Dave Hepburn, “Queens Ballerina Hired At Radio City: Star On Horizon,” New York Amsterdam News,
June 13, 1964; Gia Kourlas, “Where are all the Black Swans?” New York City Ballet, May 6, 2007.

216

American public schools desegregated until 1954. For years to come, country clubs and
other private recreational facilities remained highly segregated. Thus, articles, print media
and companies that failed to include or depict black dancers may have reflected a set of
cultural norms based on racial separation rather than a lack of involvement by black
Americans in the ballet community.
In fact, black dancers’ involvement in ballet in the 1930s was sufficient to lead to
the formation of the first black -- or as they were frequently called “Negro” and “colored”
-- ballet companies. In 1930, Katherine Dunham, who later became known in the United
States and abroad for dances that blended ballet with modern dance styles and African
themes and rhythms, founded the first black ballet company in the United States, Ballet
Nègres.
436
In 1937, Eugene V on Grona, a German dancer and choreographer influenced
by the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and the new emphasis placed on proletarian art
in the years of the Depression, organized The First American Negro Ballet.
437

The formation of two prominent ballet companies made up almost exclusively of
black dancers in the 1950s and 1960s further indicates that black Americans did
participate in the ballet community and that ballet schools had to have been available to
train those dancers. In 1958 Alvin Ailey formed the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater in New
York City, now one of the most successful ballet companies in the United States and

436
For additional information on Katherine Dunham see, Joyce Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham:
Dancing a Life (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002); Katherine Dunham, Vévé Clark, and Sara E.
Johnson, Kaiso! Writings By and About Katherine Dunham (Madison: University of Wisconsin–
Madison Press, 2005).

437
For additional information on Eugene Von Grona and the First American Negro Ballet see, Sara S.
Hodson, "The First Negro Classic Ballet," Archival Outlook (Jan.-Feb. 2003); “Black, Back," Time,
November 29, 1937.

217

renowned within the international ballet community. Ailey trained with Lester Horton in
Los Angeles, who directed the Lester Horton California Ballets in 1934. Though Ailey’s
company usually performed modern dances that dealt with African themes and styles of
performance, his choreography reflected the influence of ballet and required his dancers
to be trained in ballet. In 1969 Arthur Mitchell formed the Dance Theater of Harlem, a
company that specialized in European ballet. Both companies employed young black
ballet dancers who had to have been trained in the 1940s and 1950s.
Though it is difficult to judge how widespread these schools were, particularly in
the South where racial discrimination was particularly pronounced, ballet schools for
“colored” and “Negro” students did exist in several American cities. For example, in
1941 Ann Jones, a ballet teacher, taught ballet classes to students in the “Tiny Tots
Workshop” for black students in New York City.
438
In 1946 ballet classes at the Howe
Studio in Pittsburg supposedly gave Karl Henrich, the director of Pittsburgh’s Civic
Ballet, the idea to start a Negro Ballet group.
439
In 1947, Joseph Rickard, a dancer
formerly affiliated with the Ballet Russes and Ballet Theatre, opened a school to train
what he referred to as the “First Negro Ballet Group” in America in Los Angeles.
440
In

438
“Ballet Group,” New York Amsterdam Star-News, November 1, 1942; Display Ad 68 – No Title, New
York Amsterdam Star-News, October 25, 1941.

439
“Ballet Class at Howe Studio,” Pittsburgh Courier, February 16, 1946. The article does not explicitly
identify the students as black, but it is implied.

440
“First Negro Ballet Group in American Organized Here: Sentinel Sponsors New Dance Group,” Los
Angeles Sentinel, May 22, 1947.

218

1948, Dorris N. Patterson ran a dance school for black girls in Washington D.C.
441
And in
May 1963 the Therrell Smith Dance Group performed at Howard University.
442
(See
Figure 32) Notably, no advertisement or articles dealing with “Negro” or colored ballet
appeared in the Atlanta Constitution between 1940
and 1965 and only eight appeared in the Atlanta
Daily World, compared to fifty-six in the Chicago
Daily Tribune and forty-two in the Los Angeles
Times.
From these ballet schools also emerged
several small dance companies. In 1941 Ann
Jones formed the “New Negro Ballet Company,”
also called Sarroga, from among her students in New York, and in 1951 Joseph Rickard
organized the First Negro Classical Ballet from students at his school in Los Angeles.
443

That Rickard’s company filled all 2,670 seats, and two hundred spaces in the section for
standing room only in the Philharmonic Auditorium in Los Angeles indicates that a
sizable audience for these companies existed.
444

441
"Six African American Girls Wearing Ballet Costumes and Shoes,” Doris N. Patterson School of Dance,
Washington D.C., ca. 1948, Box 84, Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-1994, Archives Center, National
Museum of American History.

442
Jean-Battey, “Dr.Seuss's Zoo Story to Be Given Today,” Washington Post, Times Herald, May 19,
1963; Therrell Smith's Dance Students, June 1964, Box 618.04.111, Scurlock Studio Records, ca. 1905-
1994, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.
443
George Robert Garner II, “First Negro Classic Ballet Huge Success,” Los Angeles Sentinel, March 1,
1957; “Ballet Group,” New York Amsterdam Star-News, November 1, 1941; Display Ad 68 -- No Title, New
York Amsterdam Star-News, October 25 1941.

444
George Robert Garner II, “First Negro Classic Ballet Huge Success,” Los Angeles Sentinel, March 1,
1957.
Figure 32 Therrell Smith's Dance Students,
June 1964, Scurlock Studio Records, ca.
1905-1994, Archives Center, National
Museum of American History.

219

Black American interest in ballet increased in parallel with the mobilization of the
Civil Rights Movement. In 1941 A. Phillip Randolph, a prominent black labor organizer,
led a mass movement to force President Roosevelt to end discrimination in the defense
industries and segregation within the armed forces, the former of which was achieved
through the Fair Employment Act of 1941. In 1943 race riots broke out in Detroit and
New York City. And throughout the early 1940s the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (N.A.A.C.P.) and the National Negro Congress attacked
discrimination within the public transit system in New York City. The experience of
fighting overseas for democracy during World War II caused many returning black
servicemen in the 1940s to expect greater equality in the United States. The membership
of the NAACP between 1940 and 1946 increased more than nine times, evidencing that
throughout the 1940s and 1950s the Civil Rights Movement rapidly escalated as more
and more black Americans grew increasingly aware of the injustices of racial
discrimination in the United States.
445

With this increased consciousness, black Americans also grew increasingly
concerned with how white culture represented black men and women. In 1943 a
columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, George Schuyler, described his disgust with black
entertainers who perpetuated negative stereotypes of black men. He commended the
black composer William Grant Still for resigning from working on the production of the
Hollywood film Stormy Weather rather than composing music that was “supposedly

445
Justin Ewers, "'Separate But Equal' Was the Law of the Land, Until One Decision Brought it Crashing
Down," US News & World Report, March 22, 2004.

220

characteristic of Negros: i.e. crude, sexy, and ‘gut bucket.’” Schuyler criticized black
entertainers for doing whatever was asked of them regardless of its effects on black
advancement in the United States:
Far too many of our people are willing to do whatever is asked of them,
regardless of its character, so long as they are paid for it in good coin for the
republic. They will mug like cretins, clown like imbeciles, act like
underworld denizens for a price.
446

Unsympathetic to black entertainers who established well paying professional careers in
an era of racism, Schuyler viewed the negative representations of black people
perpetuated by black entertainers as more important than the success those entertainers
achieved. He lamented that these representations appeared before the general public and
perpetuated black stereotypes held by masses of white people. Black Americans, he
argued, should stay away from these entertainments and praise, honor, and support artists
like Still.
447

Given that men like Schuyler rejected cultural forms that degraded black
Americans, it is not surprising that black involvement in cultural activities associated
with respect and art also increased. Marian Anderson, who first attracted fame in 1939
when she sang before an audience of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial, performed at the
Metropolitan Opera in 1955.
448
Black ballet dancers expressed a similar interest and
appreciation of art as Anderson. However, the freedom of expression and movement
displayed via physical activities like sports and dance probably also expressed the

446
George S. Schuyler, “Views and Reviews,” Pittsburgh Courier, March 27, 1943.

447
Ibid.

448
Dizikes, Opera in America, 497-498.

221

rejection of a recent history in which white Americans exerted control over black bodies
during slavery, in the lynch mobs of the Reconstruction Era, and under the Jim Crow
South. Choreographers struggled to fuse demonstrating mastery of the European
traditions with representations of black culture. Notably, the repertoire of Joseph
Rickard’s black ballet company included Raisin Cane, a humorous ballet about life in the
cane fields set to original music by the black composer Claudius Wilson, Landscape,
which depicted a mother mourning for her lynched son and set to Chopin’s Scherzo No.2,
and the “ever popular” Cinderella.
449
By combining authentic ballets that dealt with black
experiences in America, with ballets performed in the “true classic tradition,” as in
Landscape and Cinderella, the company asserted that black dancers were equally as
capable of performing “traditional” ballet as white dancers.
Following the performance of the ballet Ballet Africana Americana by the Bernice
Hammond Lewis School of Dance in 1949, one woman wrote the editor, “As a Negro, I
found in the artistry of that dance a wonderful, heart-bursting pride in my people…. I
caught a fleeting perception of the grandeur and artistry and the beauty in the soul of
Africa.” Her description of the artistry of Africa and her pride in African culture as
expressed via African-American dancers conveyed the intimate relationship between
black ballet and the politics of the Civil Rights Movement.
Assimilation and acceptance within the ballet community expressed desires
among Black American artists for equal access to cultural activities and a recognition of
their contributions to that culture. The above writer’s recognition that the Uline Arena in

449
“Classic, Modern Ballets At Philharmonic Saturday Eve,” Los Angeles Sentinel, February 2, 1956.

222

Washington D.C., where the company performed, was a less than ideal venue but the
“very best that the nation’s capital has seen fit to open to its Negro citizenry” reflected
her awareness of the injustices framing the company’s production.
450

The ballet classes offered to black women in the LeMoyne College Dance Group
in 1947, one of the first “consciously artistic Negro groups in Atlanta and the city and
mid-South” and a part of one of Atlanta’s leading “Negro” colleges, also suggests that
many black Americans viewed dance as an expression of education. Students of the
LeMoyne Group did not take ballet lessons in order to achieve a professional career.
Rather, they danced “to give themselves poise and muscular control.” The group’s
instructor wrote, “They dance to give physical expression to various aspects of their
educational activities. They dance for physical development and for self expression.” The
company studied many forms of dance. It emphasized modern dance, which had retreated
into universities in the 1930s and was associated with intellectualism, as well as ballet,
which emphasized poise.
451
Neither dance style required the “hot licks” of a top swing
band or the “torrid minor notes” of a low-down blues.”
452

Regardless of the advancements of black companies and students, black dancers
did continue to encounter discrimination. Rickard supposedly got the idea to form the
First Negro Classical Ballet after seeing black students turned away from a ballet

450
Thelma T. Prevour, “Negro Ballet,” Washington Post, May 27, 1949.

451
On modern dance see, Gay Morris, A Game For Dancers: Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years,
1945-1960 (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 2006), 38-39; Julia Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance
and American Modernism From Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2002), 3, 157-158.

452
Nat D. Williams, “’Serious’ Not ‘Sinful’ Dancing Will Be Motif Of LeMoyne Group For Jubilect At
April 10 Show,” Atlanta Daily World, April 1, 1947.

223

studio.
453
Ballet Theater featured a rare appearance of black ballet dancers in Obeah,
choreographed by Agnes de Mille and performed on January 22, 1940. The uniqueness of
this performance, however, points to the marginality of black dancers in the community.
Catherine Littlefeld bragged in 1945 that her company had to “black up” for their
performance of a ballet based on the Negro experience.”
454
Littlefeld’s dancers literally
darkened their arms and legs to appear black. The intention behind their ballet, Let the
Rightous Be Glad, may have been positive, to celebrate “Negro art” and the “spirit of the
Negro Ritual,” but the reference to the “black face” entertainments of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries recalled a tradition of belittling black performers. In putting on
black face, the dancers also parodied their subjects, thereby implying that black dancers
were either incapable of performing the roles or unavailable. The very need for white
dancers to perform as black dancers pointed to segregation within and marginality to the
ballet community.
455

Participation in ballet by black dancers represented a means of challenging white
hegemony in the arts. Like Jackie Robinson, who desegregated baseball in 1947, by
becoming the first black professional athlete to play in major league sports, black artists
integrated white establishments and insisted on the talent of black artists and the rights of
black audiences to see them perform.
* * * *

453
Sara S. Hodson, "The First Negro Classic Ballet," Archival Outlook (Jan.-Feb. 2003).

454
“Negro Ballet At Centre: New Epoch Hailed in the American Dance Field, New York Amsterdam News,
January 20, 1940.
455
Margaret Lloyd, “Standards Must Be Kept High, Says Catherine Littlefield,” Christian Science Monitor,
March 24, 1945.

224

Evidence also exists to suggest that other racial and ethnic groups participated in
ballet activities. A photograph from 1948 shows a young Filipino girl, Miss Medrano, in
Los Angeles dressed in a tutu. (See Figure 33) Though little is known about her
experience or family, given the discrimination against
Asian Americans during World War II, Miss Medrano’s
performance of ballet may have expressed a desire to fully
assimilate with American culture. Indeed, with the end of
the War, Asian Americans, Japanese Americans especially,
quickly moved into
mainstream educational
and occupational areas.
456

Photographs of the
regional ballet movement
in Los Angeles in the 1960s suggest that Jewish girls also
participated in ballet dancing.
457
(See Figure 34)
Confronted by the morbid reality of the Holocaust and an
awareness of the rabid anti-Semitism that existed in pre-
War Europe and the United States, American Jews
pursued full social integration. In addition to buying goods popular among the white
American middle-class, they participated in similar cultural activities, practices, and

456
For a discussion of the post-war assimilation of Japanese Americans see, David J. O’Brien and Stephen
S. Fugita, The Japanese American Experience (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1991), 84.
457
“Ballet Class at Valley Cities Jewish Community Center,” ca. 1961, filing information
HCNVTd004_f26_i14, Hollywood Citizen News/Valley Times Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

Figure 34 “Ballet Class at Valley
Cities Jewish Community Center,”
ca. 1961, Hollywood Citizen
News/Valley Times Collection, Los
Angeles Public Library.
Figure 33 “Filipino American
girl dancing ballet,” ca. 1948,
Hollywood Citizen
News/Valley Times Collection,
Los Angeles Public Library.
225

forms of entertainment.
458
Performances by Jewish girls in the San Fernando Valley Civic
Ballet in 1962 and of the company at the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center suggest
that ballet – like consumer culture -- represented another means of expressing
assimilation.
459

Maria Tallchief, one of the most prominent ballerinas of the post-war period (and
briefly the wife of George Balanchine) and her sister, Marjorie Tallchief, also a ballet
dancer, were both Native Americans. The experiences of these women did not, however,
represent the norm for Native Americans in the United States. Educated at Catholic
schools and raised from the age of eight in Los Angeles, the Tallchief sisters possessed
the opportunity to study ballet – something that would have been far less likely had they
been raised on one of the nation’s reservations. Their experiences can not, therefore, be
used to draw any conclusions about the presence of ballet within Native-American
communities.
460

Conclusion
Wearing costumes made by their mothers, and spending money raised within their
own communities, students across the country danced out their dreams of ballet stardom.
The fundraising programs of large ballet companies brought patrons across the country

458
On Jews and middle-class culture see, Riv-Ellen Prell, “Why Jewish Princesses Don’t Sweat: Desire and
Consumption in Postwar American Jewish Culture,” in People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from an
Embodied Perspective ed. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz (Albany: Suny Press, 1992).

459
“Ballet Rehearses for Van Nuys Concert,” ca. 1962, Filing information HCNVT_d001_f34_i13,
Hollywood Citizen News/Valley Times Collection, Los Angeles Public Library.

460
On Maria Tallchief see, Maria Tallchief and Larry Kaplan, Maria Tallchief: America’s Prima Ballerina
(New York: Holt, 1997).

226

together. Ballet schools opened in cities small and large. Local students participated in
regional companies and regional companies organized large festivals. Ballet dancing
moved from city theaters to high school auditoriums, from formal stages to temporary
platforms. It thrived not merely in the nation’s opera houses and concert halls, but also in
the communities of everyday Americans. Americans not only saw ballet – on television,
in the movies, at the theater, and in productions by professional companies - but also
became active participants in its culture. Ballet in the United States no longer involved
merely the elite; it now encompassed a broad range of men and women, living all over
the country. This diversity, in sex, age, class, and race and ethnicity, is central to
understanding the development and growth of American ballet in the postwar period, for
it was for to these diverse tastes and interests that choreographers and dancers in the
United States catered. George Balanchine once wrote:
I liked America better than Europe.... everything was over for me in Paris,
there was no work. And I didn't like the people there; it was the same thing
over and over. And, it was impossible to get work in England. I wanted to go
to America, I thought it would be more interesting there, something would
happen, something different … life in America, I thought, would be fun.
461

Balanchine and his peers discovered an audience in the United States ravenous for high
culture and with a particular taste for ballet. In order to cultivate that audience, they
eventually modified the style and presentation of ballet to popular tastes.

461
George Balanchine quoted in, Solomon Volkov, Balanchine's Tchaikovsky (New York: Anchor, 1992),
106. Cited by, Joseph Horowitz, Artists in Exile: How Refugees From Twentieth-Century War and
Revolution Transformed the American Performing Arts (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 30.
227

CHAPTER 5
“FROM TUTUS TO T-SHIRTS”
462
:
AN “AMERICAN BALLET”
In 1952 the popular television program Kukla, Fran, and Ollie featured a
competition between ballet and modern dance. Two stars of the program, the hand
puppets Fletcher Rabbit and Ollie the Snake, each performed a short dance sequence in
which they portrayed a boy and girl meeting and falling in love. They sought to
determine which form of dance could better communicate emotion. Fletcher Rabbit wore
a tutu and pointe shoes on his large feet, while Ollie the snake performed a much longer
modern dance. It was simple and fun, but also full of a wit and satire that distinguished
the program from other contemporary puppet shows. Thus, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie,
though originally designed for children, eventually attracted a large adult following. At
the height of the show’s popularity the cast received as many as 15,000 letters a day, and
the show’s ratings compared favorably to those featuring Milton Berle and Ed
Sullivan.
463
The show’s treatment of dance, therefore, provides telling insights into
contemporary attitudes towards both modern dance and ballet in the post-war era.

462
Emily Coleman, “From Tutus to T-Shirts: Rebelling Against an Old Tradition, Jerome Robbins Has
Brought Modern Man Into the Ballet,” New York Times, October 8, 1961.

463
Kukla, Fran and Ollie first aired on October 13, 1947 as Junior Jamboree. The title of the program
changed to Kukla, Fran and Ollie within a few months. The program’s first run continued until 1957. For
additional information on the television program, see http://kukla.tv/how.html. The website includes links
to several articles written about the program.
In addition, also see, http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/K/htmlK/kuklafrana/kuklafrana.htm . The
Museum of Broadcast Communications website notes, “Kukla, Fran and Ollie was the first children's show
to be equally popular with children and adults.”
228

Though affectionately mocking of both dance forms, the puppet performance
ultimately took a much dimmer view of modern dance than ballet. Ollie performed the
role of the modern dancer. A snake, though loved on the program, he recalled biblical
images of betrayal and sin. His performance also exaggerated the analytical and symbolic
principles of modern dance, bordering on the ridiculous and absurd. Much longer than the
ballet performed by Fletcher Rabbit, Ollie’s dance told only the beginning of the story he
intended to depict. In fact, when Kukla suggested that Ollie wrap up the performance, the
snake complained that he was just getting started: “I am just explaining who I am- about
my childhood.” He hadn’t even got to the part when the boy and girl first meet! Ollie also
emphasized the use of psychoanalysis in modern dance. He narrated his performance,
noting that the “curtain was symbolic of the closed mind.” A string, in which the dancer
became entangled was “a very symbolic thing which is used in the dance today which
shows the interweaving and intertwining of the human mind.”
464
It represented the
struggle with oneself.
Overall, the puppet show ultimately concluded that modern dance explored the
unconscious, while ballet depicted real life and emotion. Fletcher Rabbit stated, “I think
that ballet is the kind of dance … that explains the story better than the others… we
believe that’s the way dancing should be.”
465
Ballet expressed emotions and stories. It
was less cerebral than modern dance, and audiences were simply more capable of
understanding and relating to its performance.

464
Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, telecast April 23, 1952 by NBC-TV, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.

465
Ibid.

229

Kukla, Fran, and Ollie’ s depiction of ballet in 1952 represented a dramatic shift in
public tastes for dance since the 1930s. During the Depression era the realism and
seriousness of modern dance resonated with an audience confronted by economic crisis.
However, in the post-war era, financial limitations forced the makers of ballet in this
country to turn to the American public for support and to cater the form, technique, and
choreography of ballet to their tastes and interests. Still committed to social commentary,
modern dance retreated into colleges, universities, and the avant-garde.
466
Meanwhile, as
in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when ballet dancers modified the
costumes, themes, and styles of performance associated with ballet to accommodate
changing conservative social morals, conceptions of gender, and attitudes towards
sexuality, ballet dancers in the 1940s adapted ballet to contemporary tastes. Having
already taken on many different forms in the United States, ballet continued to evolve;
ballet represented not one single immutable or static art form, but rather a set of dance
practices united by a loose canon of movements.
In October 2010 in an article for The New Republic dance critic Jennifer Homans
asked, “Is Ballet Over?” Recognizing ballet as fluid, as expressing a “mellifluous hybrid
language,” she noted that ballet was not static:

466
Julia Foulkes, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism From Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 3, 157-158; Gay Morris, A Game For Dancers:
Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years, 1945-1960 (Middleton: Wesleyan University Press, 2006),
38-39.

230

To the contrary, we have seen that when societies that nourished ballet
changed or collapsed—as they did in the years around the French and
Russian Revolutions—marks of the struggle were registered in the art.
That ballet could change … this is a sign of its flexibility and malleability,
and of its innovative character. Ballet has always and above all contained
the idea of human transformation, the conviction that human beings could
remake themselves in another, more perfect or divine image. It is this
mixture of established social forms and radical human potential which has
given the art such range, and which accounts for its prominence in
otherwise divergent political cultures.
467

Homans criticized ballet in the twenty-first century as “artistically moribund” and stifled
by orthodoxy. Contemporary artists “seem crushed and confused” by the iconoclasm and
grandeur of the ballets of Balanchine and his peers. They were “unable to build on [this
tradition’s] foundation yet unwilling to throw it off in favor of a vision of their own.” In
short, contemporary ballet failed to change and evolve.
468

Were this “sleeping art” to reawaken, Homans believed the inspiration would
probably come “from an unexpected guest from the outside—from popular culture or
from theater, music, or art; from artists or places foreign to the tradition who find new
reasons to believe in ballet.” Homans distinguished the ballets performed in formal
venues and by professional companies from the dance traditions of popular
entertainments.
469
She seemed to view true ballet as ballet presented as art. The history of
ballet’s movement between musical theater, film, television, and the formal concert
theater in the 1940s and 1950s challenges this definition of ballet. Ballet in the decades

467
Jennifer Homans, “Is Ballet Over?” The New Republic, October 13, 2010.

468
Ibid.

469
Ibid.
231

following World War II did not refer to all dance forms, but it did involve a much broader
array of dance styles than in the early twenty-first century.
To some extent point shoes and the ballets of Balanchine do represent what
twenty-first century Americans see as ballet, giving credence to Homan’s argument about
the contemporary genre. However, what people see as ballet changes and what they saw
as ballet in the 1940s and 1950s was more varied than it is today; audiences during these
decades viewed and referred to the dances they saw performed on Broadway as ballet.
They called almost any dance form that revolved even loosely around the dance d’ecole
and that possessed elite and highbrow connotations ballet.
In the 1920s the choreographer Albertina Rasch argued that American ballet was
the “twin-sister of the popular stage.”
470
In the 1940s and 1950s, this relationship
expanded to include film and television. During the war years many choreographers,
most notably George Balanchine, Agnes De Mille, Jerome Robbins, and Michael Kidd,
turned to popular entertainment for employment, adapting ballet to the demands of a
popular audience. In the post-war period these choreographers moved back and forth
between professional ballet companies and popular entertainment, bringing the
innovations they developed for these productions with them. By making ballet theatrical,
emphasizing its ability to tells stories, express emotions, and convey humor, these
choreographers engaged mainstream audiences in ballet; they familiarized Americans

470
Larry Billman, Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: An Illustrated Biographical Encyclopedia,
With a History and Filmographies, 1893-1995 (Jefferson: McFarland and Company, 1997), 40.

232

with the aesthetics of ballet dancing, preparing them to accept and appreciate ballet as an
independent “art” in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ballet makers catered their work to the tastes of men, women, and children of
various class and racial backgrounds. They engaged the community of students who took
ballet lessons, parents who paid for those lessons, and people who attended performances
by regional ballet companies and watched ballet on television and film. Inevitably, these
diverse backgrounds informed responses to ballet, making an “American response” to or
the “American public’s view” of ballet a generalization. Wealthier, “white collar,” and
educated middle-class families probably responded somewhat differently to ballet than
blue collar families with lower incomes, as did black and white families.
471
The central
development in American ballet in the post-war period did not, however, pertain to the
development of distinct ballet audiences, but rather to the creation of ballet as a form of
mass, highbrow culture. Tracing the process of invention and adaptation of ballet for this
audience traces the production of ballet as highbrow, mass culture.

‘Episodes’ in the Development of Ballet Literacy

Dance can be defined as a language. It is “a specialized form of body language
developed for the purpose of representing and communicating a particular aspect of

471
Future research should examine differences in how people of various class and race backgrounds
responded to ballet. While my research, as presented in Chapter Four, shows interest in ballet among
various racial and class demographics, and seeks to explain why ballet appealed to them, it does not draw
finer distinctions in reception. Examinations of scrapbooks and personal ephemera collections from
individuals of various backgrounds might make help uncover these distinctions.

233

human reality: the form of feeling.”
472
Speech conveys ideas and emotions through
individual words and though longer sentences understood by a listener to possess specific
meanings. Speakers possess sufficient familiarity with the language to communicate ideas
and listeners possess sufficient familiarity with the language to understand the ideas
communicated to them. Likewise, dance conveys ideas and emotions through movements
understood by an audience as possessing meaning. Audiences must possess familiarity
with the aesthetics of movement and must accept movement as a rhetorical device, an
alternative to spoken or written words that nevertheless communicates meaning.
Throughout most of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the majority of
Americans lacked this familiarity with ballet. They viewed ballet as part of larger
entertainments, as brief acts interspersed among song, dance, and acrobatic routines on
stage, performed live during intermissions at movie theaters, or as brief interludes in
Hollywood films. Aside from the performances of Fanny Ellsler in the 1830s, Diaghilev’s
Ballet Russes in the 1910s, and the Ballet Russes companies in the 1930s, few Americans
attended performances exclusively dedicated to ballet. Producers, choreographers, and
directors augmented ballet. Ned Wayburn added taps to the heels of ballerina’s point
shoes, and vaudeville dancers performed daring acrobatic leaps while dressed in
traditional ballet costumes.

These enhancements that sensationalized and added drama to
performances suggest that audiences enjoyed ballet as spectacle, rather than as an art that
conveyed meaning.

472
Hazel Louanne Cobb, “A Delineation of Three Major Sources of Artistic Output in the Production of
Dance Art Films,” (PhD diss., Texas Women’s University, 1977), 35.
234

In 1959 George Balanchine, then the foremost ballet choreographer in the United
States, and Martha Graham, then the foremost choreographer of modern dance,
collaborated, producing their now famous work, Episodes. By then the familiarity of
Americans with ballet had changed dramatically. Episodes consisted of two independent
movements the first of which opened with Graham’s choreography. John Martin
described this portion of the ballet as a “fantasia on Mary, Queen of Scots.” This early
movement in the ballet was “set and costumed with a certain splendor.” It was “full and
easily comprehensible,” expressing a clear story of the conflict between the British
monarchs Mary Tudor, Elizabeth Tudor, and Mary Stuart. Even when the choreography
became unconventional, Graham maintained a “purely dramatic purpose.”
473

Balanchine’s portion of the ballet took a distinctly different form from Graham’s.
In Symphony, Opus 21 a stage full of dancers wore only practice clothes -- the women
wore black leotards and pink tights on the men wore black tights and white shirts. The
ballet abandoned “all reference to dramatic situation and human emotion.” Martin
claimed that Balanchine abandoned “almost all reference to the human body;” his dancers
became “essentially an organization of bones and muscles subject to the manipulation of
an astonishingly creative choreographic mind.” “Deeply dramatic but curiously remote,”
the ballet lacked an obvious story or narrative.
474
According to Balanchine, Anton von
Webern's orchestral score “filled the air like molecules.” The music was “written for
atmosphere.” Balanchine claimed:

473
John Martin, “Ballet: ‘Episodes’ Bows,” New York Times, May 15, 1959.

474
Ibid.

235

The first time I heard it... the music seemed to me like Mozart and
Stravinsky, music that can be danced to because it leaves the mind free to
‘see’ the dancing. In listening to composers like Beethoven and Brahms,
every listener has his own ideas, paints his own picture of what the music
represents.... How can I, a choreographer, try to squeeze a dancing body into
a picture that already exists in someone's mind? It simply won't work.
475

Balanchine believed that Americans associated music with emotion; they connected with
music on a deeply personal level, imagining stories, “pictures of what the music
represents.” In addition to articulating how the cultural revival of the post-war period
influenced other areas of artistic appreciation in the United States, Balanchine’s
comments also alluded to changes in how Americans viewed ballet; he believed that
American audiences possessed enough familiarity with ballet to “see” it, to imagine the
emotions it conveyed, and to gather meanings from its movements.
Heavily indebted to the classical tradition, Balanchine’s choreography combined
technical mastery of ballet with a highly athletic and demanding style of movement. He
worked from the “traditional classical base” and “exploited such typical American traits
as speed, accuracy, a good ear for rhythm, straightforwardness, athleticism, and
expression of ‘angelic emotional concern.’”
476
In Episodes, audiences watched bodies
dance that seemed to defy human movement: hips jutted out, wrists broke sharply, and
upper bodies cantilevered off their center of gravity.
477
Balanchine’s movements

475
“Episodes,” The New York City Choreographic Institute School of American Ballet,
http://www.nycballet.com/company/rep.html?rep=68 (accessed July 10, 2010).

476
“Reviewer’s Stand,” Dance Magazine, March 1948, 42-46.

477
Marcia Siegel, The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1979), 236.

236

abandoned realistic movements of the body in natural motion in favor of angular, abstract
gestures, a style of representation similar to developments in the broader art world.
From the 1940s on artists affiliated with the movement known as abstract
expressionism, a term applied to a wide array of artists working in various styles of
production, began to forgo realism for highly individualistic styles of representation.
Jackson Pollack experimented with a “free-form aesthetic” that focused on the qualities
of the medium he worked with, canvas and paint, and the expression of personal feeling.
The tangled and tormented lines, brilliant colors, and splattered shapes of his paintings
expressed a sense of personal and social alienation and an unease born from the anxieties
of the post-war period - when reactionary consensus politics and pathological fears of
nuclear war created a mood of malaise that tempered the optimism created by abundance
and affluence.
478

Balanchine’s choreography represented the equivalent of abstract art in dance. His
seemingly broken bodies performing awkward, fast movements defied expectation. Thin,
fragile looking bodies performed movements that required immense strength. Male
dancers lifted women in complicated poses and female dancers used their core, stomach
muscles to hold their bodies in awkward positions, creating a sense of unease and discord
similar to those in the works of Pollack. Balanchine left meaning to be interpreted by the
viewer. He assumed viewers were, as in abstract art, familiar enough with ballet to be
capable of interpretation. (See Figure 35)

478
Erika Doss, Twentieth Century American Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 202), 125-131.

237

Figure 35 Unidentified dancers in Episodes,
choreography by George Balanchine, Photographer,
Martha Swope.
However, whereas since the
nineteenth-century painting styles had
gradually shifted from a focus on realism
to abstraction, the move in ballet came
much abruptly. Artists working in
impressionism, fauvism, expressionism,
cubism, dada, futurism, and surrealism
experimented with different forms of
representation, many of which became
highly visible in the United States where
modern art often appeared in consumer
advertisements. In the 1910s and 1920s
the Ballet Russes, particularly Vaslav Nijinsky performed modern ballets filled with
abstract movements, but few Americans knew of or saw these ballets performed. The
ballets that appeared in Hollywood films imitated either the classical, formal mode of
performance or the traditions of ballets performed in popular entertainments and revues.
Balanchine’s success in producing ballets that lacked story, styles of movement, and
costumes that audiences could connect with should, therefore, come as a surprise.
In Episodes Balanchine assumed that audiences knew something about the
academic language of ballet; that they would be able to recognize it and follow it.
479

Dance criticism and later writings distort peoples’ memories of their initial reaction to the

479
Marcia Siegel, The Shapes of Change, 236.
238

ballet. However, the positive reception of Episodes by dance critics and its immediate
integration into the repertoire of the New York City Ballet, suggests that audiences did
possess this familiarity; they connected with the ballet and may even have preferred the
abstract, plotless form of Balanchine’s neo-classical ballet to the narrative ballet of
Graham, whose portion of Episodes was dropped in 1960 from future productions by the
New York City Ballet.
Balanchine’s abstract neo-classical ballets only succeeded in the United States
because audiences had learned to view ballet as an independent “art” capable of
expressing emotion and meaning. Contemporary dance fans and scholars generally
associate American ballet with ballets similar to Episodes. Largely as a result of the 1962
Ford Foundation grants which allocated millions of dollars to the School of American
Ballet and named Balanchine as the trustee of additional funds dispersed to companies
and schools around the country, Balanchine emerged in the late twentieth century as the
preeminent authority on ballet in the United States. Likewise, his choreographic
innovations became the standard-bearer of American ballet.
As a result of Balanchine’s influence, scholars often describe American ballet in
the post-war era as moving away from realism, towards abstract styles of movement.

In
his history of Cold War culture, historian David Caute, for example, argues:

239

Western ballets increasingly avoided stories, dramas, heroes, heroines,
villains, dénouements, dying swans. Dance was developed en-soi, a thing
apart, a suggestive form of motion, mime, and gesticulation in which
meaning remained ambiguous, and intentions ambivalent.
480

By focusing on Balanchine’s ballets and the evolution of trends in his choreography in
the 1950s, Caute also, however, discounted the importance of an alternative tradition of
ballet produced in the 1940s and early 1950s: theatrical ballets emphasized narrative,
humor and emotion. Theatrical ballets engaged Americans in ballet, familiarized them
with the aesthetics of ballet, and taught them how to view and relate to ballet; in short
theatrical ballets translated ballet into a language that Americans could understand.

Recuperating the Theatrical Tradition of Ballet in the United States
World War II and the end of the isolationism in the United States motivated ballet
in this country by cultivating interest in international cultural activities and by
encouraging the support and development of distinctly American forms of artistic
production. The cultural rivalries of the post-war period and the increased prominence of
the United States in international and cultural affairs sustained the patriotism of the war
era, influencing many areas of culture. In jazz music, a musical style derived in the
United States and associated with Black culture, a new genre known as “bebop” melded
European classical and American musical traditions and began appearing in formal
venues. Jazz evolved from a popular style of music into a form of high culture performed

480
David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War (New
York: Oxford University Press), 468.

240

in concert theaters and universities by educated and increasingly white musicians.
481
The
cultural export programs of the 1950s sponsored by the United States government, which
sought to demonstrate the cultural achievements of the nation, included jazz musicians.
The patriotism of the post-war period manifested in ballet differently than in jazz.
It too would evolve into high culture, yet whereas the audience for jazz music in the
1940s and 1950s narrowed and became more elite, the audience for ballet widened. Ballet
dancing in the United States expressed patriotism by demonstrating the availability of art
to a mass audience. It bolstered the image of the United States as a nation of opportunity,
playing into Cold War Era Soviet-American rivalries. Moreover, the continued
association between ballet and Europe, particularly France and Russia, nations that
subsidized the arts, made the widespread availability of ballet in the United States a
symbol of the egalitarianism of capitalism.
To draw new audiences to ballet, choreographers incorporated new steps and
poses into the canons of movements. Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of
American ballet became its use of innovative new dance steps. According to Walter Terry,
the vocabulary of ballet in the post-war era expanded as “easily as we add new slang to
the English tongue.” American dancers were “insistent that dance is a potent not a trivial
art” and were “unafraid of exploration and innovation.”
482
The ballet Rodeo (1942), with

481
David Joyner, “Analyzing Third Stream,” Contemporary Music Review 19 no. 1 (2000): 72; Paul
Douglas Lopes, The Rise of a Jazz Art World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 176.

482
Walter Terry, “Distinctive Characteristics of American Dance Now Apparent,” New York Herald
Tribune, August 11, 1946.

241

choreography by Agnes de Mille, incorporated Grapevine Twists, Boston Fancies, Dos-y-
dos, and Righthand Stars. As John Kohler later wrote:
Nothing could be more characteristic of American ballet dancing than this
kind of synthesis. The American choreographer has no inhibitions about
adapting whatever styles and whatever sources will most effectively
communicate his meaning, be they vaudeville or dime-a-dance hall,
African tribal or Park Avenue Ballroom, modern dance or high classic. It
is this freedom of expression which infuses American ballet with a lot of
its theatrical entertainment.
483

Kohler described choreographers’ intention to recruit new audiences to ballet by adapting
“whatever styles and whatever sources” necessary to communicate with them in positive
terms. Innovation did not represent a corruption of ballet, as critics of modern dance
would claim in later decades, but infused American ballet. It was an important and
celebrated part of American ballet.
Kohler also, however, described another important component of American ballet:
its theatricalism. As early as the 1930 when choreographers began to experiment with
American themes and folklore in ballet productions, and in 1940, when Lucia Chase and
Richard Pleasant’s new company adopted the name “Ballet Theater,” the world of ballet
in the United States shifted towards the integration of theatrical devices into ballet. In
particular, choreographers drew from their experiences working on Broadway in the
1940s.

483
John Kobler, “The Exciting Rise of Ballet in America,” Holiday, November 1952, 135-136.
242

“Oh What a Beautiful Morning:” Ballet on Broadway
As the short-lived ballet companies of the 1930s collapsed, and as male dancers
and patrons departed overseas, many ballet choreographers turned to popular
entertainment for employment. Broadway, resurrected after a period of decline during the
Great Depression, provided many opportunities. Though the number of plays and
musicals continued to decline, attendance and revenues increased dramatically and shows
ran longer and could command higher ticket prices, making them very influential – even
if restricted to audiences who could afford those tickets.
484
New productions by
composers such as Lorenz Hart, Oscar Hammerstein II, Richard Rodgers, Kurt Weill,
Irving Berlin, Adolf Green, Betty Comden, and Cole Porter generated what one historian
of Broadway has referred to as a “golden golden age.”
485

Reminded of the horrors of war by radio programs, movies, popular songs and
most other forms of entertainment, Broadway offered Americans a rare place of escape.
Productions celebrated fantasy, drama, exotica, and even the backwoods and often
included ballets, still a symbol of luxury and leisure in the United States.
486
Between
1943 and 1965 George Balanchine, Michael Kidd, Lew Christensen, Anton Dolin, David
Lichine, Katherine Littlefeld, Eugene Loring, Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins

484
John Bush Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves: A Social History of the American Musical Theatre
(Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 2003), 129.

485
David H. Lewis, Broadway Musicals: A Hundred Year History (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc.,
2002), 32.

486
Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves, 129. See also, Gerald Bordman, American Musical Theatre: A
Chronicle 2
nd
ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). Bordman argues that the musicals of this era
avoided the topic of war.

243

choreographed ballets for nearly eighty musicals.
487
The most famous and influential
musical of this era was undeniably, however, the Richard Rodgers and Oscar
Hammerstein II production, Oklahoma! (1943).
Critic Brooks Atkinson wrote that within ten minutes of the musical’s opening the
audience of Oklahoma “was transported out of the ugly realities of wartime into a warm,
languorous, shining time and place where the only problems were simple and
wholesome, and the people uncomplicated and joyous.”
488
The musical opened to the
lilting notes of a single voice, singing, “Oh, what a beautiful morning!” According to one
contemporary scholar, the production “signaled a tectonic shift in musical theatre
plates.”
489
It was the dawn of the integrated musical, the melding of music, dance, and
story into one seamless narrative – a feat Hammerstein had attempted in 1927 with the
musical Showboat but taken another sixteen years to realize.
490

Tremendously influential on Broadway, Oklahoma!’ s forty-five minute dream
ballet at the conclusion of Act I with choreography by Agnes de Mille also had important
ramifications on the development of American ballet. By 1948 more than eight million
Americans saw Oklahoma! performed live in the theater. The original New York cast
gave over two thousand performances during its five year stint on Broadway. A separate

487
Christina L. Schlundt, Dance in the Musical: Jerome Robbins and His Peers (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1989).

488
Lewis, Broadway Musicals, 35. Citing, Brooks Atkinson, Broadway (New York: Macmillan, 1970),
338.

489
Ibid.

490
Peter Riddle, The American Musical: History and Development (Canada: Mosaic Press, 2003), 24. For
additional information on the “integrated musical” see also, Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves, 142.

244

touring company traveled across the United States, and the USO-Camps Shows troupe
performed for another million and a half servicemen.
491
Oklahoma! brought ballet to
audiences who might not otherwise have taken an interest in it, men and women who
became enchanted with a style of ballet dancing that was far removed from the Russian,
French tradition, that expressed an easily recognizable story, and that used familiar dance
steps and movements.
Set in the early 1900s, Oklahoma! depicted the conflicted romances of several
cowboys, farmers, and their lady-loves. The first act concluded with an extended dream
sequence, a ballet in which Laurie, the central female character, fell asleep and dreamed
of life with her desired beau, Curly. She then drifted into a nightmarish rape scene. The
dancing in the ballet borrowed from dance forms that audiences were familiar with,
primarily square and folk dancing. As a result, spectators unfamiliar with ballet dancing
could nevertheless appreciate and identify with de Mille’s dances. One theater critic
wrote that the dances in Oklahoma! “employ the technique, but not the stuffy
aestheticism, of the ballet and are far removed from the routine, one-two-three-four
evolutions familiar to the average musical comedy coryphée and her audience.”
492

According to a critic for the New York Times, in the dancers “an intense, freed thing takes
wing as the chains drop from them, and the very stiffness and constant constraint and

491
“Eight Million Have Seen ‘Oklahoma,” Washington Post, March 28, 1948.

492
Nelson B. Bell, “In Each Life Some Rain Must Fall – Even So Gay A One as ‘Oklahoma’s,”
Washington Post, October 24, 1943.

245

inarticulateness of gesture that would be
obstacles stand transmuted, gloriously,
tenderly, triumphant of the soul.”
493
(See
Figure 36)
Produced following the American
entry into World War II, Oklahoma!
expressed patriotic and nationalist themes
similar to those appearing in many
contemporary Hollywood films. Set on the
frontier and between cowboys and farmers,
all symbols of American life, the musical
celebrated both the merits of small town life,
where romances revolved around box
socials and beaus bought lunches from their girls, but also the advances of American
cities – most notably Kansas City, the subject of one of the characters joyous songs. The
cowboys and the farmers in this community, however, also sang of freedom, another
central theme to the musical; the characters, for example, possessed the freedom to
choose a spouse and to purchase goods. The lyric choreography of the ballet, with its
familiar movements freed from the restraints of the traditional canon and folk-inspired
movements, highlighted both the distinctiveness of American culture and this freedom.

493
Olin Downes, “Broadway’s Gift to Opera: ‘Oklahoma’ Shows One of the Ways to an Integrated and
Indigenous Form of American Lyric Theatre,” New York Times, June 6, 1943.

Figure 36 Unidentified male and female dancers
in Oklahoma!, St. James Theatre, 1943,
Vandamm theatrical photographs, 1900-1957,
New York Public Library for the Performing
Arts.
246

Oklahoma! made ballet a central component in American musicals. In the 1920s
and 1930s dance had played a subsidiary role in most shows, serving as an
embellishment.
494
However, with de Mille’s ballets an “indigenous form of American
Theatre” evolved, which began to integrate dancing fully into the form and structure of
the musical. In Oklahoma! the ballets revealed the “subconscious fears and desires of the
leading characters” (Laurie’s dream ballet at the conclusion of Act I) and contributed to
the dramatic action of show (the ballet to the “Farmer and The Cowman” at the top of Act
II.)
495

Ballet helped develop plot and convey emotions. Ballet dancers did not merely
perform brief interludes, variety acts included in the musical for mere entertainment or
spectacle. Rather, ballets that “had always crept into musicals as decorative sidelights to
be used between songs and exposition” now crept “straight into the story, not impeding
but furthering, hastening, intensifying it.”
496
Audiences who once enjoyed ballet as a
brief act, a distraction, or addition to a show, learned to understand ballet as a form of
communication, as contributing to a plot. Notably, Laurie’s dream, the context of the
ballet, transitioned from a pleasant imagining of life with Curly to a nightmare in which
Jud killed him. Ballet helped conveyed the emotional context of the scene, joy as well as
horror and sadness.

494
Robert Emmet Long, Broadway, The Golden Years: Jerome Robbins and the Great Choreographer-
Directors : 1940 to the Present (New York: Continuum, 2000), 14.

495
Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves, 143. Citing, Stanley Green, The World of Musical Comedy 4
th
ed., rev.
and enlarged (San Diego: A. S. Barnes, 1980).

496
Sonia Stein, “Ballet In Drama Is New Theater Trend,” Washington Post, September 30, 1945.

247

Oklahoma!’ s success inspired a host of similar productions incorporating ballet.
Agnes de Mille in particular became a highly sought after choreographer on Broadway.
By 1945 the New York Times claimed that a “Theatrical Revolution” was occurring on
Broadway. Critic Thyra Samter Winslow described:
The chorus, so long the keystone of the modern musical show, has about lost
the battle and disappeared. And the ballet, considered for such a long time a
trifle too esthetic, and not only too much caviar for the general but for the
private first class, and the civilians as well, has won out and taken its place.
497

Ballet was a central component of American musicals and had evolved to entertain
“general” audiences.

Broadway: Innovations, Dreams and Comedies
In the wake of Oklahoma! ballets usually took one of two forms, the dream ballet
or the comic ballet. Dream ballets were generally extended sequences that helped resolve
problems in the plot. Oscar Hammerstein eventually claimed, “With a song, or ballet,
you can convey a character’s thoughts. Actually a dream ballet can contribute a great
deal, like the soliloquy.”
498
As a result of her success in Oklahoma!, de Mille
choreographed dozens of these ballets for similar productions, including One Touch of
Venus (1943), Bloomer Girl (1944), Carousel (1945), and Brigadoon (1947). In One
Touch of Venus (1943), a musical about a man who fell in love with a statue of Venus and
subsequently brought her to life, de Mille choreographed the ballet Venus in Ozone
Heights. The ballet depicted the living-woman-artwork’s realization that she would be

497
Thyra Samter Winslow, “Notes on a Theatrical Revolution,” New York Times, March 11, 1945.

498
Paul Gardner, “Whither the Dream Ballet,” New York Times, September 20, 1959.
248

miserable living in the suburbs.
499
Likewise, Carousel (1945), which told the story of a
carnival barker who committed robbery in order to support the woman he impregnated,
featured a ballet between the barker and his fifteen-year-old daughter.
500
Audiences
watched the ballets, saw characters already developed within the musical dance emotions
central to the plot. They enjoyed ballet as a form of theater and acting, basically as acting
communicated through movement.
Comic ballets even further departed from the “classical” ballet tradition,
incorporated diverse movement styles, and often parodied ballet. Though these ballets
were common throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Jerome Robbins revived them in 1946
when he expanded his renowned ballet, Fancy Free (1944), into an acclaimed musical,
On the Town. (See Figure 37) As in Oklahoma!, On the Town reflected an emphasis on
Americana. It depicted three sailors on twenty-four hour leave from sea duty in New York
City. The men fell in love with and inevitably searched for a woman, the beautiful Miss
Turnstiles. The second act included the ballet, Gabey in the Play-Ground of the Rich,
which was set to the jazz rhythms of Leonard Bernstein, and reflected the influence of
street and social dances such as the boogie-woogie.
501

499
Long, Broadway, the Golden Years, 40.

500
Lewis Nichols, “Trip on a ‘Carousel:’ An Excellent Musical Play Is Derived From Molner’s ‘Lilion,’”
New York Times, April 29, 1945.

501
Long, Broadway, the Golden Years, 72 -73.
249

Robbins followed On the Town with similar ballets for Billion Dollar Baby
(1945), High Button Shoes (1947), and Look Ma I’m Dancing (1948). Billion Dollar
Baby (1945) satirized the 1920s, an era of speakeasies, gunman, dance marathons, and
gold-diggers. It included a dream ballet, “Life With Rocky,” as well as what the New York
World-Telegram described as “ballet pasquinades” for the musical’s star, Mitzi Green.
502

Robbins also incorporated steps from the Charleston and Black Bottom, as well as other
social dances circa 1928/1929. High Button Shoes (1947) included the “uproarious”
Mack Sennett Ballet, which involved the “Keystone Comedy Kops,” life guards, a bunch
of bathing beauties, some crooks and an ape. Critics described the ballet as “glorious
nonsense,” a “hilarious affair,” and a “frantic comic ballet.” Funny and frenzied, this was

502
Burton Rascoe, “’Billion Dollar Baby:’ So-So Satire on ‘20s,” New York World Herald Tribune,
December 22, 1945.
Figure 37 Fancy Free, choreography by Jerome Robbins, Photographer Roger
Wood, circa 1946, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
250

ballet in a new form. Performed at “terrific speed,” it, as one critic claimed, piled on the
laughs.
503

Finally, Look Ma I’m Dancing (1948), the story of the misadventures of the
“Russo-American Ballet Company,” parodied Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes and the wealthy
dancer, and patron of the company, Ida Rubinstein. In the musical a woman who
“couldn’t tell an entrechat from a cartwheel” bought a dance company in order to receive
a small role in a ballet.
504
Principal dancer, Nancy Walker, performed a parody of The
Dying Swan, one of many dances in the musical referred to as a “terpsichorean circus.”
505

As in the Broadway musicals of the 1920s and 1930s, these ballet parodies reflected a
sense of unease with high culture.
Through his comedic ballets, Robbins supposedly shed the vestiges of stuffiness
and pretension. One critic wrote of his work in High Button Shoes:
As one who has never been particularly hospitable to the ballet in musical
comedy, I hasten to report that the hero of the evening is Jerome Robbins,
who staged the dances. There is more humor and unconventional
inventiveness and less stuffiness in Mr. Robbins than in most directors of the
pirouette…
506

503
William Hawkins, “’High Button Shoes’ is Glorious Nonsense,” New York World Telegram, October
10, 1947.

504
Robert Garland, “A Good Original Idea But Just a Fair Show,” source and date unclear, circa 1948.
Clippings Folder, “Look Ma I’m Dancing,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts.

505
William Hawkins, “Nancy Walker Antics Make Audience Dance,” source and date unclear, circa 1948.
Clippings File, “Look Ma I’m Dancing,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for
the Performing Arts.

506
Richard Watts Jr., “Period Musical Show Bright and Lively,” source and date unclear, Clippings File,
“High Button Shoes.” See also, John Chapman, “Uproarious Mack Sennett Ballet High Spot of ‘High
Button Shoes,’” source and date unclear; Thomas R. Dash, “High Button Shoes,” source and date unclear.
All located in Clippings File, “High Button Shoes,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.
251

Another critic described the brilliance of his choreography in Look Ma I’m Dancing:

He has in the process happily done away with most of such dreary ballet
business... with all the solemn gazelle posturings …. In place of all such
dingdong he has managed a satirical cartoonery… and a boozy fancy that,
at its best… has swept the dry dance dust from the stage with a bright new
broom.
507

Collectively dream ballets and comic ballets re-imagined ballet. Rather than brief
interludes that added spectacle to entertainments, dream ballets made them parts of
stories capable of expressing emotions. Comic ballets disassociated ballet from elitism
and pretension.
Robbins himself described ballet in the United States as moving towards new
democratic forms. In a 1945 article for the New York Times, entitled “The Ballet Puts on
Dungarees,” he claimed, “The audience’s happy reaction to ballets it can understand,
about people it can recognize, is an augury of the ballet’s future in a democracy.”
Audiences might not be able to tell the difference between an entrechat-six (a jump in
which the feet beat six times in the air) verses and an entrechat-dix (a jump in which the
feet beat ten times in the air), but they nevertheless could enjoy “a hiking up of
dungarees, the flipping-up of chewing gum paper between thumb and forefinger, without
any help from experts, while a dash of juke-box jive is a natural accent in the new ballet
picture.”
508

507
Review, Look Ma I’m Dancing, source and date unclear. Clippings File, “Look Ma I’m Dancing,”
Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. The only information
listed on the review states: “Copyright, 1948 King Features Syndicate, Inc.”
508
Jerome Robbins, “The Ballet Puts on Dungarees: A Choreographer Describes How Ballet Has Emerged
From the Hothouse and Become in America a People’s Entertainment,” New York Times, October 14, 1945.

252

Agnes De Mille and Michael Kidd adopted similar philosophies of choreography
to Robbins. De Mille claimed to have made ballet popular by “making it human.” “I have
used it,” she continued, “not as a showpiece but always to further the plot action.”
509
She
believed that choreography should “deal with situations and emotions of daily life in
whatever period, and not with children’s dream fantasies.”
510
Kidd retrospectively
confessed in an interview for the New York Times in 1959 that his ballets for Broadway --
shows like Finian’ s Rainbow (1947), Guys and Dolls (1950), Can-Can (1953), and Li’l
Abner (1958) (as well as his first ballet On Stage produced for Ballet Theater in 1945) --
were influenced heavily by his desire to make ballet into theater: “The reason I left ballet
companies was because I became interested in all parts of the theatre.” Kidd admired
Charlie Chaplin and attempted to integrate similar forms of pantomime into his ballets.
He claimed, “I use it all the time. I like the mixture of pathos and comedy which nobody
has ever done like Chaplin.”
511

An important consequence of the proliferation of ballets presented on Broadway
in the early 1940s was that they launched the careers of aspiring young ballerinas. Bambi
Linn, who at sixteen years old entered the cast of Oklahoma! quickly became successful
on Broadway. Trained in ballet for over a decade before entering the cast, she went on to
dance in Carousel (1945) and Sally (1922, revived 1948), spending six years dancing on
Broadway before finally debuting with Ballet Theatre in a revival of Jerome Robbins

509
Margaret Lloyd, “Dances by DeMille,” Christian Science Monitor, July 22, 1944.

510
John Martin, “She Brings the Ballet Down to Earth,” New York Times, December 19, 1943.

511
Emily Coleman, “The Dance Man Leaps to the Top,” New York Times, April 19, 1959.

253

Fancy Free in 1949. As Bruce Downes wrote for Colliers Magazine, Linn “reversed the
ballet-to-Broadway order of the day by making her debut on Broadway and tarrying there
for six years before finally reaching the goal for which she had been training since she
was a child of six.”
512
Linn’s career reflected the centrality of Broadway within the ballet
community, which sometimes served as launch pad to professional careers, and
demonstrated the level of training and professionalism of dancers performing on
Broadway.
By 1947 John Martin could legitimately claim that an “astonishing body of
dancers and distinguished group of choreographers” worked in Broadway musicals.
Martin claimed that these artists created a “wonderfully evocative quality” of dancing. He
asked, “Could it be that in our habitual yearning for some vaguely defined thing that we
call the American ballet we are focusing our eyes too far on the distant clouds?”

Martin
asked, “What would happen to us if we quit our yearning for the Serious Art of the
American Ballet, and began to estimate fairly our own grass-root manifestations? Martin
believed that Broadway showcased the “grass-roots manifestations” of ballet in the
United States. Broadway presented ballet as a “spectacular form of theatre dance” and it
was this spectacle that best represented American ballet.
513

512
Bruce Downes, “Ballet to Broadway,” Colliers Magazine, April 1949. Pages unknown. Clippings
donated to the author.

513
John Martin, “The Dance: Our Unsung Grass-Roots Ballet, Valerie Bettis, Anna Sokolow, Michael Kidd
Enliven Broadway Musicals,” New York Times, February 2, 1947.
254

Moving From Broadway to Ballet Companies
Professional ballet companies in the United States in the early 40s struggled to
define American ballet, to establish the creative and imaginative potential of American
artists, and to draw new patrons and were, therefore, open to new works. Although in
the early and mid-40s companies confronted long-standing assumptions about ballet as a
foreign art form, and, therefore, demonstrated the competency of American dancers by
showing their mastery in “classical” roles, by the mid-40s the emphasis shifted to
innovation.
Upon signing to represent Ballet Theater in 1941, Sol Hurok insisted that the
company abandon its more “modern” pieces, including the successful ballets Billy the
Kid (1938), Capriccioso (1940), and Three Devils and a Virgin (1941) in favor of works
like Anton Dolin’s Princess Aurora (1941) and Pas de Quatre (1941) and Michel
Fokine’s Bluebeard (1941).
514
These were new ballets, but they were created securely
within the confines of classical technique. By the mid-40s Hurok’s enforced orientation
towards Russian ballet met resistance, eventually leading to the dissolution of their
contract in 1945. Dance critic John Martin described this era in the company’s history:
“Ballet Theatre got tired of having guest stars thrust upon it, and of being billed as
presenting the ‘best in Russian Ballet.”
515
The New York City Ballet, Ballet Theatre, and
Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo embraced the efforts of choreographers, especially
Balanchine, de Mille, Robbins, and Kidd, who promised to innovate American ballet.

514
Charles Payne, American Ballet Theater (New York: Knoph, 1978), 66.

515
John Martin, “The Dance: Communique: The Ballets Meet on the Field of Battle,” New York Times,
October 6, 1946.

255

The costs associated with producing new musicals more than doubled between
1944 and 1960, inhibiting the production of new shows. As a result, fewer musicals were
produced during this era than in any other time period prior, including the years of the
Great Depression. Ballet frequently appeared in musicals, but due to the scarcity of these
productions less work was available for choreographers, whose work was finished once
the show debuted.
516

As a result, Balanchine focused on Ballet Society and later the New York City
Ballet. Though continuing to work on Broadway, Robbins also assumed prominent
positions and roles in the New York City Ballet, joining Balanchine as Associate Artistic
Director in 1949 and choreographing The Guests (1949), Age of Anxiety (1951), The
Cage (1951), The Pied Piper (1951), Afternoon of a Faun (1953), Fanfare (1953), and
The Concert (1956). De Mille choreographed Fall River Legend (1948), The Harvest
According (1952), Rib of Eve (1956), and Sebastian (1957) for Ballet Theater.
American ballet did not completely abandon the traditions of the classic style. As
Robbins claimed, to completely discard “ghost maidens,” “enchanted princesses,” and
“white ballets” would have left many customers feeling cheated.
517
Audiences enjoyed
the fantasy of classical ballet. At the same time, to fail to advance American ballet
beyond these classic works would indicate a lack of imagination on the part of American

516
Jones, Our Musicals, Ourselves, 161-162.

517
Jerome Robbins, “The Ballet Puts on Dungarees.”

256

choreographers and dancers. As de Mille surmised, “to try to carry on in their style today
would simply show us to be uncreative and insensitive to the mind of our times.”
518

Looking back retrospectively in 1956, Robbins claimed that he “felt the need to
break away from the predominant Russian influence then prevalent in ballet and realized
the necessity of contemporary framework for his work.”
519
He was tired of Russian
folklore, dancing as a “gypsy,” and felt “pretty rebellious about babushkas and boots.”
520

Robbins supposedly once stood in the wings with Nora Kaye, both of them dressed as
Russian peasants, and commented, “This is the most old-fashioned bilge… Why don’t we
dance what we know?... Why do we have to keep on dancing Russian wheat sheaves and
Russian gypsies?” He supposedly told Kaye, “Americans ought to be dancing something
they understand a little better.” Robbins believed that though ballet in the United States
was a foreign import it had been “completely influenced and drastically changed by this
nation and the culture in which it has grown up.” “We in America,” he claimed, “dress,
eat, think, talk and walk differently from any other people. We also dance differently.”
American dancers supposedly possessed more energy, power, passion and verve.
521

American dancers, choreographers, and companies needed to create ballets which
celebrated qualities unique to the people of this nation.

518
John Martin, “She Brings the Ballet Down to Earth,” New York Times, December 19, 1943.

519
Untitled document, 1956, publicity materials, Folder 62, (S) *MGZMD 46, Jerome Robbins Dance
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

520
Document titled “Special and Not Duplicated” from Lorella Val-Mery, undated, publicity materials,
circa 1958, Folder 64, (S) *MGZMD 46, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts.

521
Emily Coleman, “From Tutus to T-Shirt: Rebelling Against an Old Tradition, Jerome Robbins Has
Brought Modern Man into the Ballet,” New York Times, October 8, 1961.

257

John Kobler described American ballet as “a great deal more” than an “accident
of geography.” Rather, American ballet implied, “traits of style, intellect and personality
distinguishable from those of ballet in other countries and times…. It yields a distinctive
native flavor, sharp and tangy as a Rhode Island pippin...”
522
Ballet Theatre celebrated its
repertoire for promoting “original productions drawn from American sources” and
reflecting “the contemporary spirit in all it did.” The company “presented ballets of
Russian and other national originals,” but also maintained “its character, integrity and
identity as an American institution.” “Our American choreographers, composers and
designers, having absorbed the best of the European tradition, have gone on to produce
works which reflect the true spirit, tempo and life of America.”
523
Many of the choreographer’s new ballets experimented with the humor and satire
common to Robbins works. In Interplay (1945), set to the music of Morton Gould,
Robbins demonstrated “the breezy inter-relationship between the classic ballet steps and
the contemporary spirit in which they are danced.”
524
Like the comedic ballets he created
on Broadway, Interplay was “a colorful, light-hearted burlesque of the traditional ballet
steps.”
525
De Mille’s ballet, Tally-Ho, was sophisticated, but at the same time infused with
“naughty wit.” The ballet dealt with the appalling social standards of the eighteenth-

522
John Kobler, “The Exciting Rise of Ballet in America,” Holiday, November 1952, 135-136.

523
“Ballet Theater to Play Summer Season at London Royal Opera House,” Advance Story, May 1, 1946,
Clippings File, “Ballet Theater,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

524
Ibid.

525
Quoting Katherine Winton in the Minneapolis Star, Ballet Theater Pressbook, 1947-1948 season, p. 76,
Clippings File, “Ballet Theater,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.
258

century high life, thereby making the ballet “not merely funny but substantially
satirical.”
526
According to one critic, it was “…a skillful blend of comedy, and not too
serious romance with a touch of spice, always sound and often brilliant choreography,
and through it all, a sheer sense of light-heartedness.”
527
In On Stage! Michael Kidd
presented a ballet about a young woman auditioning to perform with a professional
company. Set to the music of Norman Dello Joio, it depicted the light-hearted romance
between an aspiring ballerina and an enchanted stage-hand. The ballet supposedly
transported the audience into the wings of the theater, giving them a glimpse of the
“terror” in the “timid heart” of the ballerina.
528
In addition to these ballet, Ballet
Theatre’s 1946 season included works like Anton Dolin’s ballet Pas de Quatre, which the
New York Times described as a “gentle and affectionate kidding of the days of Taglioni,”
Antony Tudor’s Gala Performance, a less gentle satire of later ballerinas, and a ballet by
David Lichine which offered a purportedly unintentional travesty of Russian ballet.
529

Other ballets more closely resembled the theatrical dream ballets of de Mille.
Facsimile, choreographed by Robbins in 1946, explored the troubled romantic
relationships between three people. Set to the music of Leonard Bernstein, it was “a
serious study of insecurity and frustration between three lonely people. Of the ballet,

526
John Martin, “Three Ballets Return to Metropolitan,” New York Times, April 25, 1946.

527
Quoting George Foxhall in the Worcester Gazette. Ballet Theater Pressbook, 1947-1948 season, p. 92.,
Clippings File, “Ballet Theater,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

528
Quoting Eleanor Nicholson in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Ballet Theater Pressbook, 1947-1948
season, p. 80, Clippings File, “Ballet Theater,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library
for the Performing Arts.

529
John Martin, “Spoofing Marks Ballet Program: Mood Noted in ‘Pas de Quatre,’ ‘Gala Performance,’
and ‘Fair at Sorochinsk,’” New York Times, April 11, 1946.
259

Nora Kaye wrote, “You can’t call it modern dance. I don’t know what ‘modern’ means.
You might call it a modern approach to ballet. My role is that of a silly, shallow, neurotic
woman, but the audience should feel compassion for her.”
530
Facsimile was designed to
draw readers into the lives of the characters. Antony Tudor’s ballet Undertow (1945), set
to the music of William Schuman, dealt with the pathologies of the urban environment.
Ballet Theater described it as concerning itself with “the emotional development of a
transgressor.” “The choreographic action depicts a series of related happenings, the
psychological implications of which result in inevitable murder.” The protagonist
traveled through several sordid experiences, from encounters with prostitutes, street
urchins, and other urban characters. “The emotions aroused in the abnormal youth by
these episodes… revulsion, rage, terror, loneliness, fear of domination … result in climax
after climax, reaching a peak in his murder of a lascivious woman.”
531

In both styles, ballet continued to be connected to stories, plots, and people. Even
Balanchine, who became so well known for his abandonment of narrative, choreographed
story ballets. Western Symphony (1954) depicted cowboys and dance hall girls in the mid-
West, and was to set American folk songs. The patriotic ballet Stars and Stripes (1958)
featured the music of John Philips Sousa and dancers dressed in red, white, and blue. (See
Figure 38) Both ballets featured orchestratio n by Hershy Kay, whose other works, in
further evidence of the intimate relationship between Broadway and the ballets produced

530
Ballet Theater Pressbook, 1947-1948 season, p. 55, Clippings File, “Ballet Theater,” Jerome Robbins
Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

531
Ballet Theater Pressbook, 1947-1948 season, p. 94, Clippings File, “Ballet Theater,” Jerome Robbins
Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
260

by ballet companies, included the musicals Peter Pan
(1905, revived 1950) Once Upon a Mattress (1959),
Candide (1956), A Chorus Line (1975), and Evita
(1979).
Unfortunately, ballet in the context of elite
theaters and professional ballet companies reached a
limited number of people. The rising popularity of
television and film, entertainments well suited to
conveying stories, however, brought ballet to large
audiences. In 1954 critic Walter Sorell wrote in a Rhode
Island journal, “Some people still consider the dance an
exclusive affair for a group of balletomaniacs…but lately television and the movies have
contributed a great deal to familiarize a broader public with all aspects of the art….”
532

Mass-entertainment successfully mainstreamed ballet into the popular culture of the
United States. Indeed, the New York Times even described the proliferation of
opportunities for dance artists. “Ballet dancers who once wondered nervously where their
next engagement was coming from are juggling their schedules to permit them to
pirouette from Broadway to Los Angeles to Radio City to Europe.” Ballet dancers could
now choose to work in film and for television, as well as in professional companies.
533

532
Walter Sorell, “TV and Films Popularize Dance,” Providence Rhode Island Journal, May 9, 1954.

533
“New Leaps for Ballet,” New York Times, January 17, 1954.

Figure 38 Unidentified dancer in
Balanchine’s Stars and Stripes,
Photographer, Martha Swope.
261

Ballet on Television
Television brought ballet to a huge new audience. When it first emerged in the
United States in the 1930s, proponents of television lauded it as having the potential to
bring culture to the masses. Television would allow men and women all over the country,
in rural communities and big cities alike, to see and experience culture from the confines
of their own home. From the beginning television succeeded in this mission; it
incorporated all types of entertainment and featured performances ranging from ballet to
opera to country fiddlers to full-length productions of Shakespeare. In the years following
World War II the number of programs dealing with the arts, however, became even more
impressive.
In 1946 there were fewer than 17,000 television sets in the United States. By
1957 that number had increased to forty million. Two-thirds of U.S. homes had at least
one television. By its shear presence in the United States, television, therefore,
“dramatically changed entertainment habits” in the United States. It also, however,
played a critical role in democratizing the arts. Networks expanded their demographic
bases by producing a variety of types of programming. ABC televised opening nights
from the Metropolitan Opera; CBS broadcast plays direct from Broadway theaters; local
stations in Chicago and Minneapolis presented weekly programs featuring local
symphony orchestras; and ballet dancers began to appear regularly on television.
534

534
Brian G. Rose, Television and the Performing Arts: A Handbook and Reference Guide to American
Cultural Programming (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 1-4.

262

Local stations, like General Electric’s WRGB in Schenectady produced as many
as fifty dance programs. In fact, in 1942 WRGB produced the first complete ballet
adapted for television, a program appropriately titled Ballet for Americans.
535
The larger
networks produced special full length presentations of romantic ballets such as Les
Sylphide (1949), Giselle (1950), The Sleeping Beauty (1956), Cinderella (1957) and The
Nutcracker (1956). Charles Weidman, Agnes de Mille and Erick Hawkins made guest
appearances on CBS Studios’ Country Dance Society.
Dancers also made frequent appearances on talk shows. Melissa Hayden,
Tanaquil LeClerq, and Andre Eglevsky, of the New York City Ballet, for example,
appeared on The Kate Smith Show and ballet dancers performed regularly on The Tonight
Show. By the late 1940s, programs like Through the Crystal Ball, first broadcast by CBS
in 1949, regularly featured ballet dancing. And, by the early 1950s, programs like The
Milton Berle Show, The Martha Raye Show, and Your Show of Shows maintained
companies of dancers and choreographers on staff.
Perhaps, most significantly, in 1951 the Ford Foundation created the TV-Radio
Workshop and sponsored an arts series entitled Omnibus. Debuting on Sunday afternoons
in 1952, Omnibus eventually featured performances by artists ranging from ballet dancers
to Leonard Bernstein, Gene Kelly, and Orson Welles. Eventually, several ballet
companies, choreographers, and dancers presented work on the program. Critics,
however, denounced the Omnibus series for its commercial bias. Writing for the New
York Times, Jack Gould, for example, noted, that the program was “more commercial

535
Rose, Television and the Performing Arts, 23.
263

than programs which make no pretense to cultural uplift.” “The [Ford] foundation,” he
continued, “woefully misjudges its potentiality in television if it regards commercial
popularity as a test of success.” Gould and other likeminded critics hoped that television
would provide a space for the performance of art that was free from the demands of the
marketplace; a site where sacred, sanctified art could be presented without worrying
about the mass audience.
536

Ironically, Omnibus’s most profound and lasting influence probably pertained to
the way it did appeal to this audience. As Gould later wrote, “The economics of television
are of course at the root of this cultural evil. The costs run so high that the advertiser feels
he must pursue the mob.” In an effort to attract and mobilize the support of the “mob,”
many ballet oriented programs – particularly Omnibus – adopted new strategies of
presentation.
537
Filming dance for television was a difficult and relatively new endeavor;
it risked losing many of the most exciting qualities of live performance. Confronted by a
flat, two-dimensional performance, limited to a monochrome screen, would audiences
take the same pleasure in ballet that they would when surrounded by the live chatter of an
audience, the music of an orchestra, and a huge stage filled with scenery, dozens of
dancers, and brilliant decor? As dance historian Janet Rowson Daves wrote of British
audience during this era, “Viewers sat close, surrounded by the paraphernalia of their

536
Jack Gould, “Love that ‘Omnibus:’ Ford Foundation’s Show Yields to Gimmicks,” New York Times,
November 28, 1954. See also, Jack Gould, “Ford: Among This Week’s Musical Attractions on the
Air,” New York Times, August 19, 1951,

537
Ibid.

264

everyday living and in complete absence of any theatrical atmosphere or sense of
occasion.”
538

At the same time, dance cinematography was also very new and few directors,
dancers, or cameramen possessed training and expertise in recording live performance. A
writer for Dance Magazine argued in 1945:
In most dance films the dancer, knowing little of the possibilities of the
camera and cutting, works in terms of theatrical composition; the filmmaker,
knowing little about choreographic integrity, refuses to sit still and concerns
himself with photographic pictorial effects.
539

“The usual unsatisfactory result,” she argued, “is neither fish nor fowl – it is neither good
film nor good dance.”
540

Confronted by these limitations, many ballet and dance related programs resorted
to emphasizing narrative and sentimental qualities, a modicum of theatrical presentation
with which American audiences were already familiar. Having attended the movies, seen
plays, and watched Broadway musicals, they had learned to view ballet as telling a story.
They could relate to narrative ballets, whose prevalence in the United States also
reflected trends within the larger international community; in Britain narrative ballets
such as Peter and the Wolff and Swan Lake became the norm.
541

538
Janet Rowson Daves, “Ballet on British Television 1948-1949: Part I, Company Debuts – Teleballet
Recitals,” Dance Chronicle 15 no. 1 (1992): 12-13.

539
Maya Deren, “Choreography for the Camera,” Dance Magazine, October, 1945, 20-21. Cited in, Louise
Spain, ed. Dance on Camera: A Guide to Dance Films and Videos (New York: Scarecrow Press, 1991), 1.

540
Ibid.

541
Janet Rowson Davis, “Ballet on British Television, 1946-1947: Starting Again,” Dance Chronicle 13,
no. 2 (1990): 113 -114.

265

Presentations of full-length ballets such as Giselle, Cinderella, and Swan Lake in
the United States celebrated fairy-tales and emotionalism. For example, NBC’s 1950
broadcast of a condensed version of the full length ballet Giselle, began with the
statement, “This is a love story.”
542
Likewise, in 1956 George Balanchine produced his
first televised version of The Nutcracker. Based on E.T.A Hoffman’s short story, “The
Nutcracker and the Mouse King” (1816), The Nutcracker quickly became one of the
preeminent Christmas traditions of contemporary American culture. Balanchine’s
Nutcracker incorporated what dance historian Jennifer Fisher calls “familial feeling.” It
was domestic and intimate and employed children dancing both formally and informally,
curtseying and playing leapfrog. The Sugar Plum Fairy had a motherly manner to her and
the romance between Marie and the Nutcracker prince was innocent. The ballet reveled
in fantasy and imagination. It featured a tree that grew, toy soldiers, wind-up dolls, and
falling snow. In short, The Nutcracker appealed to an audience that valued childhood and
family.
543

A similar broadcast of Cinderella in 1957, choreographed and adapted for
television by Frederick Ashton and featuring dancers from the Sadler’s Wells Ballet,
including Margot Fonteyn as Cinderella, replicated and appropriated the most
recognizable scenes of the fairy tale. The program concluded with Cinderella dressed not

542
Giselle, telecast 1950 by NBC-TV, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

543
The first full length production of The Nutcracker in the United States was in 1944 by the San Francisco
Ballet. Between 1911 and 1920 Ana Pavlova had performed Snowflakes to the music of the snowflake
waltz. The Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo had toured the United States with a condensed version of the ballet
in the 1940s and 1950s. Jennifer Fisher, Nutcracker Nation: How and Old World Ballet Became a
Christmas Tradition in the New World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 50-51.
266

in a ball gown but a beautiful tutu and having lost a point shoe rather than a glass slipper.
The ballet also took advantage of cinematic editing processes. Cameras followed
Cinderella as she traveled through multiple and ornately decorated rooms and settings, a
feat impossible on the static stage. Costumes changed rapidly and frequently and camera
angles and close-up shots varied. From their living rooms, audiences viewed full- stage,
distance images, as well as more focused views of the dancer’s facial expressions. A
young impoverished woman danced in rags before a photo of her mother. The ballet
concluded with the storybook ending, a narrator noting, “And they would live happily
ever after.”
544

Presentations by programs like the Omnibus series also attempted to engage the
audience by providing narrators, whose voices often echoed over the entire ballet. Agnes
de Mille’s ballet Rodeo, broadcast on Omnibus on December 21, 1952 opened with her
stating, “This story is about a cowgirl. The theme is American and basic – how to get a
suitable man.”
545
Alistair Cooke, the host of the Omnibus series, introduced Eugene
Loring’s ballet, Billy the Kid, on November 8, 1953, by stating, “Today we are going on
an all American exhibition, we go west with the Ballet Theatre company and follow the
blood stained trail of Billy the Kid.” Loring then preceded to narrate the entire ballet. A
month later, he presented his ballet Capital of the World, commissioned especially for the
program, and explained to the audience that he didn’t perceive there to be any difference

544
Cinderella, telecast April 29, 1957 on “Producer’s Showcase” by NBC-TV, Jerome Robbins Dance
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

545
Rodeo, telecast December 21, 1952 on “Omnibus” by CBS-TV, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

267

between a story, a ballet, or a play. The basic tenets of the story were the same regardless
of whether they were read, acted, or expressed through movement.
546

Other ballets, like Leonide Massine’s Gaîté Parisienne, broadcast on Omnibus on
April 26, 1953, de-emphasized classical choreography and relied heavily on pantomime,
acting, costumes, and scenery. The basic story of Gaîté Parisienne revolved around “An
American or South American in Paris.” A Peruvian millionaire traveled to Paris and fell
in love with a handsome baron. Much of the story was set in the context of a café and
included a cast of students, waiters, and can can girls. The ballet opened with the women
dancers dressed in full skirts that resembled street clothes and the men in either pants or
tights with stripes that resembled a uniform. Gone were traditional tutus and pale colored
tights. The set featured chairs and tables, making it resemble a restaurant. And the
dancers, though performing classical ballet steps, such as tight turns known as soutenues
and many balances, also incorporated a can can style of dancing that featured many kicks.
Throughout the ballet only one brief solo, performed by an elegant girl dancing with a
basket of flowers and supported by waiters, featured pointe work.
547
Overall, the ballet
resembled a play.
Television programs such as these not only provided audiences with an
opportunity to see ballet, but also were educational. They provided a public outlet for
dancers to voice their opinions and perspectives on ballet dancing. When introducing

546
Billy the Kid, telecast November 8, 1953 on “Omnibus” by CBS-TV, MGZHB 12-492; Capital of the
World, telecast December 6, 1953, on Omnibus by CBS-TV, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.

547
Gaîté Parisienne, telecast on April 26, 1953 on “Omnibus” by CBS-TV, Jerome Robbins Dance
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

268

Lew Christenson’s ballet Filling Station on October 10, 1954, as part of NBC’s program
“Your Show of Shows,” celebrity host Steve Allen commented, “The word ballet
sometimes cause many people to flee in terror, but what you are about to see now is ballet
without tights or ballet skirts…. It is an amusing modern conception of what happened at
a Filling Station.”
548

Television “Americanized” ballet by bringing it into millions of homes and by
presenting ballet as an art form designed for public consumption. Broadway musicals
featured ballet dancing in substantial quantities. The ballet at the end of act I in
Oklahoma! was forty-five minutes long. Nevertheless, audiences only saw these musicals
because they were part of a broader entertainment. They weren’t choosing to watch ballet
for the sake of ballet. Television programs such as Omnibus changed this, presenting
ballet as an independent art. Sitting in their living rooms, Americans tuned into programs
dedicated to ballet.

Ballet in Film

Although by the 1940s ballet was common in film these films for the most had
failed to cohesively integrate ballet. Like the Broadway musicals that preceded
Oklahoma! these films treated ballet as a brief interlude, an act added to the film that did
not necessarily advance the story or plot of the film. Writing for the Dance Index in 1947
Arthur Knight described the ballets in these films as a “caricature” of ballet’s stage

548
Filling Station, telecast on October 10, 1954 on “Your Show of Shows” by NBC, Jerome Robbins
Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

269

incarnations.
549
These ballets represented imitations of stage performance, and because
film, like television, didn’t capture the color or excitement of a live performance, these
film-ballets were poor imitations of the original performance at best. They resembled
vaudeville acts, added to the films almost as an afterthought. Films like I Was an
Adventuress (1940), which starred the ballerina Vera Zorina and featured the
choreography of George Balanchine did very little to advance ballet as a form of
emotional or narrative communication. Recognized by audiences as a ballerina, Zorina
didn’t dance until the conclusion of the story, following the resolution of the mystery.
Only then did audiences enjoy a brief six minute excerpt from Swan Lake.
By editing dance sequences with little sensitivity to the artistic results, producers
inhibited the creativity of dance directors and choreographers. Agnes de Mille, for
example, found her choreography for the court dances in Romeo and Juliet (1936) hacked
for “dramatic purposes.” The dance supposedly interfered with the plot. Similarly, as late
as 1946 Si-Lan Chen watched as directors cut her choreography for the Siamese court
dances in Anna in the King of Siam (1946) to barely three minutes. As Arthur Knight
surmised, “Hollywood studios, with their customary prodigality, will engage experienced
choreographers to provide simple backgrounds, a foolish and discouraging business for
the artists whose careful work is arbitrarily shredded by the editorial shears.”
550
As a
result, although by the late 1940s many Hollywood studios maintained choreographers
and dance directors on staff and hired large numbers of dancers to perform in their

549
Arthur Knight, “Dancing in Films,” Dance Index VI no. 8 (1947): 185.

550
Arthur Knight, “Dancing in Films,” 190.
270

productions, the ballets in these productions had yet to truly advance the potential of
ballet to express emotion and stories.
Even Hollywood musicals, which continued to be popular into the mid-40s, dealt
with ballet somewhat ambivalently, Films like Yolanda and the Thief (1945) and The
Pirate (1948) included extended ballet sequences. But, as one writer in The Ballet Annual
of 1963 has suggested, these productions often simply restaged popular musicals. They
replicated Broadway choreography and failed to take advantage of and utilize the unique
possibilities of film as a performance medium. The ballets contributed little to the overall
production. They were merely decorative.
A few genres of film-dance, did, however, deal with ballet in new, innovative, and
important ways. Films that emphasized a feature dancer-actor, including most notably
Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, began to advance dancing as a spontaneous form of
emotional expression. Performing dance styles heavily influenced by ballet, these
performers would seemingly suddenly break into dance. In Swing Time (1936) Astaire,
for example, performed the sequence “Bojangles of Harlem,” in which he danced in
counterpoint to three enormous shadows of himself. Gene Kelly’s dances in Anchors
Aweigh (1945) expressed the emotions, happiness, and sorrows of the central characters.
The ballet-dances appeared to be impromptu affairs that sprung forth from the action of
the moment. Astaire once commented for the magazine Theatre Arts:

271

I think the audience always slumps- even more in movies than on the stage
– when they hear an obvious dance cue, and both the picture and the dance
seem to lose some of their continuity. Each dance ought to spring
somehow out of character or situation, otherwise it is simply a vaudeville
act.
551

Unlike earlier dance-films these productions, though largely outlets for a central star,
treated dance as a form of emotional expression.
The tremendous success of The Red Shoes (1948) in the United States marked a
dramatic change in filmic depictions of ballet. The film’s popularity should have come as
a surprise to most movie producers. Similar earlier films had failed. The Little Ballerina
(1947), starring Margot Fonteyn, for example, went largely unnoticed in both the United
States and Britain.
552
The Red Shoes starred a largely unknown British ballerina, Moira
Shearer, in the leading role and featured the choreography of Leonide Massine. Unlike
earlier dance films, The Red Shoes also bore little resemblance to traditional musicals.
The film was not only about the career of a ballet dancer but included ballet as part and
parcel of the production.
553
The story portrayed a ballerina, Vicky Page, torn between
devotion to her career and love for a man. Discovered by a renowned impresario, Boris
Lermontov, Page replaced a ballerina who left the company for marriage. After falling in
love with a composer, Page also married and departed the company. She, however, chose
to perform occasionally. At Lermontov’s request, she returned to perform the ballet The
Red Shoes – a ballet set to her husband’s musical score. When the composer asked his

551
Arthur Knight, “Dancing in Films,” 195. Quoting Astaire.

552
Adrienne L. McLean, Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema (New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 139.

553
McLean, Dying Swans and Madmen, 157.

272

wife to return with him to their home, Page, conflicted by her feelings, chose to dress for
the performance. At the last minute, just before stepping on stage, she rushed to the train
station to join her husband, fell in front of a train, and died. It was a story audiences
understood, basic to the core - about the dangers of a career for women. (See Figure 39)
The plot of The Red Shoes the film also mirrored the plot of the central ballet
within the film, The Red Shoes, the final ballet that Page was to perform before her death.
Based on the Hans Christian Anderson story of the same name, the ballet portrayed a
young woman who, having received a pair of red shoes from a demonic shoe maker that
she could not remove, danced herself to death. In the ballet the young woman lost
everything, her boyfriend, her independence, and her life - much the same as the
character of Vicky Page. By drawing clear parallels between the two narratives, as when
Page died wearing the red shoes she had put on to perform in the ballet, the film
advanced the audience’s understanding and ability to interpret ballet as an expression of
story.
Figure 39 Moira Shearer in The Red Shoes (1948),
Directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.
273

The success of The Red Shoes ultimately contributed to the popularity and
frequency of ballet in later films. Gene Kelly supposedly justified adding the ballet at the
end of An American in Paris (1950) to producers by citing the success of The Red
Shoes.
554
In addition, as ballet became more and more popular in the United States,
Hollywood films began to recognize its potential to draw audiences. Hollywood now
believed that “the moviegoer will take – and even enjoy – a slightly highbrow ballet on
the screen.”
555
Dancers and choreographers quickly became common contributors to
ballets in Hollywood films. For example: in 1952 Maria Tallchief played the role of
Pavlova in Million Dollar Mermaid; Tamara Toumanova danced the same role in Tonight
We Sing (1953); Leslie Caron danced principal roles in An American in Paris (1951), The
Story of Three Loves (1953), Daddy Long Legs (1955), and The Glass Slipper (1955);
fresh from her success in The Red Shoes, Moira Shearer danced in The Tales of Hoffman
(1951) and later to the choreography of Frederick Ashton in Story of Three Loves (1953).
In addition, Danny Kaye, Erik Bruhn, and Renee Jean-maire danced to Roland Petit’s
choreography in Hans Christian Anderson (1952). And, finally, Michael Kidd
choreographed ballets for Where’ s Charley (1952), The Bandwagon (1953), Seven Brides
for Seven Brothers (1954), and Knock on Wood (1954). By 1952 the New York Times
could justifiably celebrate a “Ballet Boom in Hollywood.”
Though many of these films ultimately continued to treat ballet as a tangential to
the plot, as part of a film the ballets were nevertheless part of a story. As film and dance

554
McLean, Dying Swans and Madmen, 166.

555
“Ballet Boom in Hollywood,” New York Times, June 8, 1952.

274

scholar Andrea McLean has written, “Where an individual ballet ‘number’ might eschew
a narrative framework, the function of ballet in any film is always part of a story and
often, at least through the early 1950s, a melodramatic story at that.”
556
Viewing ballet
within the context of film, audiences associated ballet with theater, emotion, and
expression. They began to see ballet as a form of communication; they understood the
language of ballet.

Ballet for the Sake of Ballet

By the late 1950s, the frequency and form of ballet being produced on Broadway
changed. Dream and comic ballets continued to be popular, as in Herbert Ross’s “eerie”
and “expressionistic” dream ballet for A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951) and Michael
Kidd’s lively choreography for the humorous ballets in Can Can (1953).
557
Yet, by the
late 1950s these ballets had also come to be perceived as cliché and dated. In the “fast”
and “roudy” “jealous ballet” in The Pajama Game (1954) Robbins even parodied dream
ballets.
558
In 1959 critic Paul Gardner asked, “Is the musical comedy dream ballet, once
considered avant-garde, now becoming passé?” He claimed that although at one time the
dream ballet had been fresh and inventive, it now no longer came as a surprise. The
dream ballet was overdone. According to Hammerstein, “now it is corny – shopworn- and

556
McLean, Dying Swans and Madmen, 206.

557
On A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Can-Can see, Murray Schumach, “Can-Can Dancer: Gwen Verdon
Says Ballet and Burlesque Contributed to Her Current Role,” New York Times, May 31, 1953; Brooks
Atkinson, “First Night At the Theater: Cole Porter’s ‘Can-Can’ Includes a Book by Abe Burrows and
Ballets by Michael Kidd,” New York Times, May 8, 1953; Ethan Mordden, Coming Up Roses: Broadway
Musicals in the 1950s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 63.

558
Paul Affelder, “Gifted Newcomer Stage The ‘Pajama Game’ Dances,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 11,
1954.
275

anything that is shopworn loses its freshness and charm.” Whereas it had once helped to
intensify characters and to further plots, it was now merely a fad.
559
Or, as Emily
Coleman wrote, “dream ballets have since frequently become nightmares of imitative
pretension…”
560
The form and styles of ballets being performed on Broadway began to
change, to adopt a more serious tone, and to deal with serious social issues.
Since World War II many Hollywood films had begun to tackle large social issues.
With the specter of Nazi Germany looming over the political landscape, anti-Semitism
became a particularly common subject. Especially relevant to Jewish directors, it
surfaced in films such as Bataan (1943), The Purple Heart (1944), and Pride of the
Marines (1945), which depicted the experiences of Jewish soldiers fighting alongside
their white American peers. The Head of the Office of War Information’s Movie Bureau,
Lowell Mellett, however, believed that Americans would respond better to films dealing
with larger subjects relevant to the civilian population rather than to films dealing
exclusively with Jews. As a result, many directors began to also deal with subjects like
racism.
561
Contemporary films, such as Home of the Brave (1949), Lost Boundaries
(1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Pinky (1949), and No Way Out (1950) depicted
conflicts between blacks and white adversaries, all featuring “ordinary folk” forced by

559
Paul Gardner, “Whither the Dream Ballet,” New York Times, September 20, 1959.

560
Emily Coleman, “The Dance Man Leaps to the Top,” New York Times, April 19, 1959.

561
Thomas Cripps, Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil
Rights Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 216-217.

276

the end of the film to choose sides.
562
Dore Schary, a Russian Jew involved in liberal and
anti-Nazi political causes, who worked with MGM before becoming Chief of Production
for RKO in 1949, became particularly well know for social message films. In 1946, he
produced Till the End of Time about the problems of returning soldiers. In the mid-50s,
Schary continued in this vein, producing Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Blackboard
Jungle (1955), and Trial (1955), to such an extent that he was fired in 1957 for having
supposedly “sold the studio for a pot of message.”
563

Social message films embodied the increasing consciousness of racial
discrimination among politically minded directors haunted by the racial eugenics of Nazi
Germany. World War II brought questions of racial discrimination, fairness, and
democracy to the fore of American culture, and eventually seeped into the ballets featured
on Broadway. Most notably, Jerome Robbins, probably not coincidentally also Jewish,
created the choreography for the musicals The King and I (1951) and West Side Story
(1957). The King and I (1951) portrayed the experiences of a white, British school
teacher, Anna, in the highly exotic land of Siam, and recalled the colonial projects and
missionary efforts of the early twentieth century. Emphasizing the cultural differences
between East and West, the musical ultimately depicted Anna as horrified by many
Siamese customs. It portrayed the West as civilized and the East as barbarous. The ballet
in The King and I, however, dealt with not only cultural difference and East-West
political insecurities but also racial discord. Narrated by Tuptim, a concubine of the King,

562
Cripps, Making Movies Black, 220-221.

563
Peter Lev, Transforming the Screen, 1950-1959 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003), 198.

277

the ballet portrayed a Siamese version of the American novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,”
thereby bridging the story of a far away culture with contemporary social issues in the
United States in the 1950s. Performed by ballet dancers Yuriko and Michiko, critics
considered the ballet the “visual highlight” of the show.
564
Described by some critics as
an “atmospheric dance,” the ballet presented audiences a fantastic, exotic, glamorous
Asian world.
565

In West Side Story (1957) Robbins depicted a modern day Romeo and Juliet love
story that, perhaps even more so than The King and I, explicitly commented on American
social and racial relations, depicting the conflict between the youths from two rival gangs
– the American “Jets” and the Puerto Rican “Sharks.” According to Brooks Atkinson, the
ballets in West Side Story helped to:
…convey the things that Mr. Laurents [the writer of the story] is inhibited
from saying because the characters are so inarticulate. The hostility and
suspicion between the gangs, the glory of the nuptials, the terror of the
rumble – the devastating climax- Mr. Robbins has found the patterns of
movement that express these parts of the story.
566

In the musical’s ballets Robbins had found a way to express the very real and
discomfiting social tensions of the inner city.
The ballets in both The King and I and West Side Story expressed and clarified the
emotions of the characters, dealing with and commenting on very real social and cultural

564
John Chapman, “’Anna and King of Siam’ a Stunning and Boldly Different Musical Play,” Daily News,
March 30, 1951.

565
Robert Coleman, “’King and I’ Has Heart, Comedy, Top Lyrics,” Daily Friday, date unknown.
Clippings file, “The King and I,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

566
Brooks Atkinson, “Theatre: The Jungles of the City: ‘West Side Story’ Is at Winter Garden,” New York
Times, September 27, 1957.

278

concerns in the United States. By integrating dance into the fabric of the musicals - West
Side Story contained almost as much dancing as song – the musicals preserved the
theatrical tradition within ballet.
Regardless of their innovation, the success of the ballets in these musicals to some
critics, represented exceptions to a more pervasive trend on Broadway: the quality of the
ballets were declining. John Martin complained in 1954, “There is something downright
frustrating in the fact that with choreographic skill in the popular vein at a new high, the
standard of dancing in the Broadway musicals is in a slump.”
567
To Martin it seemed that
ballet’s bright and fruitful years on Broadway had come to a close. Musicals that
continued to feature ballet in some form or another included Guys and Dolls (1950), Call
Me Madam (1952), The Pajama Game (1954), Peter Pan (1954), and Gypsy (1959). But,
few captured the same innovation embodied in Oklahoma!, The King and I, or West Side
Story. As ballet’s status as art solidified, the choreographers and dancers who had made it
popular on Broadway moved back to the more rarified and exclusive world of concert
theaters.
* * * *
As early as 1946 Balanchine began to experiment with abstraction and emotional
expression instead of narrative. The Four Temperaments, set to Paul Hindemith’s musical
score, Theme With Four Variations, and performed by the dancer’s of Ballet Society,
possessed only a very loose narrative. Each of the four variations supposedly dealt with
the four humours- melancholic, sanguinic, phlegmatic, and choleric. Revised twice, first

567
John Martin, “The Dance: Shows: Choreographers Creating for Broadway With Skill Beyond the Call of
Duty,” New York Times, May 2, 1954.
279

in 1947 and again in 1951, the ballet achieved most of its success in the 1960s and 1970s.
(The Royal Swedish Ballet revived The Four Temperaments in 1960, followed by the La
Scala Ballet (1962), Royal Danish Ballet (1963), Paris Opera (1963), National Ballet of
Canada (1969), Berlin Opera Ballet (1970), Royal Ballet (1973), San Francisco Ballet
(1974), Sadler’s Wells Ballet (1976), and Dance Theater of Harlem (1979)).
Dance critic Marcia Siegel has written that upon first seeing The Four
Temperaments performed she “couldn’t really see what relationship the four variations of
the dance had to the four medieval humours.” Siegel believes that even today dancers
have trouble viewing Balanchine’s work:
Perhaps do to the expressionism of modern dance, where emotions were
supposed to make some sort of appearance in the dance fabric, we are
conditioned now to see an actual sad dance when the dance is called
‘Melancholic.’ And if the movement doesn’t ‘read’ sad, the dancer is
supposed to at least look sad when he’s doing it. All of Balanchine’s work
presents a problem for the audience to some degree; he just doesn’t dramatize
things. The burgeoning dance audience of today is still largely looking for
theater values or finds its way into dance through cues used by the verbal or
musical theater. Its harder for them to identify with Balanchine because he is
about form, not about the romantic expressiveness with which most theater is
involved.
568

By the 1960s when The Four Temperaments became a popular ballet in the repertoires of
many companies, audiences had come, though perhaps still a bit mystified, to appreciate
Balanchine’s ballets. They learned to appreciate ballets that lacked narrative, to
appreciate ballet for the sake of ballet. This process occurred because narrative ballets
had conditioned them to watching ballet and taught them to understand ballet as a form of
emotional expression.

568
Siegel, The Shapes of Change, 213.

280

Balanchine’s ballets signified the maturation of ballet in the United States. In the
1960s he and dancers such as Alvin Ailey, Paul Taylor, Merce Cunningham, and Jose
Limon created ballets in which movement not story was the central focus. Ballet dancing
had so saturated the United States in the 1940s and 1950s that most Americans were
willing and capable of appreciating choreography that emphasized ballet as art and that
required audiences to appreciate ballet for the beauty of its movements rather than as a
form of story.

Conclusion
In 1954 George Balanchine wrote for The Washington Post and Times Herald,
“With television, Broadway and the movies calling for more and more dancers, ballet
schools began to take on a new look. The classes were filled with T shirts, dirndl skirts
and sweaters. The Russian names were being replaced by Smith and Adams.” Balanchine
described the “Americanization” of ballet in the most literal context. Gone were the strict
uniforms of classical ballet that he had been familiar with in Russia – the “high
pompadour” bun hairstyles and leotards of “fat” ballerinas - and in their place was a new
generation of young healthy, slim, robust, well-fed, and long-legged ballet beauties.
569

American ballet in the post-war era, however, is best defined not by Balanchine’s
t-shirts and dirndl skirts, nor even the gum-chewing sailors and cowboys of the ballets of
de Mille and Robbins. Rather, what defines American ballet in this era most profoundly

569
Dorothy Kilgallen, “Came the Revolution – and George!,” Washington Post and Times Herald, June 23,
1954.

281

was its emphasis on the interests of the audience. American ballet had come to reflect
the desires and tastes of an audience that in past decades probably would not otherwise
have taken an interest in ballet. Critic Emily Coleman described American Ballet as
“rebelling against old traditions” and as featuring T-shirts rather than tutus. American
ballet “brought modern man into ballet.”
570
Choreographers familiarized audiences with
the aesthetics of ballet; they taught them how to view ballet - how to read and understand
it. In short, choreographers made ballet legible; they adapted it to appeal to the interests
of new audiences.
In the 1985 movie White Nights Mikhail Baryshnikov played the part of a Russian
dancer who defected to United States in order to perform Western roles. When his plane
crashed in the Soviet Union, the dancer was placed under the supervision of an American
tap dancer played by Gregory Hines. The film juxtaposed American dance against
Russian dance, portraying Russian ballet as outdated and old fashioned and American
ballet, with its integration of tap dancing and emotional exuberance, as modern.
Baryshnikov, playing the role of the best ballet dancer in the world, befriended his guard,
dancing alongside him and imitating and incorporating tap steps and sequences into his
own dances. In one dramatic scene in the film, the returned defector met is former lover
who had stayed in the Soviet Union. To explain why he left he showed her the kind of
dancing he learned in the United States; the dance he performed lacked a narrative but
was dramatic and emotional and elicited tears from the overwhelmed ex-lover. The dance
featured kicks, jumps, and poses borrowed from other dance traditions.

570
Emily Coleman, “From Tutus to T-Shirts: Rebelling Against an Old Tradition, Jerome Robbins Has
Brought Modern Man Into the Ballet,” New York Times, October 8, 1961.
282

Americans only accepted the abstract plotless ballets portrayed in White Nights,
and developed largely by George Balanchine, because of the narrative, theatrical ballets
of the 1940s and 1950s. Learning to interpret and appreciate movement was a necessary
step in accepting ballet as art.

283

ACT III

284

CHAPTER 6

THE SWAN TAKES FLIGHT:

THE RISE OF THE BALLERINA AS A SYMBOL OF IDEAL WOMANHOOD
In 1955 Marilyn Monroe posed for what would become one of the most iconic and
recognizable images in twentieth-century popular culture. Seated in front of a ballet barre
and wearing a white dress with a taffeta underskirt, she looked like a ballerina.
571
(See
Figure 40) Milton Green, a Russian born Jew who was part of a select group of
photographers that included Bert Stern, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, and Cecil Beaton

571
According to Milton Greene’s wife, Amy, Monroe looked at six dresses, fell in love with a white Ann
Klein dress with an under slip, and told Green, “You have to photograph me in this.” Amy and Joshua
Green, But That’s Another Story: A Photographic Retrospective of Milton H. Greene (Brooklyn:
Powerhouse Books, 2008), 164.

Figure 40 Marilyn Monroe, Photographed by Milton Greene, 1955.
285

was known for the poignant and personal images he took of Hollywood celebrities such
as Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland. Greene was, according to artist Joe Eula,
considered the “biggest hot shot, the bright star.”
572
His ballerina series captured not only
new glamorous and less explicitly cheesecake images of Monroe, but also a shift in the
cultural meanings attached to the ballerina in the post-war period.
By the 1950s the image of the ballerina had begun to evolve from its association with
prostitution, sex, and moral ambiguity in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to
represent a form of respectable femininity; the ballerina had come to represent a form of
ideal American womanhood. Associated with art, compared in magazines to images of
the Mona Lisa, and frequently dressed by some of the most couture designers of the day,
the ballerina emerged as a symbol of high culture. Poised and sensual, she modeled a
form of feminine sexuality that resonated with post-World War II audiences.
Fetishized as objects of sexual fascination by the Romantic ballets of the
nineteenth century, ballerinas appealed to an emerging sexual culture that valorized male
heterosexuality and the consumption of titillating images of women. By encouraging
women to take on new social and civic responsibilities, including employment, World
War II challenged middle-class ideologies stemming from the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries that envisioned the private sphere as feminine and the public sphere

572
James Kotsilibas-Davis, Milton’s Marilyn: the Photographs of Milton H. Greene (Munich:
Schirmer/Mosel, 1998), 15.

286

as masculine.
573
When the war ended, many women -- particularly married and working-
class women -- chose to continue working. This disruption in gender roles triggered what
some scholars have called a “male panic” or “crisis in masculinity” in the 1940s and
1950s.
574
Many Americans feared that women were usurping men’s roles in the workforce
and through their dominance in the family corrupting the masculinity of young men.
Weak and unengaged fathers failed to properly tutor their impressionable sons. Moreover,
men worked too hard, submitting to the evil forces of work for the purpose of purchasing
consumer goods that undermined their individuality.
575
Real men came to be associated
with a kind of robust and vehemently heterosexual hyper-masculinity popular at the turn
of the century when Teddy Roosevelt conceptualized manliness in terms of qualities such

573
During the war years women’s employment outside the home increased dramatically. By 1945 the
number of women working in the United States had increased to 60%. Women worked in wartime
production industries, operating manufacturing plants or serving in clerical positions for the War
Department. All in all, more than six million women entered the workforce. See Elaine May, Homeward
Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), 53; William Henry
Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007),
9.

574
At the turn of the century, urbanization and the close of the frontier threatened qualities traditionally
associated with masculinity, such as individualism and self-reliance, and triggered a renewed emphasis on
hunting, athletics, aggression, and robustness, perhaps best embodied by Teddy Roosevelt, the character of
Tarzan, and the fascination with the cowboy. Arnaldo Testi, “The Gender of Reform Politics: Theodore
Roosevelt and the Culture of Masculinity,” Journal of American History 81, no., 4 (March 1995): 1509-
1533. See also, Mark Carnes, Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in the Victorian Era
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

575
On masculinity in the 1950s see, K.A. Cuordileone, “Politics in an Age of Anxiety: Cold War Political
Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960,” Journal of American History (September,
2000): 515-545; James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s (Chicago:
University of Chicago, 2005); Michael S. Kimmel Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2005), Tom Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and
Consumer Culture, 1900-1950 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Anthony Rotundo,
American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York:
Basic Books, 1993);

287

as self-reliance, individualism, and athleticism.
576
Magazines like Playboy and Esquire
presented men with images of women, scantily dressed and posed for their consumption,
and used eroticized images of women to represent “femininity as a signifier for
specifically heterosexual masculinity.”
577
Ballerinas displayed female bodies in minimal
clothing, on stage, and moving in sensual and often suggestive ways.
At the same time, the conclusion of World War II also marked the beginning of
the Cold War and a period of deep ambivalence towards female sexuality. Confronted by
fears of communism and nuclear war, George Kennan advocated a policy of
“containment” that quickly influenced domestic behaviors; Americans created a sense of
social stability by advocating marital fidelity and the nuclear family. They equated the
expression of female sexuality to the dangers of atomic energy, and they perceived ideal
femininity as suppressing sexual desire.
578
New images of female dancers as young,
small-breasted and very thin metaphorically contained the dangerous sexuality of adult
women into the bodies of adolescents. Moreover, the status of “art” reconfigured the
sexuality of ballerinas as sensual rather than explicitly sexual or erotic.
Milton Green’s image of Marilyn Monroe portrayed her as a trying but ultimately
failing to assume the newly elevated and highbrow status of the ballerina. Visual markers
such as the ballet barre and the white skirt clearly associated her with ballet. At the same

576
Arnaldo Testi, “The Gender of Reform Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the Culture of Masculinity,”
Journal of American History 81, no., 4 (March 1995): 1509-1533. See also, Mark Carnes, Meanings for
Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in the Victorian Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).

577
Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 214 .

578
May, Homeward Bound.

288

time, the image also portrayed her as glamorous, wearing her trademark bleach blond
hair, red lips, and painted toes, and sitting with her legs turned in, in distinct contrast to
the turn out required of ballet dancers. Monroe didn’t look like a ballerina. Her large
bosom didn’t fit into the bodice of her dress. Less famous stills from the same series of
photographs showed that she couldn’t even close the back of the dress. (See Figures 41
and 42) Monroe supposedly emerged from her dressing room disappointed to find the
dress a size to small, at which point Greene suggested, “Get into whatever you can and
leave the rest opened.”
579
Monroe simply held the dress up. She could neither literally
nor figuratively wear the costume of the ballerina. Marilyn Monroe was an icon of
American popular culture, a symbol of abundant, unrestrained female sexuality. She

579
Ibid.

Figure 41 and 42 Marilyn Monroe, Photographed by Milton Greene, 1955.
289

could dress herself up as a ballerina, but as a symbol of high culture -- as Green’s image
captured – the costume was an ill fit.

A New Look at the Ballerina
At the turn of the century vaudeville theater managers used art to make risqué
images of naked women “family friendly” and appropriate to middle-class audiences.
Likewise, the association with art in the mid-twentieth century allowed middle-class
audiences to consume titillating images of ballerina’s bodies without offending their
moral sensibilities. The ballerina was a socially acceptable image of female sexuality.
Popular literature showed ballerinas in highly seductive poses that simultaneously
resembled marble sculptures, famous paintings, and glamour photography. Life
Magazine’ s 1947 expose, “Ballet Beauties,” for example, showed Ruth Ann Koesen and
Melissa Hayden lounging in various positions, often on sheets and always in positions
that emphasized their legs. While these sheets may simply have been part of the backdrop
used to photograph the dancers, the accompanying text associated them with the
bedroom. Diana Adams, “the legs” of Ballet Theater, was a “bedtime Helen of Troy.”
With her head in the lap of dancers dressed as sheep, Adams was reduced to a sex object;
she lay on sheets, one leg crossed over the other and her hand lying suggestively along
her chest.”
580
(See Figure 43) At the same time, Life also, however, described the dancers
as “purely ornamental.” They stood between two columns, draped over a gold

580
Ibid.

290

Figure 43 “Ballet Beauties: American
Company Has Young and Lovely
Dancers,” Life Magazine, November 3,
1947, 99.
counterpane and staring intently at each other.
581

Likewise, in 1947 Life Magazine featured an
elegant ballerina on its cover but risqué images of the
dancer inside. On the cover, Rickie Soma wore her
hair down, make-up that appeared natural, and
pearls. With long dark hair, bare shoulders,
tremendous poise, and an ambivalent facial
expression, she looked like the Mona Lisa - a
reference made more explicit in the ensuing article. (See Figure 44) In contrast, the
images inside the magazine showed her sitting in her dressing room, topless with her
back to the camera, her hair piled high on her head, and the curve of one breast exposed.
Looking into a pocket mirror, she appeared to examine her hair. Unlike the DaVinci
portrait, this image of Soma highlighted her bare flesh. The “piquant beauty” of the
ballerina was both elegant and titillating.
582
(See Figure 45) The presentation of the
ballerina as a

581
“Ballet Beauties: American Company Has Young and Lovely Dancers,” Life Magazine, November 3,
1947, 99-102.

582
“Beautiful Young Ballerina,” Life Magazine, June 9, 1947, cover page and 127-128.

291

respectable, beautiful, and modest woman on the cover of the magazine, but as
provocative and alluring inside, symbolized the ways in which the status of art and elite
culture functioned to allow for more sexual display than would be traditionally be
accepted in American culture in the post-war period; as art, the ballerina could be both
sexy and respectable.
The photographs taken for Life’ s column “Speaking of Pictures” especially reflect
this symbiosis. In 1945 one photographer captured images of a ballerina under water. In
many poses her soaked tutu floated up, revealing the hem of her leotard and full views of
her bare thighs. A particularly suggestive image featured the classically trained dancer, a
woman the article noted had trained for nineteen years, standing on her toes doing a
“saucy cancan” more reminiscent of burlesque performances by ballerinas in productions
such as the “The Black Crook” than of celebrated Romantic ballerinas such as Fanny
Figures 44 and 45 “Beautiful Young Ballerina,” Life Magazine, June 9, 1947, cover page and 127.
292

Figure 46 “Speaking of Pictures: Ballet Dancer
Goes Under Water in Hollywood,” Life Magazine,
August 27, 1945, 15.

Elssler or Anna Pavlova. Leaning forward, her legs drawn up in a tight fifth position, the
ballerina exposed her butt, smiling over her shoulder for the camera.
583
(See Figure 46)
Eight years later the same column
offered a “strikingly different look” at a
ballerina. A series of images examined a
ballerina from “bottom-side views.” A
ballerina in a tutu stood on a sheet of glass
with the photographer beneath her,
exposing point shoe clad feet, pink legs, the
underside of a tutu, and the hint of a leotard
that covered the ballerina’s private body
parts. The photograph was a literal look up
the dancer’s skirt. It captured the continued
fascination with female ballet dancers and
the fetishization of their bodies as sexual objects.
584
A century earlier Edgar Degas’
portraits cast male patrons and directors leering at women dancers from stage wings.
Life’ s images aligned viewers with the gaze of the male photographer and conferred them
similar access to the women’s bodies. (See Figures 47 and 48) In playing with
perspective and experimenting with increasingly sophisticated photographic processes

583
“Speaking of Pictures: Ballet Dancer Goes Under Water in Hollywood,” Life Magazine, August 27,
1945, 14-16.

584
“Speaking of Pictures: 400 Year-Old Art Acquires Startling Different Look,” Life Magazine, March 23,
1953, 20-22.

293

(photography under water and over a sheet of glass), the images referenced high culture
and thereby made the appearance of the ballerinas’ barely clothed bodies acceptable for
presentation in mainstream popular literature.

Advertisements for products sold to women in the
1940s and 1950s that referenced ballet reveal the extent to
which the association with art legitimated sexual display. Ballet dancers frequently
appeared in advertisements for women’s products worn beneath outer clothing or for the
purpose of heightening sexual appeal, particularly nylon stockings, underwear, and
perfume. Juliana Lingerie, for example, displayed three women in long elegant slips, two
of whom wore pointe shoes, and celebrated “day and night dreams.” The slips supposedly
Figures 47 and 48 “Speaking of Pictures: 400 Year-Old Art
Acquires Startling Different Look,” Life Magazine, March 23,
1953, 21, 22.
294

possessed a “treasured look of feminine beauty.”
585
An image of a woman clad in a white
dress, skirt fanned around her legs, arms raised gracefully, and standing in front of two
swans whose heads nodded together to form a heart, sold “Blue Swan Lovely Lingerie.”
“You… a vision of loveliness in swirls of caressing nylon tricot,” the advertisement
suggested, would be as a graceful as a swan, as a ballerina in Swan Lake.
586
Likewise,
Rhythm Lingerie claimed that the Rhythmese Bias Band, a special feature of its slips,
would not only “drape the bodice in flattering perfection,” but would make you “swing
along with a dancer’s poise.” One advertisement for the slip featured a woman gazing
into a hand mirror. Behind her three ballet dancers posed in graceful arabesques.
587
Two
years later, the same advertisement showed two young women gazing at a figurine of a
ballerina dressed in a tutu dancing and with a man.
588
Discussions of these personal
garments, pieces of clothing seen only in private and by intimate partners, might have
challenged social conventions about modesty. Ballet, however, had become so entwined
with high art that it tempered the salacious and potentially transgressive qualities of the
products.
As marketing mechanisms – both for products and for the newly emerging ballet
culture in the United States – images of female ballet dancers resembled contemporary
advertisements. Many products in the 1950s turned to sex to draw public attention.

585
Advertisement for Juliana Lingerie, Vogue, January 1948, 96.

586
Advertisement for Blue Swan Lovely Lingerie, Vogue, February 1, 1951, 91.

587
Advertisement for Rhythm Lingerie. Vogue, December 1, 1945, 52.

588
Advertisement for Rhythm Lingerie. Vogue, February 1, 1947, 68.

295

Advertisements for John Smith’s Magnet Pale Ale and Mennen Menthol-Iced Lather
Shave, for example, featured women with bare legs in sexy poses.
589
The advertisements
suggested that men who drank this beer or used this shaving cream would draw the
attention of beautiful women. Advertisements that referenced ballet or that portrayed
female ballet dancers, used sex for similar purposes; they drew the attention of
consumers. The tried to associate consumption of their products with the glamour of
ballet, and they circumvented moral taboos about the display of the female body by
exploiting the association with high culture. As the fashion industry matured in the
1950s, clothing became an especially important means of reinventing ballet.

Refashioning Ballerinas
By associating ballet with the elite class, wealth, and couture culture, fashion
played an important role in redefining ballet and images of ballerinas. Designers of haute
couture and expensive high fashion clothing perpetuated a tradition of associating couture
with art. Christian Dior claimed in 1957 to have told a client wary of the cost of his
clothes to buy elsewhere -- as remorse was better than regret.
590
According to Dior,
fashion was priceless; it represented an investment similar to the purchase of art. In the
post-war period, as French fashion regained prominence in the United States, so too did
images of ballet become more common in American fashion.

589
Advertisement for John Smith’s Magnet Pale Ale, circa 1950, collection of the author.

590
Alexandra Palmer, Couture and Commerce: The Transatlantic Fashion Trade in the 1950s (Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press, 2001), 47.

296

The political chaos of 1930s Europe and later the turmoil of World War II isolated
American audiences from European fashion houses, leading to the development of a
significant and influential fashion industry in New York. In the aftermath of the War
American audiences reverted back to preferring what they perceived to be as the more
prestigious and glamorous fashion houses of Paris. Having born the rations of the war
years, they were drawn to the luxury, feminine beauty, and chic associated with Paris. In
the United States, the fledgling New York industry helped advance fashion more
generally. The rising middle-class also, however, created a burgeoning market for cheap
imitations of high fashion designs. The long relationship between French fashion and
theater may, therefore, account for some of the centrality of ballet in post-war fashions in
the United States.
591

Perhaps the most dramatic representation of the influence between fashion and
ballet, Christian Dior’s cinched waist, full skirt, draped over a stiff crinoline, resembled
the long tutus of Romantic ballets such as La Sylphide and Giselle. The skirt emerged in
Europe in the 1940s, where, unlike in the United States and England, fashion designs
became more extravagant. By using less fabric, American fashion supposedly took less
away from the military. French consumers, on the other hand, saw any fabric used by
French citizens as less fabric available to the Germans. With its yards of gathered fabric
the tutu-like skirt appealed to American women tired of the rations of the war years and
eager for more lavish styles.
592

591
Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 272.

592
Steele, Paris Fashion, 265.

297

Dior was not alone in referencing ballet. Coco Chanel popularized ballet flats,
women’s shoes that resembled ballet slippers; Hubert de Givenchy’s black and white
evening gown for Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954) possessed a diaphanous skirt that
resembled the shape introduced by Dior and resembled a long tutu; and designs for haute
couture collections in 1958 featured women wearing similar styled dresses.
While it is unclear whether fashion designers consciously referenced ballet and
knowingly looked to the theater for inspiration or whether they were simply influenced
by an increasingly influential form of culture, it is clear that high fashion and ballet
became intimately intertwined. In the 1950s designers even dressed dancers affiliated
with the tours of professional companies. Wealthy patrons also wore couture clothing to
ballet productions in concert theaters and to fundraising events on behalf of ballet,
making “going to the ballet” a fashionable and elite social event. Socialite Betty Cassels,
for example, wore a gown by the fashion house Marty of Switzerland to the elite National
Guild Ball de Ballet at the Royal York Hotel in England, which attracted one thousand
guests, cost $30 a ticket, and included performances by Duke Ellington’s orchestra.
593

Mona Campbell wore a dramatic red and black halter neck British design by Victor
Steibel to a 1953 Ballet Ball.
594

The emerging relationship between glamour photography and ballet also helped to
redefine ballet as art. The tradition perpetuated by Serge Diaghilev in the early twentieth
century of involving avante- garde artists in ballet through costume and set designs

593
Palmer, Couture and Commerce, 107.

594
Palmer, Couture and Commerce, 273.
298

extended into the post-war period. Portrait and glamour photographer Cecil Beaton,
known for his striking images of celebrities that ranged from the Queen of England to
Marilyn Monroe, for example, created costumes for ballets in the 1950s. Known for his
theatrical black and white photographs, Beaton’s interest in ballet influenced his later
works.
Beaton began photographing ballet in the 1920s. In the 1910s he attended
performances of Pavlova, the Danish ballerina Adeline Genée, and the Ballet Russes. He
saw the ballets Blue Bird, Scheherazade, Prince Igor, Thamar, and Cleopatra performed
live. Around 1929 he took his first portraits of the ballet, The Masque of Beauty and
Pleasure.
595
The portraits of Lydia Lopokova alone and with Frederick Ashton and
Harold Turner showed the dancers gazing out of the image in soft poses that captured the
feeling of movement. Beaton claimed that the images taught him some of “the
tremendous difficulties of photographing ballet.”
596
In 1936 he returned to photograph
scenes from backstage for Symphonie Fantastique, performed by de Basil’s Ballet
Russes. His images taken from the wings captured the long limbed ethereal image of
Tamara Toumanova and a highly made up Leonid Massine, his hair slicked back and his
eyes outlined heavily in black eyeliner. Beaton would take dozens of photographs of
ballet dancers in the 1930s, in many of which individual dancers posed against a blank or
simple backdrop – something he frequently imitated in later images of Hollywood icons
like Marilyn Monroe and Greta Garbo.

595
Cecil Beaton, Ballet (Great Britain: Doubleday and Company Inc, 1951), 12, 14, 15, and 37.
596
Beaton, Ballet, 38.
299

While ballet influenced his photography, the reverse was also true of Beaton’s
work; his glamour photographs and stage designs influenced the appearance of ballet in
the 1940s and 1950 when he created costumes for ballets such Les Sirenes, Les Patineurs,
Camille, Illuminations, Swan Lake, Casse-Noisette and Soiree. Beaton’s designs
embodied the glamour of his photographs. He described his designs for the New York
City ballet’s Les Patineurs, a ballet about ice skaters, as “working to evoke the
atmosphere of a Victorian tuppence-colore, Hoxton-toy-theatre snow scene.” He claimed
to have consulted the set and costume designer Pavel Tchelitchew for the full-length
ballet La Dame aux Camellias for Alicia Markova. Tchelitchew advised him towards the
fantastical and ornate:
You must invent a scheme for the dance – a device – that will fill the
imagination. This is a ballet, not a stage drama. Build only a light
framework: make your changes within that. Be ingenious: forget lifelike
proportions: use of false perspectives. Recreate a forgotten world, a world
of you have never seen, so that the audience will gasp with surprise and
recognition. Make everything gold and glittering, and rich and dusty. All
the whores should be like Victorian jewelry – make one of tapaz, another
ameythst or sapphire or ruby.”
597

Beaton explicitly rejected costumes that invoked reality. He intentionally created costumes
based on fantasy and that possessed allure and mystery. In so doing, his designs often
resembled his work outside of the theater.
Beaton’s costume for Tanaquil LeClerq for the New York City Ballet’s
performance of Illuminations (1950), with its long white tutu and thick ruffled collar, for
example, looked strikingly similar to a portrait of Greta Garbo he took four years earlier

597
Cecil Beaton, Cecil Beaton: Memoirs of the 40’s (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1972), 127-
128. The costumes were originally created by Barbara Karinska.
300

(1946) in Hollywood. Beaton’s portrait of Rudolf Nureyev in 1963 looked almost identical
to an earlier portrait of Johnny Weismuller in 1932; both men lounged on one arm with
their right hand outstretched and fingers curled, gazed off into the distance, and had
smooth bare chests -- though in a white ruffled shirt Nureyev wore more clothing than
Weismuller.
References to ballet in fashion, glamour photography, and other mediums
successfully elevated ballet above popular culture. This redefinition of ballet as art helps
to explain why film, a relatively new form of entertainment, and Broadway theater, whose
producers and creators aspired in the 1950s to distinguish it from other supposedly lesser
theatrical forms, frequently referenced ballet. As high culture, ballet possessed the ability
to legitimate the status of other cultural forms. Part of redefining ballet as art, however,
involved reconfiguring the sexuality exuded by ballerinas in more culturally acceptable
terms.

Remaking the Sexual as Sensual
The abundant unrestrained sexuality of the dancers in The Black Crook and similar
burlesque productions in the nineteenth century, and the highly eroticized and sometimes
homosexual themes of the Ballet Russes in the early twentieth century, would have
offended cultural views of “good women” in the post-war period. The sexuality of
ballerinas, therefore, had to evolve from explicit eroticism to possessing a more subtle
sensuality.

301

As a physical performance, enacted by carnal, flesh and blood, sweating bodies,
ballet is inherently sexual and eroticized. At the same time, highly choreographed,
consisting of a series of systematic and prescribed steps strung together in set sequences,
and governed by strict rules of performance, ballet requires control, skill, and precision.
The individual movements require immense coordination and represent years of training.
Dancers learn to complete multiple beats of the feet midair, high jumps, and graceful
turns through years of practice. Neat, systematic, and planned, ballet is an art of control
and precision. Emotion is contained and expressed gradually and purposefully. By
emphasizing this kind of control, dance critics, journalists, and other cultural
commentators redefined ballet dancers as sensual rather than sexual. Ballerinas embodied
a controlled and contained form of sexuality.
Representations of female ballet dancers in American popular literature reveal the
centrality of control in the new post-war image of the ballerina. As the previously
mentioned images from Life Magazine attest, female ballet dancers rarely appeared in
movement. While the difficulty inherent in taking “action shots” invariably shaped these
images, the rhetorical and visual accompaniments to those rare dissenting exceptions
suggest an alternative explanation. Images of women in performance frequently depicted
moments of submission to a male partner, character, or choreographer. Images from the
ballet The Dual (choreographed by William Dollar) showed a ballerina in the throes of
death. The Dual depicted a tragic love story, when a warrior accidentally killed the
Saracen girl he loved. Instead of showing the battle the preceded her murder, the
photographs, however, showed the ballerina being stabbed, an expression of pain on her
302

face, or lying dead in the arms of her tormented lover. Undoubtedly as a dramatic
moment that elicited a strong facial expression, this moment in the ballet was well suited
for photography. However, in conversation with similar images, and with a subtitle that
read, “quivering with agony and forgiveness, she dies in his arms,” the image reveals a
new trend towards representing female ballet dancers as subordinate to men.
598
Indeed,
control by an external male presence – a choreographer, a male audience, or another
dancer – reinforced the notion of the emotional and passion of women dancers being
securely suppressed.
An image from the ballet Lilac Garden showed “four ill-matched lovers who try
to preserve social amenities at a garden party” and featured three ballerinas all posed in
direct relationship to a romantic entanglement. Nora Kaye swooned into the arms of her
fiancée, a gesture of total submission and dependence. Downstage a second ballerina sat
staring into the face of a “simpler love.” Meanwhile, Tanaquil LeClerq, played the part of
a woman from the fiancée’s past. None of the images posed the women in active dance
positions or as independent from a male character; in all of the images women directed
their attention towards a man.
Subtitles frequently contained what independence and strength did permeate an
image. A photograph of Maria Tallchief in the ballet The Firebird captured her leaping
mid-air, performing a grand-jeté. The text, however read:

598
“Tops in the Dance: New York’s Brilliant Ballet Becomes an Ambassador of U.S. Culture,” Life
Magazine, May 12, 1952, 90 – 8, unnumbered page.

303

Here, underneath a moody moon in an enchanted forest Maria Tallchief as
the magical Firebird soars in an electrifying leap of joy as she expresses
her gratitude to the huntsman-prince who first captured her and then,
dazzled by her grace and beauty, freed her.
599

Rather, than a wild bird who dances with tremendous passion and who rescues Prince
Ivan from the villain, Kashchei, as is also depicted in the ballet, the Firebird here
represents an enslaved creature. Her movement is circumscribed by the character she
plays. She is captured and freed, subject to the Prince’s control.
600

Popular literature also rarely took ballerinas seriously as artists – a role perceived
as highly emotional and therefore unfitting to the emerging conception of women
dancers. Dance commentators and journalists often circumscribed the emotional output
and expressive possibilities associated with an artist by attributing that emotion to an
external, generally male, artist; they minimized the input of women dancers in creating
ballet, instead emphasizing the roles of men. In 1947 Vogue, for example, reported on the
founding of Ballet Society and identified nine men as the ambitious designers of the
program. An accompanying photograph included George Balanchine, dancers William
Dollar, Todd Boleander, and John Taras, composer Rudi Revil, painter Kurt Seligmann,
conductor Leo Barzin, and set designer Esteban Francés. Conspicuously absent from the
photograph, or from any mention in the article, was a discussion of the women dancers,
primarily Maria Tallchief, or for that matter any of the several female patrons who

599
Ibid.

600
Ibid.

304

supported the company.
601
While the ballerina may have embodied talent and glamour,
her performance relied on these master artists.
Popular literature construed the choreographer, a role that, with the rare exception
of women like Agnes de Mille and Bronislava Nijinska, was generally filled by a man, as
the most important person in the creation of ballet. Choreographers drew inspiration from
dancers and created ballets based on their talents and beauty. In other words, ballerinas
were canvasses not artists. They communicated the artistic genius of a master virtuoso.
Instead of moving bodies that created ballet, ballerinas were described as puppets, created
and motivated by men. Many images subsequently depicted women being tutored by
men. A photo of Alicia Markova rehearsing the balcony scene in Romeo and Juliet,
showed the choreographer, Antony Tudor, demonstrating a “difficult gesture.” He leaned
over a barre, back bent, legs engaged. Markova stood above him, head tilted, fingers
raised in a sign of concentration. Even though in performance Markova danced this
particular scene (and the steps being demonstrated), the photograph drew the reader’s
attention to the role of the choreographer.
602
He represented the figure in action, she a
passive participant. Life Magazine referred to George Balanchine, the director of the New
York City Ballet as a “creator of dances and dancers who shapes busy art of ballet.”
603

One journalist noted, “The ballerinas on today’s cover are Balanchine’s creations…He’s

601
“Vogue’s Spot-light,” Vogue, March 15, 1947, 184-185.

602
“You Must Start Young and Work Long and Hard to Be Really First-class Dancer,” Life Magazine,
March 20, 1944, 85.

603
“Balanchine: Creator of Dances and Dancers Who Shapes Busy Art of Ballet,” Life Magazine,
December 22, 1958, 99.

305

worked these young women and his male dancers through years of grueling, exhausting
training without complaint from any of them. His dancers are dedicated to him.”
604

In describing Balanchine’s interactions with his dancers, journalists tended to
portray him as a quiet, stable, supportive and commanding presence. For example, one
writer noted, “In a profession noted for fiery temperaments, Balanchine rarely raises
voice, prefers showing to telling. When satisfied he gives a quiet accolade:
‘Excellent!’”
605
Balanchine didn’t need to raise his voice, because he always exerted
supreme control. He offered his dancers, for example, a “steadying hand,” as when he
tutored ballerina Allegra Kent for her role in the ballet Seven Deadly Sins. Kent, on the
other hand, tried “clambering up the backs of other dancers” and “vainly” attempted to
flee the sinner’s life. Whereas the language describing Balanchine expressed control,
confidence, and assurance, the language surround Kent conveyed a sense of struggle and
futility. In the accompanying image, Balanchine hovered over the rehearsal, spotting Kent
as she practiced lifts with her partner and tutoring her in the finest details of the
performance. He showed her what “expression of the face, what angle of the fingers,
what sweep of limb he wanted.” Only after this tutelage did the movements come alive,
“full of drama, conveying moods that swiftly changed from the tender to the sensual to
the terrifying.”
606

604
Rosalind Massow, “Ballet: Are We Now the World’s Best?” Parade, July 28, 1963, page number
unknown. Clippings File, “New York City Ballet,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.

605
““Tops in the Dance: New York’s Brilliant Ballet Becomes an Ambassador of U.S. Culture,” Life
Magazine, May 12, 1952, 90-98.

606
Ibid.
306

The suppression of female independence in these images should also be viewed as
a response to post-war fears of women in public roles. As women who worked, women
ballet dancers in the 1940s and 1950s might have represented strong independent, career
oriented women. By taking control of their careers, gaining financial independence, and
molding their public identities, actresses like Sarah Bernhardt had challenged social
norms about appropriate feminine behavior at the turn of the century.
607
Objectifying
ballerinas as art and denying the dancers the independence and agency performance and a
career might have imparted situated post-war dancers within male control.
Though by twenty-first century standards this model of femininity seems negative
– an image of social control – in the context of the post-war era it represented the
elevation of a female figure to a highly visible and prominent place in culture. Articles
that sexualized female dancers, that cast them as artistic mediums rather than artists
themselves, and that showed them tutored by male choreographers, at once codified their
status as subordinate to men and at the same time positioned them securely in the public
eye. Aside from actresses, many of them subject to the same criticisms and social controls
as ballerinas, few public role models existed for women. As a result, the ballerina must be
understood as multifaceted in meaning. She at once embodied how a hegemonic culture
exerted control over women and at the same time how that role might elevate women to
new stature.

607
Susan Glenn, Female Spectacle: The Theatrical Roots of Modern Feminism (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2000).
307

Glorifying Woman: Balanchine’ s Ballerinas
The most renowned choreographer of the era, George Balanchine, supposedly
“glorified women.” His ballets featured large casts of women and made women, even
when dancing with men, the central focus of the ballet. Regardless of the manner in
which he foreshadowed ballerinas, Balanchine’s attitudes towards women nevertheless
reflected and influenced her new and conflicted social role. In 1976 Balanchine wrote:
Man is a better cook, a better painter, a better musician, composer.
Everything is man – sports – everything. Man is stronger, faster. Why?
Because we have muscles, and we’re made that way. And woman accepts
this. It is her business to accept. She knows what’s beautiful. Men are great
poets because they have to write beautiful poetry for women – odes to a
beautiful woman. Woman accepts the beautiful poetry. You see, man is the
servant – a good servant. In ballet, however, woman is first. Everywhere else
man is first. But in ballet, it’s the woman. All my life I have dedicated my art
to her.
608

Balanchine believed ballet was about women and supposedly focused his choreography
on celebrating her beauty. His choreography often, however, treated her problematically.
Dance historian Ann Daly has described Balanchine’s treatment of women
dancers as possessing deeply patriarchal foundations, as bordering even on misogynist.
Requiring immense strength, coordination, and trust in her partner, Balanchine’s
choreography demanded a high level of technical expertise by woman dancers. Many lifts
and poses, however, gave the impression of passivity and dependence on her male
partner. In The Four Temperaments, first performed in 1951, the ballerina performed a
number of unconventional arabesques. Rather than balancing freely and independently,

608
Ann Daly, “The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers,” The Drama Review:
TDR 31 no. 1 (Spring, 1997): 8.

308

she leaned back against the body of her partner. He then pulled, thrust, and pivoted her
into various positions. The ballerina may have been the primary visual interest in the
ballet, but the choreography itself positioned her as passive and weak and the male as
assertive and controlling.
609

Balanchine also perceived the female body as an artistic medium. He described
choosing the students who danced for him as similar to selecting horses: “The dancers
here have exceptional bodies. You choose them as you would horses. There are a lot of
horses in the U.S. and when you choose them to run, some are faster and better.”
610

Balanchine depersonalized the dancer, turning her into an animal – an animal often
purchased, bread, and owned - rather than an artist. He also prescribed very definite
notions of what an ideal ballerina’s body would look like. He claimed, “They couldn’t be
too tall because on points they add five inches. Legs must be fairly long, bones, small and
well formed, head rather small.” Most ballet dancers were petite and adolescent in
appearance. His dancers could be no taller than 5’5 and weigh no more than 115
pounds.
611
The ideal ballet dancer’s body was ultra-thin. She had long arms and legs, a
long neck, a short waist, and small head. To fit his height and weight requirements, she
also carried very little extra body fat. In short, she looked like a teenager. Particularly
following grants from the Ford Foundation in 1959 to audition students around the

609
Daly, “The Balanchine Woman,” 10.

610
George Balanchine, “Now Everybody Wants to Get Into the Act,” Life Magazine, June 11, 1965, 98.

611
Sally MacDougall, “So You’d Like to be a Ballerina,” journal and date unclear, circa late 1950s,
Clippings File, “New York City Ballet,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.
309

country to train in New York, Balanchine exerted greater control in selecting women who
met these body types.
Balanchine ballerinas resembled “Twiggy,” the British model who rose to fame in
the late 1950s, and popularized a skinny, boyish image of femininity. Rather than an
imitation of the emphasis placed on thinness in fashion, Balanchine’s preferred body type
for women should, however, be understood as another side of the same coin. Both
Twiggy and the ballerina reflected images of adolescent women, images of female
sexuality contained in the body of teenagers. Significantly underweight, the professional
ballerina often did not even menstruate. She was not a fully mature woman, but rather a
“girl” only partially grown into her sexuality. In other words, ballerinas were images of
stunted sexual development. They symbolized restraint, sensuality rather than explicit
sexuality, elegance and chastity rather than passion. The bodies of models could be
argued to express similar anxieties and concerns.
Youth became the defining characteristic of most professional ballerinas. For
example, in 1945 Cyd Charisse, age twenty-two, and Margaret O’Brien, age ten posed for
photographs in Life Magazine. The images should have depicted two women at very
different stages in their lives and careers. Instead, two remarkably similar looking women
posed in similar positions. The first full page photograph featured the dancers standing
one leg behind them and arms raised in matching costumes. The younger dancer stood in
front of the other, appearing a smaller and diminutive, rather than younger, version of her
partner. These were two “gay young ladies frolicking about.” Neither sisters nor a
mother-daughter team, the only differentiation between the girls was in their size. One
310

image even showed the younger ballerina sitting in a “classic pose,” tying her shoes in
such a way that she appeared much older.
612

Even older ballerinas were portrayed as frozen in youth. At the height of her
partnership with Nureyev in 1963, Margot Fonteyn, probably the most famous ballerina
of the post-war era was forty-four years old - nineteen years older than her renowned
partner, Rudolf Nureyev. At forty-four she danced the role of the teenaged Juliet in the
ballet Romeo and Juliet. Audiences only saw a woman enlivened by the youth of her
younger partner. Though Fontyen was considered the “Dame” of British ballet, she also
continued to embody girlhood and femininity. She performed the anguish of a betrayed
maiden in Marguerite and Armand and conveyed “the abandon of youthful
infatuation.”
613
Nureyev wrote of her, “I don’t care if Margot is a Dame of the British
Empire or older than myself. For me she represents eternal youth…. She is a great artist,
and I have not met any woman dancer who has the femininity of Margot, which for me is
a superlative compliment equivalent to saying that she is a goddess.”
614
While Fonteyn
may have represented the epitome of eternal youth, she also embodied a more pervasive
cultural association between youth and the ballerina. Similar language would be used to
describe other prima-ballerinas such as Maya Plisetskaya and Galina Ulanova.
Nureyev’s description of Fonteyn as a goddess was apropos. Worshipped for her
beauty by the thousands of Americans who went to see her perform, she represented the

612
“Speaking of Pictures: Margaret O’Brien Dances With Cyd Charisse,” Life Magazine, April 7, 1945, 24-
26.

613
“The Hottest Little Team in Show Biz,” Life Magazine, May 24, 1963, 107-108.

614
“Nureyev,” Life Magazine, November 27, 1964, 100.

311

epitome of elite art. By the 1950s she and other professional ballerinas commanded
respect in U.S. culture.

Images of Ballerinas in Pin-Up Art
Additional evidence of the elevation of the ballerina to new stature in the United
States appears in lowbrow images of ballet dancers in pin-up art. As forms of “soft”
pornography, pin-up art employed pastiche, parody, and an “abundance of familiar
second-hand styles” to titillate audiences.
615
Parodies work by drawing upon generic
cultural conventions and by referencing and mocking mainstream culture.
616
On film
parody one scholar wrote, “the viewer needs to have some familiarity with the target text
in order to appreciate the parodic activity.”
617
Parodies also frequently mock high culture.
Representations of ballerinas in pin-up art, therefore, indicate not only the widespread
familiarity of American audiences with ballet, but also its evolving meaning in U.S.
culture.
Known for the images he produced for Esquire between 1933 and 1956, George
Petty created the “Petty Girl”- an immensely popular airbrushed image of robust female
sexuality which eventually graced the noses of American aircraft in World War II.
618
His
ballerinas straddled power tools, wore overalls, baseball caps, gun halters and bath

615
Angela McRobbie, Postmodernism and Popular Culture (New York: Routledge, 1994), 87.

616
Peter Lehman, Pornography Film and Culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006)

617
Dan Harries, Film Parody (London: British Film Institute, 2000), 25. Cited in, McRobbie,
Postmodernism and Popular Culture, 196.

618
For additional information on the Petty Girl see, Reid Austin, Petty: The Classic Pin-Up Art of George
Petty (New York: Gramercy Books, 1997).

312

towels; they chatted on the phone and completed domestic activities. To a lesser extent
the Peruvian born artist Alberto Varga, an abbreviation of his name “Vargas” which he
assumed while working for Esquire in the 1940s when he replaced Petty, also worked
with the image of the ballerina.
Pin-up art construed women as fetishized objects. Dressed in shear clothing that
emphasized their breasts and legs, the women held men off; they were flirts, sexually
available only to men who pursued them. A “real man” not only desired women, but also
diligently courted them.
619
The supplicant reclining positions of pin-up ballerinas,
fingers pointed to their nipples, tutus hovering over a photographer’s face (in the Life
article), construed their bodies as available to be consumed by men. Varga depicted a
ballerina in a sheer leotard, reclining back on her thighs with her head back and her
nipples pointed up in a position that made her body appear available. (See Figure 49)
Petty at times posed the women in positions
that can best be described as phallic. For
example, one ballerina sat on one foot,
photographed from behind, with an
emphasis on her round highlighted buttocks.
Notably, she also placed one finger on her
nipple, a pose he imitated in images such as
his 1956 calendar image.
620
Certainly more

619
Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man, 214.

620
Petty calendar images, January 1956, Collection of the author.

Figure 49 Alberto Varga, original source
unknown, reprinted in, Charles G. Martignette
and Louis K. Meisel, The Great American Pin-up
(New York: Taschen, 2002), 416.
313

exaggerated than the images that appeared in Life Magazine that posed women in
sexually seductive manners- in sheets and with their bodies exposed, etc. – pin-up
ballerinas nevertheless objectified women. They reflected the centrality of ballet to post-
war culture but also the perpetual fascination with the ballerina’s body.
The influential American writer Kurt V onnegut, known for his use of satire in his
writing, wrote of Varga’s images, “the effect … if not their intention, was to make horny
youths far from hornier…the pin-up girls of World War II had the generalized appeal of
merchandise, implied fixed prices and order forms.”
621
V onnegut suggested that calendar
images turned women into consumer goods, available for purchase. “The paper woman in
the girdle and bra, if you were a man seemed as much in your power as the socket-
wrench set or level-winding fishing reel.”
622
Indeed, images of ballet dancers posed with
tools and a fishing line drew a parallel between ownership and consumption of physical
goods and the woman selling them. Thus, they promoted a manipulation and possession
of women as sexual objects similar to the ballerinas in Life Magazine in the 1940s
Both Varga and Petty posed ballerinas in costumes that were not suitable for
dancing and in settings where they would not necessarily perform. In 1942 Varga
depicted a ballerina lying on her back, with her legs in the air. The skirt of her tutu
swathed over her bare chest. She appeared to be topless, wearing a tutu skirt but no
bodice. She also wore only one point shoe, the other dangling from her extended hands.
This ballerina represented a fantasy of female sexuality, a woman stripping, removing her

621
Alberto Vargas, Varga, the Esquire Years: A Catalogue Raisonne (New York: Marck Editions, 1987), 6.

622
Varga, Varga, 6.
314

clothing one shoe at a time. Two years later Varga painted a ballerina wearing seductive
black stockings, a marked departure from the pink flesh-like tights worn on stage. The
color of risqué lingerie, black marked the
image as provocative. The ballerina also
notably wore a leotard that lacked straps.
Many images also showed the women in
settings where she would not normally
perform. Petty’s ballerinas, though
usually shown against a white backdrop,
held props. (See Figure 50) Most
ballerinas would not, however, perform with stirrups attached to her shoes, in a garage, or
while talking on the phone.
623
Denying the women the opportunity to perform paralleled
articles in mainstream culture that denied women dancers professional agency.
Images of sexual objectification and manipulation the pin-up images also reveal
ballet’s association with high culture. Some contemporary commentators in the 1950s and
scholars today have argued that the appearance of pointe shoes on the women tempered
the eroticism of the images. Pointe shoes were an alternative to the high heeled shoe; they
maintained the long lines of women’s legs and the emphasis heels placed on their muscles
and butt, but avoided some of the “social disadvantages” tied to such a sexualized piece
of clothing. One author has even argued that the ballet shoes successfully neutralized
some of the shocking, albeit avant-garde qualities, of Petty’s 1930s images. The sexy,

623
For additional images see, Martignette and Meisel, The Great American Pin-up, 343 and 345.

Figure 50 George Petty, Calendar Image, January
1956, Collection of the author.
315

titillating quality of the Petty girl of this era faded with the “fantasy of ballet shoes” and
“too broadly-smiled innocence.”
624
Hugh Heffner claimed that the Petty girl of the 1940s
was “less sophisticated and seductive – a reflection of more conservative times.” Instead
of the telephone, the hallmark of his earlier images, Petty now featured ballet slippers.”
625

By abandoning the high heeled women of his 1930s images, or even those portrayed as
barefoot, Petty supposedly forfeited the “invaluable reality and sexuality” that they
produced.
626
Understanding, the use of pointe shoes in pin-up images as means of making
the images less sexualized, therefore means recognizing how the image of the ballerina
evolved from mere sexuality to refinement and idealization. Known for his use of satire
in writing, Kurt V onnegut’s commentary on pin-up images was apropos. Pin-up art
mocked an emerging cultural icon.

Audrey Hepburn: A Ballerina and an American Icon
More so than anyone else, Hollywood actress Audrey Hepburn embodied the
emerging image of the ballerina. With her petite, youthful appearance, Hepburn looked
like a professional ballerina. Born in Brussels and trained in ballet dancing by the
renowned Polish-Jewish dancer, Marie Rambert, Hepburn eventually forsook a career as
a ballet dancer. Realizing she was too tall and had lost too much time during World War
II to have a career as a ballerina, Hepburn chose to pursue other forms of work –

624
Varga, Varga, 159.

625
Varga, Varga, 10.

626
Varga, Varga, 160.
316

Figure 51 Audrey Hepburn in a still from Secret People,
Margaret Herrick Library.
primarily acting.
627
In London, she worked briefly in musical comedy, performing in
shows like High Button Shoes, a popular American musical with choreography by Jerome
Robbins.
628
Her slender long-legged physique, however, soon attracted the attention
fashion photographers, landing her important modeling contracts and motivating her to
study acting.
Hepburn rose to fame in Europe in the early 1950s, performing small roles in
British films like The Lavender Hill Mob (1951) and later in feature roles in Young Wives
Tale (1951) and Secret People (1951).
629
In Secret People she played an aspiring twenty-
two year old ballerina. It was the most demanding role of her young career and required
her to perform on pointe three times during the film (See Figure 51). Parts in Monte
Carlo Baby (1951) and later in the
Broadway adaptation of Gigi, based
on the French novel by Colette, led
to her American film debut in the
Academy Award winning production
of Roman Holiday (1953).In the
ensuing decade Hepburn starred in a
series of major Hollywood films

627
“Princess Apparent,” Time, September 7, 1953, 60-62.

628
Donald Spoto, Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn (New York: Harmony Books, 2006), 40.

629
For more extensive reviews of Hepburn’s work in her early films and career as a dancer see, Robyn
Karney, Audrey Hepburn: A Star Danced (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995).

317

including Sabrina (1954), War and Peace (1956), Funny Face (1956), Breakfast at
Tiffany’ s (1961), and My Fair Lady (1964). Throughout the tenure of her career,
Hepburn’s association with ballet, however, would remain an important part of her public
image. Renowned for her “spectacular elegance” and “polish” and for always being well
“groomed,” Hepburn epitomized ideal femininity.
630
She embodied elegance, control,
youth, femininity, sensuality, restraint, elegance, and grace - qualities that became
synonymous with the ballerina.
Upon her death in January 1993 the New York Times titled Audrey Hepburn’s
obituary “Farewell to the Swan.”
631
Recent biographies of the famed actress include
Enchantment: The Life of Audrey Hepburn (2006), How to Be Lovely: the Audrey
Hepburn Way of Life (2004), Audrey Hepburn: An Elegant Spirit (2003), and Audrey
Hepburn: A Star Danced (1995). Contemporary journalists would describe her in the 40s,
50s, and 60s as “lovely,” “elfin,” and “coltish.” Biographer Donald Spoto has argued that
the press used these “empty clichés” to describe Hepburn because she was beyond the
current lexicon attached to contemporary actresses.
632
All of these descriptions, however,
did share in common one vital association; they evoked graceful, youthful, movement.
Prior to Hepburn’s entrée into American cinema actresses generally fulfilled one
of several types of women in film. Women were sex goddesses, femme fatales, sex
kittens, girls next door, sharp-tongued wise crackers, screwball comediennes, musical

630
Warner Brothers Studios, Press Release, Burbank, CA, HO 9 – 1251, “Biography of Audrey Hepburn,”
Clippings Files, “Audrey Hepburn,” University of Southern California Film and Television Library.

631
Janet Maslin, “Audrey Hepburn: Farewell to the Swan,” New York Times, January 31, 1993.

632
Spoto, Enchantment, 77.

318

comedy starts, and dignified dowagers.
633
To this, Hepburn added a new and complicated
image. Biographer Robyn Karney wrote, “it is obvious to all but the most curmudgeonly
that in Hepburn the cinema had found a new ideal of feminine loveliness, a personality of
unique attraction that would be much imitated, and much extolled the world over ….”
634

Hepburn was both sexually alluring, as well as refined and elegant. She was the post-war
era’s embodiment of a ballerina. She appropriated both the ballerina’s explicit sexuality
and the containment and control associated with ballet and with professional ballerinas.
In her role as Ondine on Broadway in 1953, Hepburn, for example, played an
other-worldy sprite. Based on a French play by Jean Giraudoux, Ondine blended
depictions of the real with the fantastical. The plot revolved around the romance of
Ondine, a water spirit enamored with the human world. The play elicited reviews that
Hepburn was “enchanting,” “magical,” “nymphlike” sophisticated and fresh.
635
In
addition, following her success in Roman Holiday in 1953 Life Magazine ran a short
article and photographic essay on Hepburn. The cover of the magazine featured Hepburn
seated, her long legs completely bare and her hair pulled off her face. Inside a photograph
showed Hepburn stretching at the ballet barre, clothed in a leotard, tights, and ballet
shoes, and working with the renowned dancer and choreographer Eugene Loring. A
second photograph featured Hepburn staring longingly at a plate of breakfast pastries,
evoking the restraint and discipline required in maintaining the ballerina’s slim figure.

633
Karney, Audrey Hepburn, 12.

634
Karney, Audrey Hepburn, 58.

635
“Another Triumph for Audrey: She Plays Enchanting Sprite,” undated and source unclear, circa 1953,
Clippings Files, “Audrey Hepburn,” University of Southern California Film and Television Library.

319

Hepburn was elegant, controlled, and an embodiment of the sylphlike image of the
ballerina.
636

At the same time, Hepburn also exuded a sensual sex appeal.
637
The cover of
Theatre Arts journal, as well as an article in the Broadway Postscript, featured Hepburn
dressed as the sprite in Ondine in a full length nude leotard with only a smattering of
apparent seaweed decorating her body.
638
A Paramount executive reported that “Any
other actress would have been censored from here to Timbuctoo for this Minksy outfit.
But what censor would dare point a finger at Audrey Hepburn.”
639
Hepburn had come to
so embody the restraint associated with ballet, that her appearance in minimal and very
sexy outfits garnered little negative attention. As one journalist wrote, “The elfin
enchantment Audrey Hepburn dispenses on the screen is the kind of black magic that
fascinates men and charms women. Her appeal is universal because of the totally
acceptable image she projects: the sophisticated child-woman capable of giving herself
completely to love without any feminist reservations.”
640

636
“She is the Director’s Joy, The Studio Helps Delight,” Life Magazine, December 7, 1953, 128, 132.

637
Biography of Audrey Hebpburn, Warner Brothers Studios, HO 9-1251, Clippings Files, “Audrey
Hepburn,” University of Southern California Film and Television Library.

638
Cover, Theatre Arts Journal, June 1954; “Nymph Mania” in Broadway Postscript undated, circa 1953,
Clippings Files, “Audrey Hepburn,” University of Southern California Film and Television Library.

639
Karney, Audrey Hepburn, 63,

640
“Audrey Hepburn,” The Sound Stage, undated, pps. 19-21, 59-60, Clippings Files, “Audrey Hepburn,”
University of Southern California Film and Television Library.

320

Public appraisals of Audrey Hepburn’s talents often relied on terms that at first
glance appeared quite contradictory. She was described as both childlike and regal and
sensual as well as pure. In 1953 Life Magazine wrote:
Nobody ever quite sums her up because Audrey defies definition. She is
both waif and woman of the world. She is disarmingly friendly and
strangely aloof. She is all queen (her grandfather was a Dutch baron) and
all commoner – you can imagine her lifting a lorgnette at a ball or milking
a cow in a barn. She has been called chic, soignée, ravissante, and a lot of
other fancy French words; she has also been called a slick chick.
641

The photographs to follow attempted to capture “the elements that comprise Audrey’s
elusive charm.”
642
Following her performance in Roman Holiday as Princess Anne, Time
Magazine reported, “Exquisitely blending queenly dignity and bubbling mischief, a stick-
slim actress with huge, limpid eyes and a heart-shaped face was teaching U.S.
moviegoers last week a lesson they already knew and loved.”
643
(The highlighted lesson
was that royalty does not necessarily equate with happiness.)
Regal, sophisticated, exquisite, chic, soignée, ravissante, and enchanting,
Hepburn’s public persona differed from that of Marilyn Monroe in that she represented
ideal femininity. She was a woman with a career, but she subsumed that career within an
image of domesticity. She was a dutiful wife and later mother. She exuded sexuality, but
passed that sexuality through the lens of an image of containment. In short, Audrey
Hepburn embodied the image of ballerina in the post-war period.

641
“Audrey Hepburn,” Life Magazine, December 7, 1953, 128.

642
Ibid.

643
“Princess Apparent,” Time, September 7, 1953, 60-62.

321

Conclusion
In 1971 Alvin Ailey choreographed the ballet Cry, a plotless solo for a woman, in
tribute to the experiences of black women. First performed by Judith Jamison, the ballet
celebrated female strength and independence. It showed a woman performing aggressive
strong gestures, contorting her back under heavy burdens, and wearing a long white
dress. While invariably pointing to a juncture in attitudes towards women in the black
and white communities in the 1970s, Ailey’s ballet also marked a distinct departure from
traditions of representing women in the 1940s and 1950s. In these first few decades of the
post-war period, representations of female ballet dancers took largely restrictive forms.
They embodied a preoccupation with the containment of female sexuality and often
appeared controlled, managed, and manipulated.
Dance historian Ann Daly argued that Balanchine’s ballerina served as “a
powerful but regressive model in an era when women are struggling to claim their own
voices.”
644
In the twenty-first century, when culture tends to portray ballerinas as
masochistic, preoccupied with her weight, and willing to endure painful demands on her
body for the sake of art, this model does seem oppressive. However, in the context of the
post-war period, the representation of the ballerina as an image of idealized femininity
was central to redefining ballet as high art.

644
Ann Daly, “The Balanchine Woman,” 9.
322

CHAPTER 7
THE RUNAWAY DANCER:
RUDOLF NUREYEV AND MASCULINITY IN THE UNITED STATES

In June 1961 newspaper headlines across Europe and the United States reported
on the “Daring Leap to Freedom” of a young Russian ballet dancer, Rudolf Nureyev.
Only twenty-three years old and previously unknown outside the Soviet Union, Nureyev
quickly became a popular phenomenon. Following his 1962 debut in the United States,
Nureyev partnered with the renowned British ballerina, Margot Fonteyn. Together, they
embarked on a tour that crisscrossed North America. Audiences across the United States
flocked to often sold-out performances and Nureyev became what dance critic Walter
Terry would describe in 1978 as “the superstar of the entire world of dance.” He also
attracted the fascination of men and women beyond the traditional circle of dance fans
who historically attended the theater, eventually moving from the concert theaters of
classical ballet to dancing on Broadway. According to Terry, “It was the public that came,
for Nureyev was more than a premier danseur, he was a total star of the theater.”
645

Nureyev’s celebrity soared to the extent that John Raymond compared him to James
Dean, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe; Nureyev was “one of the modern
mythology.”
646
He became one of the most famous men in the world.

645
Walter Terry, Great Male Dancers of the Ballet (New York: Anchor Books, 1978), 117, 121.

646
John Raymond, newspaper and date unknown, circa 1962, Clippings File, “Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins
Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
323

Not since Vaslav Nijinsky, the star of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes nearly fifty-
years earlier, had a male ballet dancer attracted anything approaching the level of media
attention that Nureyev generated. Some scholars have attributed Nureyev’s success to the
political and cultural ramifications of the Cold War, noting that his defection
demonstrated the opportunities and freedoms of the West and the advantages and
superiority of capitalist democracy over communism.
647
Indeed, in the summer of 1961
political tensions between the United States and Eastern Europe escalated to a near
breaking point; in August barbed wire, the beginnings of the Berlin Wall, was erected to
divide communist occupied Germany from the West. Nureyev’s defection in the months
immediately prior undoubtedly resonated with an international audience terrified by the
impending political crisis.
The context of the Cold War does not, however, fully explain the duration of the
public’s interest in Nureyev. His popularity far surpassed the notoriety of his defection.
Moreover, dance critic John Martin noted in 1962 that Nureyev’s defection was “scarcely
enough, no matter how strongly one may feel about those wicked Reds, to pack the
theatre to the roof and to produce a hysterical demonstration that exceeded the bounds of
both reason and decorum.”
648
Nureyev was not the first or the last Russian dancer to
“defect” to the West. In the first half of the century, George Balanchine, Anton Mordkin,
Serge Pavley, and Alexandra Danilova, among others, immigrated to the United States.

647
Naima Prevots, Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War (Hanover: Wesleyan
University Press, 1998); David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During
the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

648
John Martin, “Dance: Nureyev: Gifted Young Russian Throws Himself to the Lions – Week’s Events,”
New York Times, March 25, 1962,

324

However, in 1922, with the formation of the Soviet Union, legal emigration became
virtually impossible and during the Cold War the term “defector” came to refer to
scientists, artists, spies, and athletes, as well as dancers, who fled Soviet controlled and
Eastern bloc nations for the West.
649

Eight years prior to Nureyev’s defection, two Kirov-trained dancers, Nora Kovach
and Istvan Rabovsky, fled from communist occupied East Berlin. During a tour of the
Budapest State Opera in East Berlin the dancers boarded an underground subway located
beneath their hotel and escaped to West Berlin. In the years to follow they traveled
around the world and throughout the United States. They appeared on television
programs like The Ed Sullivan Show and were the subjects of articles in Life Magazine.
650

In the 1970s, Natalia Makarova (1970), Mikhail Baryshnikov (1974), Alexander
Gudonov (1979), and Leonid and Valentina Kozlova (1979) abandoned Russian ballet
companies and established successful careers in Europe and the United States. Widely
celebrated and acclaimed, these dancers sustained the ballet craze of that decade.
651

Baryshnikov went on to star in Hollywood films like The Turning Point (1977) and White
Nights (1985), and Makarova became one of the most famous ballerinas in the United

649
See chapter three in, Alan Dowty, Closed Borders: The Contemporary Assault on Freedom of
Movement (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

650
On Norah Kovach and Istvan Rabovsky see, "Recruits for Freedom," Time Magazine, September 7,
1953; "Refugee Dancers Score; Couple Who Fled From the Iron Curtain Hailed in London Bow," New
York Times, August 26, 1953; "Two Dancers Arriving; Hungarian Couple Who Fled From Reds Will Be on
TV Nov. 22," New York Times, November 13, 1953; Anna Kisselgoff, “Nora Kovach: Ballerina Who
Defected From Hungary, Is Dead at 77,” New York Times, January 24, 2009; George Mikes, Leap Through
the Iron Curtain: The Story of Norah Kovach and Istvan Rabovsky (New York: Dutton, 1956).

651
For a general review of ballet in the 1970s and the defections of dancers during this era see, Nancy
Reynolds and Malcolm McCormick, No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2003), 498 – 508.

325

States. Nevertheless, their popularity paled in comparison to that of Nureyev. He
captivated fans as no ballet dancer before or after him.

A New Kind of Dancer: Nureyev and Images of Male Dancers
Beautiful but strong, elegant but athletic, authoritative but temperamental,
Nureyev embodied a series of highly gendered contradictions that resonated with a post-
war political discourse that shunned weak men as “soft” in comparison to their “hard”
superiors. This rhetoric betrayed several pervasive social anxieties. Festering class
antagonisms between ultra right Republicans resentful of their political powerlessness
during the years of the Great Depression and “old-moneyed eastern establishment
liberals” disdainful of the “crude right wing upstarts” who threatened their status
inevitably surfaced in and informed this rhetoric. These anxieties, however, intersected
with more easily personified concerns about the nature of masculinity in the United
States. Questions about the extent to which one was a “real man,” a full heterosexual, or
even just “normal” struck deep emotional chords and became a basis of the political
discourse of the era.
652

In its preoccupation with masculinity, post-war political discourse responded to
dramatic changes in gender and sexuality in the United States. World War II propelled
women into the workforce and disrupted traditional divisions of labor between men and
women, triggering fears that powerful women would emasculate men. At the same time,

652
K.A. Cuordileone, “Politics in an Age of Anxiety: Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in
American Masculinity, 1949-1960,” Journal of American History 87 no. 2 (September, 2000): 515-545.

326

the post-war emphasis on consumption, which had traditionally been associated with
women, produced concerns about the “feminization of American culture” and the loss of
“traditional” values.
653
Mass culture, with its emphasis on unity, conformity, and
bureaucracy threatened to undermine personal individuality, a core component of
masculinity in previous centuries, and gender differences, a key component of the
contemporary social hierarchy.
654
Moreover, changes in race relations accompanying the
escalating Civil Rights Movement threatened to undercut white male authority. These
anxieties created what some scholars have referred to as a “crisis in masculinity” or
“male panic.”
655

During the McCarthy trials, anxieties about masculinity surfaced frequently in
accusations of homosexuality, revealing another underlying concern in the United States:
as men and women struggled to define masculinity and femininity, attitudes towards
sexuality also fluctuated. The children of the baby boom generation came of age and
favored new sexual practices, while an older generation of social reformers continued to

653
On the “feminization of American culture” see, Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture
(New York: Knopf, 1977).

654
Cuordileone, “Politics in an Age of Anxiety,” 6–7.

655
On the “crisis in masculinity” and “male panic” see, K.A. Cuordileone, “Politics in an Age of Anxiety;”
Michael Davidson, Guys Like Us: Citing Masculinity in Cold War Poetics (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2004 ; James Gilbert, Men in the Middle: Searching for Masculinity in the 1950s (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2005). For additional information on masculinity in the 1950s see, Michael S.
Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Tom
Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture 1900-1950
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000).
327

advocate pre-marital abstinence and sexual control.
656
Moreover, the increasingly
mobilized gay and lesbian community of the 1950s and the hippie subculture of the early
1960s advocated sexual experimentation.
These changes in gender and sexuality had several important consequences on
post-war culture. For one, they clashed with fears of nuclear war produced by the Cold
War. Surrounded by political chaos most Americans desperately desired social stability,
turning to the preservation of the nuclear family, the containment of female sexuality, and
the codification of gender roles for this security. These changes, however, also “had the
effect of creating the possibility for more diverse role models for middle-class
Americans.”
657

In Hollywood James Dean and Marlon Brando popularized an image of tough but
tender masculinity. Popular film reviews portrayed Dean as vulnerable, brooding, and
insecure, attributes that heightened his sexual appeal by creating a more accessible form
of masculinity, that made vulnerability a symbol of strength, and that stood Dean’s
masculinity in stark contrast to the invincibility embodied by John Wayne.
658
Rebel
Without a Cause (1955), Dean’s most famous film, also possessed allusions to
homosexuality. The persona of the sad young man embodied in the character of Jim

656
According to historians John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman, “Through literature, movies, magazines,
popular fiction, and pornography, sex unconstrained by marriage was on display – on the other hand, even
as the erotic seemed to permeate American life, white middle-class America struggled to maintain sexual
boundaries.” John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 277.

657
James Gilbert argues that there were many ways to be a “man” in the 1950s. Gilbert, Men in the Middle,
4.

658
Michael Kimmel, Men and Masculinities: A Social. Cultural, and Historical Encyclopedia (Santa
Barbara: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 2004), 10.
328

recalled a prominent gay stereotype common from the 1940s to the 1970s. Introspective,
sensitive, and ill at ease in the world, Dean inverted expectations of masculinity, hinting
at its socially constructed nature.
659

Rudolf Nureyev embodied a similar model of masculinity to Dean. He appeared
robust, vigorous, and athletic and yet also soft, sinuous, and elegant. Both men wore
makeup, performed on stage, exposed their bodies, and were depicted as impetuous and
highly temperamental young men. Nureyev’s masculinity eventually, however, took on an
even more exaggerated form, blurring the boundaries between the masculine and the
feminine, and cultivating a new model of male sexuality in the United States. The French
ballerina Violette Verdy described Nureyev’s sexual intensity:
Rudi [was] a dancer of such multiple beauties that you can almost say he has
no sex. Or you could say that, as a dancer, he has both sexes. He goes beyond
a regular, ordinary square male dancer. And the matter is beyond one of
simply having feminine qualities. It’s almost as if he creates another type of
sex altogether. He’s a kind of dancing creature. You don’t see a male or a
female – you see a dancer, a great dancer. Something like a faun or a bird,
something wild and something very beautiful. He has all sexual qualities.
660

Whereas Dean challenged strict societal constructions of ideal manhood as “hard,”
Nureyev forged an altogether new form of androgynous masculinity. He was physically
strong, equally strong-minded, independent, and assertive, as well as passionate,
emotional, and highly sensual. In an era when political discourse emphasized binaries

659
Claudia Springer, James Dean Transfigured: The Many Faces of Rebel Iconography (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 2007), 34.

660
Otis Stuart, Perpetual Motion: The Public and Private Lives of Rudolf Nureyev (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1995), 148. Citing, Ballet Review, Spring 1979.

329

such as male/female, soft/hard, good/bad, and gay/straight, and when social values
seemed black or white, Nureyev represented ambiguity.
During his debut performance on American television in 1963 on The Bell
Telephone Hour, Nureyev danced two solos, one from the Romantic styled ballet The
Sleeping Beauty (1890) by Tchaikovsky and the other from Gayne (1942) by the Russian
composer Aram Ill’yich Katchaturian.
661
In The Sleeping Beauty Nureyev soared though
the air in daring leaps known as grand-jetés, performed impressive double cabrioles
(jumps in which the dancer springs from one foot into the air, beating the legs together
before opening in a scissor like motion), double tours en l’air (when the performer jumps
from two feet straight in the air spinning twice), and turns known as pirouettes,
sometimes rotating as many as five times. He also, however, moved his arms in soft,
graceful, and delicate motions. His port de bras, the movement of his arms and hands
between positions, literally translated in French as “carriage of the arms,” seemed to float
through the air, in big sweeping gestures.
662
(See Figures 52 and 53 )

661
“Rudolf Nureyev Solo Debut on American TV 1963,” jkirchner314, youtube.com, (accessed July 18,
2010). This clip is available for view on the popular shared media cite, youtube. Unfortunately, the video
lacks information pertaining to when, on what program, or on what channel the video aired. The video is
also available on the DVD, Firestone Dances: Historic Ballet Performances, which cites the program as
airing June 2, 1963. Firestone Dances: Historic Ballet Performances, released April 29, 2008, Black &
White, Classical, DVD, NTSC.

662
Ibid.

330

Inspired by Russian folk and “character” dancing, Gayne opened with Nureyev
bouncing to highly rhythmic music and showed him performing rapid gestures of the feet
that forced his hips to sway. His arms moved through gestures reminiscent of a female
flamenco dancer, arms above his head and hands turned up. Between impressive jumps
and turns he performed intricate arm gestures, often opening them and forcing his chest
out. Mid-way through the dance, with his back to the audience, he pranced upstage
(towards the back of the stage) crossing his legs in an exaggerated walk, and swaying his
arms.
Both ballets juxtaposed male qualities with female. Choreographed in the
Romantic tradition, The Sleeping Beauty recalled a balletic tradition associated with
women and costumed Nureyev in tight pale tights and a heavily ornamented jacket. At
Figure 52 Rudolf Nureyev performing
The Sleeping Beauty with the Kirov
Ballet in Paris in May 1961, prior to
his defection, Agence de Presse
Bernand. Notice his wig, heavily
defined eyes, and soft hands.
Figure 53 Rudolf Nureyev performing a grand jeté in The
Sleeping Beauty, with the de Cuevas company following his
defection, Paris, June 196. Nureyev wore a similar costume
(though no wig) when he made his debut performance in the
same ballet in the United States in 1963. Agence de Presse
Bernand.
331

the same time, the ballet also required the athleticism, strength, and superior control to
perform complicated movements. Gayne dressed Nureyev in dark pants and a simple
waist coat, showed him performing the leaps and jumps for which he became so famous,
but also featured intricate and highly stylized arm movements and swaggering walks. He
ended the solo on his knees, arms gently unfolding from his shoulders as the music came
to an end.
663

The television program also included an extended introduction and a montage of
images of Nureyev between solos, which had the effect of heightening the gender
ambiguity in his performance. The opening dialogue claimed:
Rudolf Nureyev: the critics have exhausted their endless superlatives. The
audiences have cheered until their voices departed. Today in our own land
that tradition of the supreme dancer flames again. The blazing intensity of
this young disciple of movement - he has taken the torch from the immortal
hand of Nijinsky and carried it aloft to greater heights.
664

Blazing and intense, Nureyev attracted fans as only a few other male entertainers before
him. His predecessor in ballet, Vaslav Nijinsky, performed highly sexualized roles that
elicited criticism in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s as lewd and pornographic.
Images of Nureyev on stage in 1963, particularly those that zoomed in on his face,
showing him preparing to perform, hand gently and dramatically crossed against his

663
Ibid.

664
Ibid.
332

heart, also resembled the feminized glamour photography of George Hurrell in the
1930s.
665

The cult-like following of exhausted fans described by the narrator of the program
as following Nureyev also resembled those that followed Hollywood actor Rudolf
Valentino in the 1920s. Beloved by women for his persona as the “Latin Lover,”
Valentino’s dandyish image attracted the condemnation of men who preferred the
masculine model of Douglas Fairbanks. Nureyev’s similarity and association with the
actor eventually culminated in his being cast to play the title role in the 1977 Hollywood
film Valentino, in which he appeared fully nude.
Given attitudes towards male ballet dancers in the twenty-first century, the
novelty of Nureyev’s performance on American television in 1963 may be lost on
contemporary audiences. Today, films such as Center Stage (2000) and television
programs such as So You Think You Can Dance (2005-present), while still calling into
question the masculinity of male dancers, have nevertheless normalized their
participation in dance and ballet. By 1963 Balanchine had so “glorified woman” on stage,
and Hollywood so frequently cast men in secondary roles to female dancers, that ballet
was largely associated with women. Male ballet dancers also constantly confronted
allegations of homosexuality.
Whereas in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries male ballet dancers had
confronted little stigma, in the twentieth century they confronted immense prejudices.
666

665
On glamour photography in Hollywood in the 1920s see, Elizabeth Willis-Tropea, “Hollywood
Glamour: Sex, Power, and Photography, 1925-1939,” (unpublished, PhD. diss., University of Southern
California, 2008).

333

With the exception of taking piano lessons, learning to play a band instrument, or singing
in a choir or glee club, any indication of interest in the arts by boys in the United States
met strong disapproval.
667
Due in part to its intimate association with women and
emotional expression, ballet seemed an especially effeminate and inappropriate activity
for men.
668
Articles in the 1940s and 1950s that defended the masculinity of male
dancers by describing them as manly, rugged, and heterosexual demonstrate the
persistence of these taboos in the post-war era. In 1953 John Martin described dancer
Jose Limon as a “strong and mature man in command of all his powers.” Limon
possessed a “heroic vision.” He was a true artist, a man who came to ballet at a late age
after studying to be a painter. He was a refined and well-cultured man, but, as Martin
ardently pointed out, he was also a strong and robust, a fit man with a hearty appetite and
no hint of vanity. P. Bunzl describes Jacques D’Amboise as a “rugged family man and
natural athlete” who could “easily have won his fame in bigtime sports.”
669

In an era when celebrated male dancers struggled to defend and prove their
masculinity and heterosexuality, Nureyev resurrected the role of the male dancer,
marginalized (with the exception of Nijinsky) since the nineteenth century. Alongside
dynamic, athletic masculine movements, he also performed in a soft, feminine fashion.

666
See, Alexander Bland and John Percival, Men Dancing: Performers and Performances (New York:
Macmillan Publishing, 1984); Ramsay Burt, The Male Dancer, 10.

667
Walter Terry, Great Male Dancers of the Ballet (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1978), 2-4.

668
See Chapter One, pps. 44-49.

669
John Martin, “The Dancer as an Artist: Jose Limon, Who Returns to Broadway This Week, Has Brought
New Range to Ballet,” New York Times, April 12, 1953; P. Bunzl, “Let’s Make Ballet a Manly Art, Life
Magazine, June 21, 1963, 64-69.

334

Biographer Otis Stuart wrote of Nureyev, “He was more than the paradigm for a new
breed of male dancer. He was a whole new species, and men in dance learned a
completely new vocabulary.” Elena Tchernichova, a Russian dancer who served as ballet
mistress of the classical repertoire for American Ballet Theatre between 1977 and 1990,
believed that Nureyev made other male dancers appear awkward, ungainly, and crude.
She claimed, “Rudolf was a revolution in male dancing. Everybody else looked like truck
drivers next to him.”
670

Though undoubtedly a talented dancer, Nureyev did not possess perfect technique
that might account for his celebrity even within the smaller world of ballet. Known for
taking definite “preps” before beginning turns (for preparing to perform pirouettes by
assuming a wide fourth position stance, the most common basis of these turns), Nureyev
didn’t just naturally flow into turns. He entered jumps from a very deep plié (bend of the
knee) and, though breathtaking in the air, often landed sloppily. P.W. Manchester, of the
Christian Science Monitor, described his American debut, noting that he lacked the
classic perfection of the Danish dancer Erik Bruhn or the brilliant “demi-caractère
virtuouso” of his former colleague at the Kirov, Yuri Soloviev.
671

Even critics who did express thrill with Nureyev’s technique did not identify this
technique as the source of his distinctiveness. Critic Maurice Tassart wrote for the
Christian Science Monitor, “There is certainly no match for Nureyev among ballet
dancers in the Western world. No one is so good a jumper, so good a partner, so good an

670
Stuart, Perpetual Motion, 107.

671
P.W. Manchester, “Nureyev’s U.S. Debut,” Christian Science Monitor, March 17, 1962.

335

actor, so good a dancer in every respect all at once.” Tassart, also, qualified his
comments, comparing Nureyev to Nijinsky, but noting “Nijinsky’s figure was not nearly
so beautiful.”
672
To Tassart, beauty was a central component of Nureyev’s appeal.
According to Manchester, everyone on stage dancing around Nureyev could be
performing more impressive steps, but the audiences would still look to Nureyev.
Manchester claimed:
What he has –and this distinguishes him from other present-day dancers – is a
quality of mystery, that indefinable something which rivets attention to him
even when he is doing nothing more than stand.
673

Nureyev possessed an indefinable magic and this magic is especially important to
understanding his appeal among audiences unfamiliar with ballet technique.
Critics, frequently, described that magic in highly contradictory terms.
Manchester wrote, “There is a great quietness about him, enveloping a flame.”
674

Nureyev could be beautiful and dynamic, vigorous and athletic, elegant and animalistic.
He embodied qualities associated with both men and women, revealing the relationship
between his popularity and contemporary anxieties about gender and sexuality. Nureyev
blurred the boundaries between the masculine and feminine. He re-imagined the role and
image of male dancer and in the process created an alternative model of masculinity in
the United States.
Analyzing Nureyev’s reception in the United States poses several problems for
historians. Time distorts personal recollections and memories. Oral interviews tell

672
Maurice Tassart, “Soviet Loss, Parisian Gain,” Christian Science Monitor, July 1, 1961.

673
P.W. Manchester, “Nureyev’s U.S. Debut.”

674
Ibid.
336

historians more about how Nureyev has been remembered in the West than about his
initial reception in this country. Diaries, journals, scrapbooks, and other written
documents recording how individual members of the audience responded to Nureyev are
scarce and difficult to locate. Fortunately, dance criticism and popular discourse more
generally offer a rich source of information.
675
Articles by men such as Clive Barnes,
Walter Terry, and Arnold Haskell appeared in both trade magazines as well as the popular
press. They both informed how Americans viewed Nureyev, as well as embodied the
broader attitudes and tastes of the public.
Furthermore, the global nature of the ballet community makes it difficult to
distinguish between uniquely European and American responses to Nureyev. Audiences
learned about ballet via syndicated articles that circulated beyond the borders of a single
nation. Moreover, critics writing for the New York Times might describe performances in
London and Paris. Discussing Nureyev’s appeal within the United States does not deny
his international influence. Rather, it focuses that discussion within a particular historical
contest and in relationship to particular historical developments. Ultimately this analysis
helps to explain why an effeminate, male dancer rose to iconic status in the United States.

675
Miriam Hansen describes public discourse around Rudolph Valentino as including reviews, interviews,
studio publicity, articles in fan magazines and the general press, and popular biographies. She suggests that
these sources documented, manipulated, and constituted his reception. Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon:
Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 253. Most of the
discourse I examine on Nureyev comes from the clippings file of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New
York Public Library for the Performing Arts and includes articles either published in newspapers and
magazines around the United States or published in sources that circulated widely in this country. Other
potential sources include contemporary biographies such as, Alexander Bland, ed. Nureyev: An
Autobiography with Pictures (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1962). Scrapbooks would include
interesting insights into what aspects of Nureyev’s dancing and personality dance fans favored most. For a
list of the ballets he performed and choreographed between 1956 and 1991 see Appendices one and two,
Otis Stuart, Perpetual Motion: The Public and Private Lives of Rudolf Nureyev (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1995), 265-272.

337

Nureyev’ s “Hard” Side
In the twenty-first century ballet fans remember Nureyev as one of the many
homosexual artists who tragically died of AIDs in the 1980s and 1990s.
676
They
remember Nureyev as a gay artist, a man who developed a cult-like following in the gay
community, who wore flamboyant clothing, and who mingled with glamorous women
like Jacqueline Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor. By 1973 when Dick Cavett introduced
Nureyev to audiences as the “most glamorous and mysterious man in the world” his
homosexuality was common knowledge.
677
This was not, however, the case at the time
of Nureyev’s defection in 1961. Originally, some journalists speculated that Nureyev left
Russia on behalf of a woman. The omission from his 1962 autobiography of any
discussion of his sexual relationships did little to dispel such rumors.
678
Nureyev’s public
image in the 1960s consisted of not only the effeminate images associated with him
today, but also of highly masculine images. Many of his physical and personal
characteristics resonated with a form or rugged masculinity coveted in the 1950s.
Masculinity in the post-war era underwent a crisis that originated in the nineteenth
century when industrialization and urbanization triggered changes in the nature of men’s
work. No longer tied to the land, middle-class men moved into bureaucratic positions.
This shift from an agrarian based culture in which sweating men tilled the land to an

676
Nureyev died in 1993. Though he never publically acknowledged his infection, images of the dancer in
its final stages immortalized his illness. The widely seen film And the Band Played On (1993), issued the
same year Nureyev died, also featured a final montage sequence of images of men and women who died of
AIDs and that included a clip of Nureyev dancing.

677
This euphemism, in tandem with the dancer’s crossed legs and snake skin boots, highlighted his
homosexuality. The Dick Cavett Show, telecast November 28, 1974 by ABC-TV.

678
“Russians Say Romance Caused Dancer’s Flight,” New York Times, June 18, 1961; Alexander Bland,
Nureyev: An Autobiography with Pictures (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1962).
338

urban culture in which men quietly worked in offices, challenged core American values
of individualism and rugged manliness. The frontier, where men supposedly once
cultivated strength and character by confronting the untamed and unknown wilderness of
the backwoods, also came to a close.
679

Half a century later, in the midst of the dramatic social changes rendered by World
War II, the rise of consumer culture, and the bureaucratization of corporate America,
many middle-class and blue-collar men experienced a similar crisis. They began to feel
powerless in their jobs, isolated and estranged from their work and disenchanted by the
conformity of their jobs.
680
Like Willy Loman, the protagonist in the tremendously
successful and much celebrated Arthur Miller play, Death of a Salesmen (1947), these
men glorified the masculinity of the “self-made” man. Hegemonic masculinity in the
post-war era viewed “real men” as participating in physical activities like sports and
warfare and as represented by military men, sports figures and cowboy heroes.
681
In film,
robust looking men like John Wayne, who often played war heroes, and Clint Eastwood,

679
On the crisis in masculinity at the turn of the century see, Arnaldo Testi, “The Gender of Reform
Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the Culture of Masculinity,” Journal of American History 81, no. 4
(March 1995): 1509-1533. Testi argues the masculinity was tied to attributes associated with the West –
athleticism, vigor, individuality, etc.

680
Michael Kimmel describes American men in the 1960s as feeling “increasingly alienated, stuck in a rut,
unable to escape the dull monotony of a cookie-cutter corporate identity, a suit that was ready made and
waiting to be filled.” He cites sociologist Robert Blauner’s study of factory workers, Alienation and
Freedom (1964), as evidence that both blue collar and middle-class men felt powerless in their jobs, felt
that those jobs were meaningless, felt isolated from the larger company and its goals, and often lacked a
sense of integration between their personal and professional lives. The result was that they affirmed their
identity outside the workplace, via consumption. Kimmel, Manhood in America, 175.

681
Gilbert, Men in the Middle, 7.

339

who favored action roles in Western films, performed idealized manhood. Rudolf
Nureyev embodied several qualities consonant with this conception of masculinity.
In his journey out of poverty in Russia to success in the West, Rudolf Nureyev
epitomized hard work and discipline. He represented a true “self-made man.” Born to
poor parents in a nation many Americans viewed with disdain, Nureyev overcame
significant disadvantages.
682
An article for one trade magazine claimed he “learned
almost at the very beginning of his life, that little of lasting value is attained without
tremendous effort.”
683
Nureyev also grew up in a “half-starved village east of the
Urals.”
684
He was not born to privilege, but rather was a self-made man. He once
claimed, “My prevailing memory is one of hunger – consistent, gnawing hunger. I
remember those endless six-month-long winters in Ufa without light and almost no
food.’”
685
Newsweek Magazine reported that Nureyev entered the prestigious Kirov
School of ballet at age seventeen, much older than most Russian dancers who began
rigorous training at age eight or nine.
686
In a nation in which children studied ballet full

682
Popular biographies which trace Nureyev’s rise to fame include, Julie Kavanagh, Nureyev: The Life
(New York: Pantheon Press, 2007); John Percival, Nureyev: Aspects of a Dancer: A Biography (New
York: Putnam, 1975); Diane Solway, Nureyev: His Life (New York: William Morrow, 1998); Carolyn
Soutar, The Real Nureyev (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2006); Otis Stuart, Perpetual Motion: The
Public and Private Lives of Rudolf Nureyev (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995); Peter Watson,
Nureyev: A Biography (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1994).

683
“Nureyev: On Nureyev and Dance Education,” The Dancer’s Notebook 9 no. 3 (date unknown): 1.
Dance Clippings File, “Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

684
Anne Scott-James, “Enigma of Rudi Nureyev Runaway Soviet Dancer,” New York Herald Tribune,
undated, Clippings File, “Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

685
“Nureyev: On Nureyev and Dance Education,” 1.

686
“The New Nijinsky?” Newsweek, May 6, 1963, 61.
340

time for many years, Nureyev’s relatively short tenure in the Kirov School meant that he
received less formal training and had less time to refine and hone his skills. In
overcoming these disadvantages, Nureyev demonstrated a profound commitment and
dedication to his profession.
Fellow dancers even described Nureyev’s body, the vehicle of his talent, as the
result of hard work. Georgina Parkinson, his peer at the Royal Ballet, claimed, “Ballet
was never easy for Rudolf. He had to work terribly hard for what he had. And he was
willing to sweat blood for it.” Violette Verdy noted:
Rudi’s body was not an easy one to work with. He is self-created in that
sense. He made his body – made an instrument of it at the same time as his
soul and his talent were revealing themselves. He was the battleground on
which all this took place, from the beginning.
687

Finally, Sonia Arova, one of Nureyev’s partners in the 1960s, commented, “Everything
Rudolf had technically he worked for. He really worked for that jump, really worked on
his head and épaulement [placing and angling of the shoulders while dancing] thoroughly
and carefully.”
688
According to these dancers Nureyev did not possess an ideal dancer’s
body, or, for that matter, natural coordination, something Tchernichova associated with
later defector Mikhail Baryshnikov. Rather than being born with natural gifts, Nureyev
worked for everything he had.
The highly charged language used to describe Nureyev’s performances and
entrance into Western ballet also associated him with power and danger. By
metaphorically representing Nureyev in terms of missiles, comets, explosions, and

687
Georgina Parkinson and Violette Verdy, cited by, Stuart, Perpetual Motion, 109.

688
Sonia Arova, cited by, Stuart, Perpetual Motion, 110.

341

fireworks, critics portrayed him as dynamic, robust, and vigorous. They also mobilized
the highly gendered rhetoric of the Cold War.
689
Clive Barnes noted that Nureyev
“came, saw, and conquered…”
690
Alexander Bland wrote, “This year a real balletic
missile was sandwiched in amongst the fireworks… but it would be unfair to let the fall-
out from his detonating performance totally obscure the other performers.”
691
As in the
1950s when the blond “bombshell” linguistically symbolized American fears of untamed
feminine sexuality, these descriptions of Nureyev invoked the dangers of nuclear war
with the Soviet Union. Not coincidentally, they were written in the same year as the Bay
of Pigs Invasion, when the involvement of the United States in Vietnam escalated,
construction of the Berlin Wall began, and President Kennedy, perceiving the Soviet
threat as imminent, increased the number of American servicemen committed overseas.
On stage, the intensity of Nureyev’s dancing invoked images of strength.
According to Alexander Bland, the “savage intensity” with which Nureyev performed
produced the shock of seeing a wild animal -let loose in a drawing-room.
692
(See Figure
54) In other performances he “bounded and leaped like a demented tiger” and made

689
Additional examples, Alexander Bland described Nureyev’s debut at Covent Garden as his “launch”
into the West. His performance supposedly should have been recorded “as clearly as the appearance of a
comet.” Alexander Bland, “Ballet: Comet at Covent Garden,” The Observer, 1962, Clippings File,
“Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

690
Clive Barnes, title of article unknown, Dance Magazine, April 1963, 41, Clippings File, “Nureyev,”
Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

691
Alexander Bland, “A Great Dancer,” source unknown, 1961. Clippings File, “Nureyev,” Dance
Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

692
Ibid.

342

“great loping runs around the stage like a cheetah caught behind bars.”
693
Brute,
carnivorous, wild, and animalistic, Nureyev’s frenzied struggle against the feminizing
influence of the domestic home and the bars of a cage invoked feelings of freedom and
confinement that resonated with many men in the real world. Like Nureyev, they too
struggled against unseen and intangible social constraints.
The aggressive masculine approach
Nureyev took to dancing stood in distinct
contrast to other contemporary male
dancers. Andre Eglevsky, once a principal
dancer of the American Ballet Theatre and
the director of his own company in 1964,
was famous for the grace and agility he
performed in ballets like Swan Lake and
Giselle.
694
According to John Martin, New
York City Ballet principal dancer and “all
American boy” Jaques D’Amboise
possessed a “thoroughly masculine mind,”

693
Bland, “Ballet: Comet at Covent Garden;” A.V. Coton, “Effortless Thrills of ‘Le Corsaire,” newspaper
and date unknown, circa 1962, Clippings File, “Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.

694
Roy R. Silvers, “Eglevsky Ballet Presents Benefit at Massapequa,” New York Times, April 27, 1964.

Figure 54 Rudolf Nureyev dancing Prince Igor in
London, 1965, Photographer, Reg Wilson.
343

but also danced with tenderness, imagination, and introspection.
695
Alexander Bland
described the contrast between Nureyev and other male dancers of the era best when
comparing him to the “first gentleman of ballet,” Erik Bruhn, with whom Nureyev would
later have a lasting romantic relationship and whom Nureyev would site as having a
lasting influence on his dancing. Bland wrote:
Nureyev showed the other day how a strong individual rendering plus a
supercharged stage personality can make Albrecht jump into the foreground
of the picture: on Tuesday Erik Bruhn gave a second remarkable
interpretation of a totally different kind.
696

Bruhn performed with charm, intelligence, and control. His style of performance was to
conceal “his fiery deeds beneath an almost glacial elegance.” In Swan Lake, “pale and
distrait he wander[ed] through the first act like a stranger …. And if he [was] fascinated
and bewitched by the Swan Queen, he [was] never quite involved with her.”
697

Nureyev performed with an abandon unique to many male dancers of the era.
They too possessed masculine qualities, but they never succeeded in marrying that
masculinity with grace and elegance to the extent that Nureyev did. One quality always
outweighed the other; in the case of D’Amboise his “masculine” mind superseded his
“feminine” tenderness, in the case of Bruhn his calm control overwrought his creative
fire. Nureyev was always both; he could be fiery, wild, animalistic, and passionate and
also elegant and refined. Alice: Be careful not to essentialize these qualities – they are
constructed)

695
John Martin, “Dance: D’Amboise,” New York Times, February 18, 1962.

696
Alexander Bland, “Ballet: Dominant Male,” The Observer, April 8, 1962.

697
Alexander Bland, “Ballet: The First Gentleman,” The Observer, April 1, 1962.

344

As an artist, Nureyev also displayed desirable male qualities – particularly a fierce
insistence on artistic independence. In the nineteenth century male artists in Europe and
the United States set themselves apart from the public by rejecting normative social roles.
Male artists might align themselves with elitist standpoints which viewed bourgeois
culture as vulgar, moralistic, and narrow, choosing to ignore, circumvent, shock and
deride its constituents, or, alternatively, they might publically empathize with the plight
of exploited workers. Male artists appropriated either the appearance of a rarefied,
aristocrat, in line with the image of the dandy, or likewise the coarse appearance of a
highly masculine worker.
698
In the post-war era, Jackson Pollack promoted the latter
image, aligning himself with contemporary images of rebel heroes, such as those of
Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953) and A Street Car Named Desire (1953).
699

Frequently depicted at work, wearing overalls, and cigarette in hand, Pollack performed
the role of the artist as impassioned, brilliant, volatile, dynamic and highly masculine.
700

Dressed in fashionable clothing and tight pants and eventually a trendsetter in clothing
styles, in appearance Nureyev resembled the dandified artist. In temperament he,
however, more closely resembled the rough, coarse, artist modeled by Pollack.

698
Raymond Williams, The Politics of Modernism: Against New Conformists (London: Verso, 1989). Cited
in, Amelia Jones, “Clothes Make the Man: The Male Artist as a Performative Function,” Oxford Art
Journal 18 no. 2 (1995): 19.

699
Jones, “Clothes Make the Man,” 22.

700
Ellen Landau describes Pollack’s masculinity. Ellen Laundau, Jackson Pollack (New York: Abrams,
1989).

345

The choreographer Vaslav Orlikovsky once described Nureyev as moody and
irascible and as “almost neurotically antagonistic toward the press.”
701
Peter Martins, a
New York City Ballet dancer who eventually became its artistic director, described
Nureyev’s behavior towards the dancers of the Danish Ballet in the early 60s, where
Martins was then studying, as:
just plain obnoxious. He was… what? Twenty-two, twenty-three years old
and already acting like a star… my first impression of him was that he was
rude, enormously rude to everybody – to the other dancers, to the pianists, to
every single one of the teachers with the exception of V olkova [a Russian
instructor and expert in the Vaganova technique].
702

Nureyev supposedly once informed theater
administration that he could not reduce his passions to
their restrictions.
703
He obstinately refused to curtail
his creativity and did not fear offending the press,
critics, and even the audience. (See Figure 55)
First and foremost, Nureyev insisted that every
ballet he danced or directed reflect his own personal
style. According to Ann Barzel, he was “driven by an
urge to do things the way he sees them and his

701
“Nureyev: the Defecting Soviet Ballet Star Talks,” source and date unknown, Clippings File,
“Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

702
Stuart, Perpetual Motion, 106. Citing Peter Martins.

703
“Nureyev,” Life Magazine, November 27, 1964, 92-102 +.

Figure 55 Rudolf Nureyev, “Portraits,”
Paris, 1962, Photographer, Henri
Cartier-Bresson.
346

viewpoint is usually from a fresh (and interesting) angle.”
704
Even critics who would
otherwise criticize changes to classic nineteenth-century ballets, eventually welcomed
Nureyev’s contributions. Clive Barnes described his distress upon learning that Nureyev
planned to alter the choreography to the ballet La Bayadere:
I had no faith in Nureyev’s powers as a régisseur, and to be honest viewed
the whole project with feelings of alarm and despondency. These
trepidations practically became a shivering fit when I entered the theatre,
looked at the programme and saw the choreography described as ‘Marius
Petipa, revised and produced by Rudolf Nureyev.’
705

Regardless of his reservations, Barnes ultimately applauded Nureyev’s work, referring to
his alterations to the choreography as “improvements.”

Nureyev’s supreme authority as
an artist stood in distinct contrast to that of contemporary women dancers who tended to
be treated as raw artistic material – muses rather than inspired creators.
Rather than diva-like, egotistical, or in the fashion of the prima-donnas of the
opera and theater, Nureyev’s personality should be understood as an assertion of a
particular kind of masculinity. In the twentieth century, photographs of male artists by
men such as Alexander Liberman and Brassaï, whose works appeared in mainstream
American fashion magazines, particularly Vogue, in the 1950s, portrayed art as a
masculine endeavor. In 1951, only a decade prior to Nureyev’s defection, Liberman
questioned the virility of the French painter Maurice Utrillo, depicting the emotionally
unstable and alcoholic artist as a humble painter and humiliated man. Liberman’s
portrayal of Utrillo’s wife, Lucie Valore, resembled the representation of Lucrezia del

704
Ann Barzel, “Chicago Opera Ballet,” Ballet Today, Jan./Feb. 1963, 30.

705
Clive Barnes, “La Bayadere,” Dance and Dancers, January 1964, 14-15.

347

Fede, wife of the Italian artist Andrea del Sarto, by Ernest Jones in a pyschobiographical
essay first published in 1913 but reissued in 1951, the same year Liberman’s photographs
appeared in Vogue and only a decade prior to Nureyev’s defection.
Jones viewed the lack of “fierezza” in Sarto’s work as a reflection of his passive,
receptive, feminine temperament. He claimed, “One cannot help feeling the difference
between a masculine creative temperament and a feminine receptive one.”
706
Nureyev’s
domineering, aggressive, brooding, smoldering, unpredictable, difficult, and even
tyrannical personality aligned him with this conception of the impassioned male artist; he
performed the persona of the artist in a manner congruent with its representations in
popular literature.
Nureyev’s intimate interactions with women on stage also affirmed the hegemonic
masculine sexuality of the 1950s. During the Cold War Americans confronted political
anxieties and fears of nuclear war by celebrating family values.
707
At the same time,
magazines like Playboy featured naked and scantily clad women posed for the
consumption of men.
708
In tandem with the assault on homosexuality in the 1950s
spearheaded by McCarthyism, these events positioned heterosexuality as the sole socially
acceptable form of sexual interaction. A highly athletic man, Nureyev also danced with
women who wore very little clothing. He performed Romantic love scenes and frequently

706
Mary Bergstein, “’The Artist in His Studio:’ Photography, Art, and the Masculine Mystique,” Oxford
Art Journal 18 no. 2 (1995): 55.

707
Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic
Books, 1988).

708
Tom Pendergast examines the construction of masculinity through men’s magazines in the first half of
the century. Tom Pendergast, Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture
1900-1950 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000).
348

played the role of a heterosexual male lover. Moreover, he twined his sweating body in
intimate poses with warm and often barely clothed ballerinas. In a time when the
ballerina represented a form of male fetish, he may have enacted male sexual fantasies.
(See Figure 56)
Nureyev’s homosexuality did not become
common knowledge to audiences in the United
States until the 1970s, when the sexual revolution
liberalized attitudes towards sex and Nureyev
emerged as a central player in the gay social
scene.
709
Stalin’s criminalization of consensual
sex between men in the Soviet Union in the
1930s had threatened gay men with prison
sentences, legitimizing their harassment, and
forcing gay men to live in secrecy. As a result, as
Nureyev came of age in the 1950s he learned to
guard his sexuality. Reticent to discuss his private
life, the closest Nureyev ever came to acknowledging his homosexuality in the United
States was a brief comment during a Mike Wallace interview in 1979 that he knew “what
it was like to make love as a man and a woman.”
710
Though perhaps more so evidence of

709
In chapter 9 of his biography of Nureyev, titled “The Great Gay Myth: ‘I Slept With Nureyev,’” Otis
Stuart describes Nureyev’s reputation in the gay community. Stuart, Perpetual Motion, 144-159.

710
Stuart, Perpetual Motion,154.

Figure 56 Rudolf Nureyev with Margot
Fonteyn in Marguerite and Armand,
London, 1963, Photographer, Eve Arnold.
349

the stigma attached to AIDs than the his fear of being recognized as gay, Nureyev never
even recognized the illness that killed him 1993, though he received the diagnosis in
Paris in 1984. At the time of his defection, many newspapers, including the Los Angeles
Times, the New York Times, and the Hartford Courier attributed his move to the West to
love for a “young and very beautiful woman,” Claira Saint, the daughter of a Chilean
painter living in Paris. Audiences, therefore, saw Nureyev not as an effeminate gay man,
but as a volatile, temperamental artist capable of both athletic and elegant feats.
Nureyev’s robust “hard” masculinity was a central component in his public appeal.

Nureyev’ s Softer Side
Alongside the rigid, manly, heterosexual image of men celebrated in men’s
magazines in the 1950s and 1960s, emerged an alternative model of masculinity that
permitted greater gender ambiguity. In the absence of pride in their careers, many men in
the post-war era began to define their identities via consumption of material goods and in
relationship to domesticity, raising children, and the “companionate family.”
711
Moreover,
as the conflict in Vietnam escalated and news of the war reached the United States, the
war-hero-veteran, once a paragon of male virtue, fell in favor.
712
A generation of male
icons emerged who rejected the masculine form of John Wayne; in addition to James
Dean, Rock Hudson played macho but also Romantic leading men in Hollywood
comedies. Nureyev created an alternative version of masculinity that ultimately merged

711
Robert Griswald, Fatherhood in America: A History (New York: Basic Books, 1993).

712
Kimmel, Manhood in America, 174.

350

“soft” and “hard” qualities and created a sexualized, glamorous, and mysterious
androgyny distinct from Dean or Hudson.
Physically, Nureyev embodied the “hard”
athletic masculinity of Wayne. Anyone
watching him on stage could see in his bulging
muscles, huge leaps, and one-handed lifts of
women over his head, a body of physical
prowess. (See Figure 57) As a man who danced
on stage, he also, however, transgressed typical
gender boundaries. His light, graceful
movements, particularly his soft hands and
elegant sweeping gestures of the arms, resembled
the movements of female dancers. (See Figure 58) Set to dramatic music, the male solo
from Le Corsaire, a role for which Nureyev became well known, featured a series of
intricate leaps and turns. Danced from beginning to end with little of the pantomime or
acting still common to many “classical” ballets in the 1950s and 1960s, Le Corsaire
showcased Nureyev’s athletic prowess. Bare-chested, he traversed the stage, performing a
series of leaps in a circle around the stage. (See Figure 59) Robust and

Figure 57 Rudolf Nureyev rehearsing
Giselle with Margot Fonteyn, London, 1962,
Photographer, Houston Rogers.
351

vigorous, Nureyev, nevertheless, made the choreography appear easy and effortless.
Between jumps, he performed sweeping balancès, a step based on the waltz and
performed horizontally, swaying his arms gently with the movement. The soft elegance of
his arms stood in distinct contrast to the volatility of his leaps.
713

713
Videos of Nureyev performing this role are common. See, An Evening with the Royal Ballet / Nureyev,
Fonteyn, 1965, Directors Anthony Asquith and Anthony Havelock-Allan, released July 31, 2001, DVD.
Many clips are also available on youtube. See, “Nureyev: Le Corsaire,” briciolakatia, youtube, accessed
July 20, 2010.

Figure 58 Rudolf Nureyev in Les Sylphides,
London, 1963, Photographer, Houston Rogers.
Figure 59 Rudolf Nureyev in Le Corsaire, London, 1962,
Photographer Houston Rogers.
352

Nureyev also added a distinct sense of drama and sensuality to his roles. He added
what Alexander Bland called a “vital ingredient” to his performances. He conveyed
emotion that was “absolutely
genuine” in his performance of
Albrecht in the ballet Swan Lake.
(See Figure 60) He took a role that
had typically been portrayed as
noble, ardent, weak, and manly,
and added a streak of “post-
adolescent instability.” His
“excessively youthful
interpretation” aroused “mixed
feelings of anxiety and
protectiveness.”
714
Even during
curtain calls, Nureyev overflowed
with emotion. According to Clive Barnes, “The young, disheveled Russian” supposedly
gazed at a rose given to him by Fonteyn with “the purest rapture.” With eyes “gleaming
with tears,” he supposedly quite suddenly “swept down to one knee, caught Fonteyn’s
hand and kissed it fervently.”
715
Nureyev appeared impassioned, impulsive, youthful, and
adolescent, demonstrating qualities embodied by James Dean that had only recently

714
Bland, “Ballet: Comet at Covent Garden.”

715
Clive Barnes, “Nureyev,” The Spectator, March 2, 1962, 271.

Figure 60 Rudolf Nureyev performing Giselle with Margot
Fonteyn, London, 1962, Photographer, Zoë Dominic.
353

become associated with masculinity, but that still for the most part represented the
antithesis of a hegemonic masculinity based on stoicism, control, and maturity.
In the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet, a role he became known for dancing
with Margot Fonteyn, Nureyev entered the stage wrapped in a black cape, hiding in the
shadows of the scenery, before stopping and gazing for several bars of music at his
beloved looking down on him from her balcony above. After an extended pause, when
Romeo stared at Juliet, barely moving, Nureyev untied his cape, allowing it to slowly fall
from his shoulders and to expose his body. He literally undressed on stage, revealing a
pair of pale blue tights and white blouse that while drawing attention to his male body
nevertheless evoked a striptease. Throughout the remainder of the scene, Romeo and
Juliet moved in constant tension, torn between their love and fear of discovery. Nureyev
played Romeo as a nervous youth, alternating between feelings of lust, joy, and pain. His
characterization of Romeo and performance of the ballet differed from that of other
contemporary dancers and productions in the way that he held poses – as when he stood,
arms dramatically folded to his heart.
716

Nureyev invoked masculine images of “loping tigers,” but also images of delicate
cats and birds. Clive Barnes described his dancing as possessing both “cat-like spring”
and “mellifluous flow” and beautiful musical phrasing.
717
A journalist for the New York
Times described Nureyev’s movements as appearing to be in slow motion. They were

716
See, Romeo and Juliet (Royal Ballet)- Rudolf Nureyev and Margot Fonteyn (1966), Director Paul
Czinner, released November 30, 1999, DVD.

717
Clive Barnes, “Nureyev,” The Spectator, March 2, 1962, 271; One journalist praised the beating of
Nureyev’s feet as “ecstatic, like the fluttering of some mythical bird.” “Rudolf Nureyev,” The Dancing
Times ed. A.H. Franks LII, no. 615 (December 1961): 138.

354

connected and constant like breathing and showed no sudden signs of strength. Nothing
but “the buoyancy of perfect control” inhabited Nureyev’s body as he moved “in
elevation through the air, with a certain romantic, allegro melancholy.
718
Nureyev
possessed athletic abilities which allowed him to perform dynamic leaps, but performed
those movements with finesse, grace, and control.
As an object of public scrutiny, Nureyev also occupied a traditionally female
cultural space. In performing for an audience and allowing his body to be viewed for the
purpose of leisure, Nureyev became the subject of the gaze. He inverted the assumed
cultural norm that spectators are male and subjects female.
719
He reversed the “patriarchal
gaze,” which objectified women’s bodies, and allowed his body to be admired as both an
object and a source of public and cult ritual. Throughout the 1960s many men placed
their bodies on display for public consumption, most notably Cassius Clay, now known
as Muhammad Ali, became a three time world heavyweight champion in boxing. Other
athletes, such as Arnold Palmer in professional golf, Willie Mays in baseball, and Arthur
Ashe in tennis, also, however, provided audiences entertainment. Unlike Nureyev, the
central focus of these men’s performances was not, however, their bodies.

718
Letters from Paris, New Yorker, Feb. 3, 1962, 82.

719
Laura Mulvey describes the masculinization of the spectator in Hollywood cinema. She argues that films
perpetuate sexual imbalances in society by aligning the audience with a male gaze that views women as
objects of spectacle and narrative and men as agents who look. Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema,”Screen 16, no. 3 (Autumn 1977): 6- 18. For a more detailed review of scholarship
dealing with the “male gaze” and its application to dance history see, Burt, The Male Dancer, 49-57.

355

Critics regularly commented on Nureyev’s naturally well built body and “heavy
thighs,” or his “face, with its high check bones, and attractive style.”
720
Discussions of
athletes, on the other hand, tended to focus on their accomplishments. As members of
teams or as competitors, athletes performed an aggressive masculinity that tempered the
transgressive potential of their bodily performance. With the exception of boxing, where
competitions began with the ritualistic removal of the boxer’s robe, few of these sports
also required men to undress, as Nureyev did in Romeo and Juliet. Moreover, in boxing
emphasized brutal aggressiveness, with its goal to “knock” the other competitor
unconscious, or “out,” and often culminated in bloodshed.
As a performer, Nureyev’s frequent donning of symbols of femininity heightened
his “soft” appearance. He wore ornate costumes, makeup, and wigs. Photographs of
Nureyev showed him applying make-up, standing before a mirror outlining his eyes in
black.
721
Critics sometimes commented on the style of his hair or the spray he used to
keep it in place.
722
John Martin went so far as to describe his performance as Albrecht in
Giselle as seeming en travestie.
723
“When he makes his first entrance in Giselle with a
half-bale of mouse-colored hair worn partly à la Bardot and party à la schnauzer, one has

720
Harold C. Schonberg, “Russian Dancer Who Defected Appears With Ballet in Paris,” New York Times,
June 24, 1961, 11.

721
“Whirlwind Wednesday in Brooklyn,” Dance Magazine, October 1963, 40. Photographs by Martha
Swope.

722
Fernau Hall, “Nureyev in Giselle,” Ballet Today, April 1962, 7.

723
“En travestie” is the French term to refer to performances in which women perform men’s roles and men
perform women’s roles. See chapter 1, p. 36, footnote 52. Martin suggested that Nureyev seemed to be in
drag.
356

the shocked elusion that here for the first time Albrecht is being played en travestie.”
724

Nureyev’s hair gave him the appearance of the highly feminine actress and model Bridget
Bardot as well as a small German dog generally known to be stubborn, fiercely
protective, and highly intelligent.
Nureyev’s distinct sense of style off stage further undermined his masculinity. His
interest in clothing and fashion challenged cultural perceptions of dress as a feminine
domain.
725
Moreover, his actual clothing – particularly his leather jacket, tight pants, and
French beret - influenced fashion trends for both men and women. One journalist
claimed, “Rudolf as a style-setter for muscular young men is a natural.” She, however,
suggested that Nureyev had an equally strong impact on women. Nureyev had “too strong
a sense of clothes to be ignored by the women.” A “touch of the Nureyev” would give an
edge to the “fashion way of life” of women.
726
Nureyev also dined at the Russian Tea
Room and aligned himself with European conceptions of masculinity that valued taste,
refinement, and manners, a tradition which unfortunately came under intense scrutiny in

724
John Martin, “Nureyev, Plus and Minus,” SR, May 25, 1963, 48.

725
Fashion, since the “Great Masculine Renunciation” of the eighteenth century, when men abandoned
sumptuous dress (once a symbol of aristocratic status), represented the domain of women. Miriam Hansen
applies this explanation to Rudolf Valentino in the 1920s. Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 259. She cites,
Kaja Silverman, “Fragments of Fashionable Discourse,” in Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches
to Mass Culture, ed. Tania Modleski (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 139 – 152. The term
“Great Masculine Renunciation” was first used in, J.C. Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes (London:
Hogarth, 1930). Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 358.

726
Deidre McSharry, “Via Nureyev to the Girls,” source and date unknown, Clippings File, “Nureyev,”
Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

357

the 1950s when McCarthy attacked men like Alger Hiss for their “soft” and effeminate
inclinations.
727

While tolerated to some degree in male artists, Nureyev’s emotionality off-stage
frequently exceeded what society viewed as acceptable behavior for men. On the one
hand, his temperament destabilized the feminizing gaze of the audience. Unlike images of
women in much contemporary art, who male artists generally cast as gazing away from
the viewer, Nureyev’s temperamentalism might be understood as exerting control on that
gaze and thereby reasserting his masculinity. Historically, the male artist represented the
sole socially acceptable position from which men could deviate from gendered divisions
of behavior that viewed rationality as a masculine attribute and emotionality as a
feminine attribute.
728

However, artists such as Jackson Pollack modeled a new masculinity where
passionate emotions were buffeted by symbols of masculinity (like the worker image he
appropriated). On the other hand, Nureyev’s moody temperament offstage seemed
feminine and childlike. One article claimed, “He is a boy, but a complicated one. A boy
who leaves all his clothes around, but who screams at himself if he makes one false step
on the stage.”
729
He was a “difficult child” and a still more “difficult young man.”
730
He

727
Hansen, Babel and Babylon, 259.

728
Burt, The Male Dancer, 21.

729
“Nureyev: the Defecting Soviet Ballet Star Talks,” source and date unknown, Clippings File,
“Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. John
Martin noted that he was a “boy of enormous talent for dancing, both physically and temperamentally,” but
his talents included a “starry-eyed gullibility and an appalling lack of discipline.” John Martin, “Dance:
Nureyev: Gifted Young Russian Throws Himself to the Lions – Week’s Events,” New York Times, March
25, 1962.

358

was “erratic, undependable, and moody” and condescended to dance well only when the
wind was in the right direction.
731
(Appearing with the dame of the British ballet, Margot
Fonteyn, sixteen years his senior, Nureyev must have appeared particularly young.)
Rather than vigorous, mature, and dependable, qualities associated with the
emotional male artist, these descriptions construed Nureyev’s behavior as impetuous,
capricious, naïve, vulnerable, and verging on disrespectful and unruly. He was not just a
temperamental artist, someone whose creativity exempted them from traditional gendered
divisions of behavior, he was a man who lacked control.
732
Pollack’s persona as an artist
was one of a man who consciously unleashed his creative energies and accepted no
limitations to seeing that creativity realized, whereas according to Clive Barnes, Nureyev
needed to be reigned in: “Royal Ballet needs to find some way of taming him without
breaking him – he cannot be allowed to ride roughshod over everything….”
733
In
Nureyev’s case, his emotionality on stage was a liability not an advantage.

730
Edward Crankshaw, “The Legend of Nureyev,” newspaper unknown, December 9, 1962, Clippings File,
“Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

731
John Martin, “Nureyev, Plus and Minus,” Saturday Review, May 25, 1963, 48.

732
Ramsay Burt, The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacles, Sexualities (New York: Routledge, 1995), 21.

733
Clive Barnes, “Nureyev,” Spectator, March 2, 1962, 271.

359

In the 1920s and 1930s Russian dancers Vaslav Nijinsky, Serge Oukrainsky, and
Andreas Pavley performed highly feminine roles and dances in the United States.
Dressed in minimal and heavily eroticized costumes, photographs of the men could easily
be mistaken as those of women. (See Figures 61 and 62) Nureyev’s performances in the
1960s differed from these earlier predecessors because, though adopting feminine
movements, his dancing maintained a definite masculine quality. There was no mistaking
Nureyev as a woman. His body looked male. His dancing possessed qualities viewed as
male. Nureyev was a man who performed with the robustness expected of a man, but
who added romance, drama, and sensuality to male dancing.
Elegant, graceful, and emotional, Nureyev possessed a “soft” side. This soft side
did not, however, negate the centrality of his “hard” masculinity to his persona onstage or
off. Nureyev’s “soft” and “hard” sides always operated in tandem, in constant tension
with each other, forging a complex version of masculinity in the United States.
Figure 61 Serge Oukrainsky, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.
Figure 62 Andreas Pavley, New York Public
Library for the Performing Arts.
360

Nureyev’ s Masculine Sexuality
By displaying his sexuality in a public setting, Nureyev also negotiated
controversies about sexuality and culture in the post-war period. He performed intimate,
corporeal acts on stage and quite literally positioned his sexuality in the public spotlight.
As a result, his performances appealed to a generation of Americans coming of age in the
1960s who advocated more liberal attitudes towards sexuality. The baby boom
generation embraced sex as a source of personal identity and an expression of
independence and choice. The population explosion of the 1940s resulted in efforts to
control fertility and reproduction. No longer tied to reproduction, sex could function as a
relatively safe source of sexual pleasure.
Meanwhile, the prosperity of the post-war era provided young adults with
heightened discretionary income, contributing to the development of a singles culture far
different from the marital ethic of the 1950s. Young people spent money on clothing,
cosmetics, cigarettes, cars, and other goods, which increasingly turned to sex as a quick
sell. Sexual behavior also came to express social and political unrest. The United States
involvement in the conflict in Vietnam escalated throughout the early 60s eventually
culminating in anti-war protests and student movements. In addition, the Civil Rights
Movement continued to fulminate, progressing from efforts to desegregate public schools
to the Freedom Rides of young activists in 1961 and the March on Washington in 1963.
Through sex, be it the “free love” culture of the hippies to simply more
polygamous relationships, young people expressed a sharp rejection of the moral and
political viewpoints of their predecessors. At the same time, the homosocial
361

environments produced in the military by World War II helped to mobilize the gay
community in the United States in the 1950s. By the 1960s large urban centers like New
York hosted gay bars and clubs, leading to the development of a gay community that
would eventually mobilize on behalf of gay rites. The increased sexual liberalism of the
young, however, met significant and organized resistance.
A strong backlash emerged, spearheaded by active purity campaigns that
consisted of conservative churches, citizen groups, congressional investigators, and
especially the Catholic Church. For example, in 1952 the House of Representatives
conducted an investigation into paperbacks, magazines, and comic books, seeking to
expose the extent of “immoral, obscene, or otherwise offensive matter.” In local
communities vigilante groups and vice squads targeted companies and industries
producing offensive material. The city of New York attempted to reduce the distribution
of girlie magazines and pulp novels in Times Square. And, the Chief of Police in
Youngstown, Ohio banned over four hundred paperbacks from newsstands.
734
As late as
1967 television programs such as The Ed Sullivan Show continued to censor sexual
content, for example, revising Mick Jagger’s lyrics “let’s spend the night together” to
“let’s spend some time together.”
735

By the 1960s the more strident prohibitions against sexual display of the first half
of the century, and the family orientation of the 1950s, clearly began to dissipate in favor
of a more sexually explicit culture. Frequently bare-chested, lithe, and always dramatic,

734
D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, 282.

735
Beth Bailey, “Sexual Revolutions,” in The Sixties: From Memory to History ed. David Farber (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 235.

362

Nureyev’s unmistakable sexual charisma enthralled these fans. Standing in the shadows
of scenery in classic ballet he could drape his arms across his body, inviting the viewer to
peruse it. Jumping through the air he could create a sense of sexual frenzy, a sense of
energy that seemed to build throughout a dance, climaxing in a dramatic conclusion,
typically a male solo in the coda or finale to a ballet. Dancing with a woman on stage, he
could give the impression of both sexual dominance and sexual surrender. He could fully
devote himself to his partner, attending to her with little distraction, and yet he could also
dominate her, his performances frequently eclipsing hers.
In 1962 Janet and Leo Kersley wrote that “the eternal adolescent among the ballet
audience is fascinated by him as much as the teenager is drawn to Elvis Presley or Cliff
Richard.”
736
A time when hormones rage, adolescence represents the height of sexual
development, a period in one’s life when an individual learns to deal with lust and desire.
Thus, by referring to Nureyev’s fans as “eternal adolescents,” the Kersley’s subsequently
emphasized his sexual appeal.
Nureyev’s sexuality might have represented a significant threat to several social
norms and have risked alienating more conservative audiences. The protective barrier of
the stage, which drew sharp delineation between performer and audience, however,
helped to moderate this danger. The Kersleys described Nureyev’s sexuality as remote
from personal contact. He fascinated audiences as Elvis and Cliff Richards did, but he
also seemed somewhat sexless.
737
Protected by the gaping blackness rendered between

736
Janet and Leo Kersley. “Nureyev,” Ballet Today, June 1962, 10.

737
Janet and Leo Kersley, “Nureyev,” Ballet Today, June 1962, 10.

363

stage and audience when located within institutions of elite high-brow culture, and by the
distance created by television, Nureyev performed his sexuality at a distance.
Moreover, his performance of sex on stage always remained unconsummated. It
was titillating but not pornographic. The balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet concluded
only with suggestive gestures, and while other scenes showed the lovers in bed, sex
existed only by inference. Nureyev’s dancing produced a quality of remoteness and
isolation that didn’t threaten the chastity of the audience. His appearance on stage with a
woman old enough to be his mother also rendered his performances more sensual than
sexual.
In 2004 Nigel Crawthorne investigated the sexual lives of many great artists,
producing a salacious and raunchy account of their often outrageous sexual practices,
fetishes, and histories.
738
His work seemed to suggest that artists possess a sexuality that
differs from the mainstream, echoing a commonly held belief that creativity and sexuality
are inextricable. Nureyev certainly fit within this mantra. He was known as an artist and
apt at evoking the persona of the artist. As such, audiences may have viewed him as
above or beyond normal sexual standards. Nevertheless, by sexualizing an androgynous
form of masculinity, he challenged strict sexual binaries as heterosexual and homosexual,
establishing an alternative model of sexuality, and creating new possibilities for sexual
expression.

738
Nigel Crawthorne, Sex Lives of the Great Artists (London: Prion, 1998)
364

A Perfect Partnership
While popular in his own right in the United States, Nureyev’s appearance on
stage with Margot Fonteyn contributed to his appeal. Walter Terry described them as the
“hottest little team in show business.”
739
Even more so than their exceptional talent, the
perfect marriage of styles shown by Nureyev and Fonteyn on stage contributed to their
success. Their partnership joined elegant restraint with exotic, passionate flamboyance.
In 1962 the dance critic Alexander Bland described the partnership of Rudolf Nureyev
and Margot Fonteyn in The Observer, writing, “Fonteyn has always excelled in
portraying the youthful innocence, but it was uncertain how the visitor’s more exotic
style would marry with our production [of the ballet Giselle].”
740
Fonteyn and Nureyev
“married” beautifully. The partnership embodied the union of control and abandon and
the containment of excess via refinement. Walter Terry wrote:
But that special miracle – on which had been duly reported in the London
press – was the artistic union of Dame Margot and Nureyev. When they were
together on stage and looked at each other or smiled at each other, or cried
out or forgive or faced death, everything else paled and there seemed to be
only two people in the entire world.
741

Fonteyn and Nureyev represented very different methods of performance. Whereas
Fonteyn favored restraint and poise, Nureyev favored emotionality. The contrast in their
performance styles created a distinctive partnership unlike others before them. Nureyev’s

739
Walter Terry, “Their ‘Black Swan’ Stops the Show for 5 Full Minutes,” New York Herald Tribune,
1963, Clippings File, “Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the
Performing Arts.

740
Bland, “Ballet: Comet at Covent Garden.”

741
Walter Terry, “Defector and Dame Triumph Together,” New York Herald Tribune, 1963. Clippings File,
“Nureyev,” Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

365

suggestive and dramatic sexual advances on Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, for example, met
a much cooler, though still passionate, response in Juliet. Fonteyn portrayed Juliet as in
love but also as timid, perhaps even cautious.
John Martin expressed a rare dissenting opinion of the Fonteyn-Nureyev
partnership, criticizing it as an “unhappy experience.” He wrote:
[Fonteyn] has said in praise of him that when she dances with him she never
sees him in person, but only sees the ballet. In this she is in a more fortunate
position than the rest of us; we cannot avoid seeing him, and frequently
resenting him…. She is, after all, an exquisite part of an exquisite legend, and
it is difficult not to feel somehow embarrassed, even possibly a little
betrayed; she has gone, as it were, to the grand ball with a gigolo.
742

Martin seemed to view Nureyev’s sexuality as exaggerated – too explicit perhaps for the
refinement of the theater. On stage, Nureyev looked like a male prostitute rather than a
dashing cavalier. Aside from Martin, most critics, applauded the partnership.
In the 1950s and 1960s the ballerina in the United States slowly shifted from a
fetishized icon of female sexuality, to an image of idealized American womanhood. As a
partner to Fonteyn, Nureyev performed the more explicitly sexual role. Fonteyn appeared
sensual and refined. Next to Nureyev, she appeared the embodiment of control. Thus, the
partnership fortified emerging cultural attitudes towards the ballerina, while also serving
as yet another means to contain Nureyev’s sometimes troublesome masculinity and
sexuality.

742
John Martin, “Nureyev, Plus and Minus,” Saturday Review, May 25, 1963, 63.
366

Conclusion
Rudolf Nureyev challenged the hard-soft/ male-female binary of the post-war era
and created a culturally accepted form of androgynous masculinity. Passionate, youthful,
moody, and emotional, he was also perceived as explosive, combustible, and strong. His
popularity in the United States, while inevitably tied to his Russianness, also derived
from the ways in which he embodied and interacted with contemporary attitudes towards
sexuality, gender, and masculinity.

367

CONCLUDING COMMENTS
In 1964 the Governor of New York, Nelson A. Rockefeller, opened the New York
State Theater at Lincoln Center, by turning to the Director of the New York City Ballet
and stating, “It’s all yours, George. Take it from here.”
743
Eight years earlier, as part of
the urban renewal project initiated by chairmen Robert Moses and New York City Mayor
Robert Wagner, a committee of prominent New York activists and arts advocates gathered
to plan what would become one of the nation’s largest arts centers, eventually home to
twelve resident organizations, including companies dedicated to opera, theater, dance,
and symphony.
744
Balanchine’s dancers performed three ballets, including the patriotic
ballet Stars and Stripes, set to the music of John Philips Sousa. Filled with red, white, and
blue costumes, and evocative of a fourth of July parade, the celebratory tone of Stars and
Stripes befitted this triumphal moment; after years of planning, four city blocks of New
York now housed a world class arts district, physical testimony to the cultural renaissance
of the post-war period and at the head of that renaissance stood George Balanchine, the
figurehead of American ballet.
Balanchine could personally celebrate that his dancers represented the sole ballet
company permanently associated with the new center, noticeably to the exclusion of the
American Ballet Theatre, Robert Joffrey Ballet, and numerous modern dance companies.
But more generally, he and ballet fans across the United States could celebrate that, for

743
Lynn Garafola and Eric Foner, Dance For a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), 25.

744
For additional information on Lincoln Center see, Samuel Zipp, “The Battle of Lincoln Square:
Neighborhood Culture and the Rise of Reistence to Urban Renewal,” Planning Persepectives 24 no. 4
(October 2009): 409-433; Julia L. Foulkes, “The Other West Side Story: Urbanization and the Arts Meet at
Lincoln Center,” Amerikastudien 52 no. 2 (2007): 227-247.
368

the first time in its history in this country, ballet stood at the forefront of the nation’s
culture. On Lincoln Center’s proposed educational program composer William Schuman
wrote in 1962, “I hope that you will look upon us as a positive force; not only a positive
force in the arts, but also a positive force for the extension and strengthening of the
highest spiritual and intellectual value towards which our free society lives.”
745
Housed
within the walls of an art venture dedicated to such high and lofty ideals, ballet in the
1960s had come to represent a respected form of “high” culture in the United States.
Rockefellers’ gesture to Balanchine in 1964 signified the birth of ballet in the
twentieth century as we know it today. Ballet “took it from there” and became a leading
art form in the cultural renaissance of the post-war period. In the early 60s President
John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy, promoted arts programming in the
United States. An avid fan of ballet, glamorous trend setter in fashion, and influential
public figure, the First Lady drew particular attention to ballet, regularly attending
performances in New York, serving as Chair of the Washington School of Ballet
Foundation, and bringing her children to see Robert Joffrey and Rebekah Harkness
rehearse in the White House prior to a state dinner.
746
In 1965, following the Kennedy
assassination, as part of his “Great Society” President Lyndon B. Johnson created the

745
William Schuman , “The Responsibility of Lincoln Center to Education,” Music Educators Journal 49
no. 1 (Sept-Oct 1962): 38.

746
On the First Lady’s interactions with Joffrey and Harkness see, Sasha Anawalt, The Joffrey Ballet:
Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 175-176. On her support of the arts see also, Carl Sferrazza Anthony, As We Remember Her:
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the Words of Her Family (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), 165.
A testament to her contribution to ballet in this county, the pre-professional division of the American
Ballet Theatre School is named after her –the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at American Ballet
Theatre.

369

National Endowment for the Arts, the first permanent federally funded arts organization.
Finally, in 1971, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts immortalized the former
President and his wife’s support of the arts during his administration, establishing the first
national performing arts center in the United States. As a result of these events, between
1965 and 1975, major dance companies increased from ten to fifty-one and touring dance
companies from twenty-seven to eighty-six in the United States.
747
Dance critic Marcia
Siegel has written, “In one stroke Lincoln Center drastically altered several facets of
dance life …. Lincoln Center and the subsequent rash of little Lincoln Centers that broke
out all across America turned dance – that is ballet – into a full fledge constituent of
fashionable culture.”
748
Lincoln Center represented the institutionalization of ballet in the
culture of the United States.
Once limited to brief appearances in other forms of entertainment, or to
performances that attracted small elite audiences, ballet in the 1960s and 1970s
entertained a broad cross-class and cross-race audience. Little girls took ballet lessons.
The Alvin Ailey Dance Theatre (1958), Dance Theatre of Harlem (1969), and Ballet
Hispanico (1970), companies that drew non-white audiences, joined the New York City
Ballet and American Ballet Theatre among the nation’s most prominent companies. Local
arts centers, regional companies, and national festivals brought Americans across the

747
Paul DiMaggio and Michael Useem, “Cultural Democracy in a Period of Cultural Expansion: The Social
Composition of Arts Audiences in the United States,” Social Problems 26 no. 2 (December 1978): 180.

748
Marcia Siegel, At the Vanishing Point (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972). 3. Cited in, Diana
Theodores, First We Take Manhattan: Four American Women and the New York School of Dance
Criticism (Amsterdam: Overseas Publishers Association, 1996), 16.

370

country together to celebrate ballet. Once peripheral to American culture, ballet now
occupied a prominent and highly visible place in the United States.
In the twenty-first century it is tempting to look back on the widespread
popularity of ballet in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s and call it “middlebrow.” According
to Dwight MacDonald’s now well known 1960 article “Masscult, Midcult,”
“middlebrow” culture refers to bastardized forms of high culture. MacDonald claimed
middle brow culture “pretends to respect the standards of high culture while in fact it
waters them down and vulgarizes them."
749
In other words, middlebrow culture
commodifies highbrow culture to the tastes of a mass audience.
750
Ballet in the postwar
years did take on new forms and did evolve to meet the tastes of a broad audience. Agnes
de Mille and Jerome Robbins rejected the “stuffy” styles of “classical” ballet and
Broadway musicals blended ballet with tap, square, and folk dancing. Regardless, ballet
was never, however, part of the nation’s middlebrow culture.
MacDonald’s description of middlebrow culture possessed a heavily derisive
tone; he acquiesced to the notion of high culture as “better” than popular or lowbrow
culture. To reject labeling ballet as middlebrow culture is not to affirm or subscribe to
this position. MacDonald’s definition of middlebrow rests on the assumption that an art
form or cultural product has already secured recognition as high art. For something to be

749
Dwight Macdonald, "Masscult and Midcult," in Against the American Grain (New York: Random
House, 1962).

750
Scholars studying book clubs, literature and painting in the early twentieth century have argued the
emergence of a middlebrow culture in the 1920s and 1930s. Joan Shelley Rubin, The Making of
Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Nicole Humble, The
Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s-1950s: Class, Domesticity, and Bohemianism (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2004); Victoria Grieve, The Federal Art Project and the Creation of Middlebrow Culture
(Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 2009).
371

middlebrow, it must imitate highbrow - something ballet could not do as it was only in
the process of becoming high culture at mid-century. Rejecting labeling ballet as
“middlebrow” acknowledges its evolving place in post-war culture.
Ballet dancing in the United States never exclusively signified high culture. In the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Americans experienced ballet as part and parcel of
variety acts, alongside magicians, and comedians. In the early twentieth century, Russian
dancers brought the aristocratic and courtly traditions of their homeland and Europe
across the Atlantic. They too, however, quickly found themselves performing in
vaudeville houses and movie theaters. Ballet only began to climb in the nation’s cultural
hierarchy in the mid-twentieth century, when cultural rivalries between the United States,
Europe, and the Soviet Union, anxieties born from the prospering commercial
marketplace, changes in class, race, and gender, and the politics of the Cold War inspired
a “culture boom” that valued “high arts.”
Without federal funding and eager to exploit the new cultural turn, ballet
companies marketed ballet to a broad audience. Supporting ballet supposedly
demonstrated the nation’s commitment to culture, refuted accusations of materialism,
showed the United States to be equally conducive to culture as to consumption, and
proved the superiority of capitalism over communism. The form and style of ballet
evolved from highly theatrical productions based around stories and easily recognizable
emotions towards a more abstract and neo-classical style of presentation similar to the
styles popular in painting and visual art. As more and more Americans became familiar
with the aesthetics of ballet dancing, capable of understanding and appreciating it as a
372

form of expression and communication, ballet could slowly take on more elite and avant-
garde forms.
Changes in the representation of male and female ballet dancers both provide
evidence of and help explain the elevation of ballet to high art. Ballerinas, once seen as
salacious and titillating, appealed to cultural anxieties about women and gender by taking
on more refined and sensual forms. Their bodies became thinner and more youthful and
their agency as artists more limited. Images of containment and control, ballerinas
represented idealized femininity, an image of womanhood to be aspired to, praised, and
held sacrosanct. Paragons of virtue, ballerinas attained social status on par with high
culture, thereby expressing and promoting the elevation of ballet to a similar status.
Rudolf Nureyev, the most famous dancer of the post-war period, and one of the most
recognizable men of the 1960s, modeled a new form of androgynous masculinity that
complimented the image of the ballerina and resonated with contemporary concerns
about masculinity and sexuality.
Today, ballet stands for elegance, beauty, and culture. Its status as such emerged
in the three decades roughly spanning World War II and the National Endowment for the
Arts.
* * * *

In 2009, seven months pregnant with my daughter, and two years into this
dissertation I went to see the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater perform at the Dorothy Chandler
Pavillion in Los Angeles with three friends. On the program were three ballets, one new
ballet set to the vocals of the a cappella group, Sweet Honey in the Rock, a second ballet,
373

Suite Otis, choreographed by George Faison in 1971, and Ailey’s 1961 masterpiece
Revelations. As we left, I listened to my friends discuss the ballets. They loved the first
ballet, liked the second and were bored by the third. I distinctly remember my surprise at
hearing these comments. Revelations to my mind is one of the artistic masterpieces of the
twentieth century, a stunning visual depiction of black experiences in the United States.
The rounded broken shoulders of the dancers in the now famous opening pose, with a
spotlight cast on the one figure whose hands reached towards the heavens, depicted the
persistence of hope in a burdensome period of injustice. (See Figure 63) The frenzied,
jumping movements of male dancers in a trio in the ballet evoked the energy and sense of
desperation and futility felt by black men in the 1950s. The joyous depiction of a church
revival, including a stunning image of the dancers struggling in a stream, an image of
baptism and rebirth, expressed the centrality of the black church to sustaining hope in the
black community. Though lacking a specific narrative, the dances in Revelations evoked
the feelings produced by the incumbent Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
374

Figure 63 The concluding pose from the first dance in Revelations
by Alvin Ailey. Photographer and dancers unknown. Circa 1961.
Image is widely circulated on the Internet.

The ballet to Sweet Honey and the Rock featured dancers performing around
vocalists who described in song the feelings the dancers sought to express. This dance
possessed a far more theatrical quality. The audience need not interpret the movement,
but listen and be directed towards the feelings the dances intended to evoke. To my
friends, none of them trained in ballet or dance, this ballet was wonderful. They “got it”
and left the performance with a distinct sense of understanding art. To me, a long time
lover of ballet and one time dancer, the ballet lacked subtlety. It was too much like theatre
and too little like “ballet.” The recognition of where my friends and I parted ways
informed the argument of this dissertation.
Ballet never would have achieved the status it does today in the United States
without drawing in new audiences and these audiences, unfamiliar with the aesthetics of
375

ballet, needed an entryway. Their tastes, wants, and needs shaped the evolution of ballet
in the United States. To make ballet appeal to a broad audience, choreographers created
theatrical ballets like those of Sweet Honey in the Rock. As audiences became better
schooled in viewing ballet, choreographers created the abstract ballets we think of today
as high art – ballets like those of Revelations.
More than anything else, I hope this dissertation has complicated cultural
definitions of ballet as high art. A friend and film scholar recently decried the
“bastardization” of Broadway by singers made famous by the television show American
Idol. In addition to perpetuating what I see as a flawed system of judging “art,” she
treated Broadway as inherently above or “better” than television. The history of ballet in
the twentieth century shows us how intertwined various forms of cultural can be. It forces
us to recognize the importance of Broadway, television, and film to the status of ballet
today, begging questions about the relationship between other genres – like Broadway
and television. Can they really so easily be segregated as “high” and “low” or “good” and
“bad?” My hope is that the history of ballet in the twentieth century will lead to less
hierarchal conceptualizations of culture. If it also leads readers to recognize the
importance of federal support of the arts, all the better.
Looking back on this dissertation, I see several areas for future research. I have
focused on the creation of ballet as mass culture and the invention of ballet for the appeal
of a vast audience and have, therefore, viewed reception through a very broad lens,
asking: How and why did ballet resonate with Americans? Future research should delve
further into the reception of ballet by specific racial and class based audiences. To get at
376

these questions, future research might employ oral histories, an area of evidence absent
from this dissertation. Finally, while this dissertation has attempted to explain the appeal
of the ballerina, additional research might focus more explicitly on how she was
positioned in high culture – particularly via fashion.

377

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