Ballet Management and Funding 1964 1979
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Ml 4810G 18 BEDFORD ROW. LONDON WCl R 4EJ. ENGLAND 1314800 JAFFE. PHVLISS SIMCER A COMPANY IN TRANSITIONS AN ANALYSIS OF THE NEW YORK CITY BALLET MANAGEMENT AND FUNDING 1964 1979. THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY, M.A., 1980 COPR. 1980 JAFFE, PHYLISS SINGER Univers*/ /yUomnrts IntanaOonal s o o n , z e e b r o a d , a n n a r b o r . m ( « b id s © Copyright by Phyliss Singer Jaffa 1980 All Rights Reserved PLEASE HOTE: In all cases this material has been filmed in the best possible way from the available copy. Problems encountered with this document have been identified here with a check mark . 1. Glossy photographs 2. Colored illustrations 3. Photographs with dark background 4. Illustrations are poor copy 5. °r1nt shows through as there is text on both sides of page 5. Indistinct, broken or small print on several pages throughout 7. Tightly bound copy with print lost in spine 8. Computer printout pages with indistinct print 9. 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M: 45?06 313: 751-4700 A COMPANY IN TRANSITION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE NEW YORK CITY BALLET MANAGEMENT AND FUNDING 1964-1979 by Phyliss Singer Jaffe Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Performing Arts Signatures o Me mb Member Dean the College Date 1980 The American University Washington, D.C. 20016 Ù 1 U THE AMEHICAM UHIVEESITÏ LIBHAHÏ A COMPANY IN TRANSITION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE NEW YORK CITY BALLET MANAGEMENT AND FUNDING 1964-1979 by Phyliss Singer Jaffe ABSTRACT This thesis will investigate and examine the factors responsible for the continued artistic prominence of the New York City Pallet and the School of American Ballet. The introduction will be a brief history of these two institutions through 1963. Subsequent chapters will provide an analysis of key management and funding policies. The source material was a compilation of personal interviews, memoirs, biographies and journals as well as company, school and foundation archives. Thus this thesis reflects the myriad changes and transitions experienced by the New York City Ballet in these fifteen years. The research indicates the excellent and unique administrative mechanisms responsible for maintaining the ongoing artistic integrity of this major institution. Table of Contents Chapter I. "Dreams" 1933-1963 ................................... 1 II. "Metamorphoses" 1964-196 8 IB III. "Theme and Variations" 1969-1973 ................... 39 IV. "The Gods Go A-begging" 1974-1977 55 V. "Episodes" 1978-1979 ................................ 65 Appendix A 196 3 Ford Foundation G r a n t .....................77 Appendix B 1976-1980 Basic Agreement .................. 87 Individual Artist Contract .................. 113 Appendix C Subscriptions ....... 115 Appendix D Stravinsky Festival Programs ............... 120 Appendix E 197 3 Ford Foundation Grant ................... 129 Appendix F 1976 Musicians Strike...................... 140 New York Times Appendix G 1977 Challenge Grant ......................... 141 Appendix H Fundraising Campaigns.......................... 156 Appendix I 196 3-1979 NYCB Programs................. 169 Appendix J School of American Ballet .................. 201 Annual Report................................... 201 Workshop Performance Programs..................252 Bibliography ................................................ 262 11 "Dreams In Boston in 1916 Lincoln Kirstein, then ten years old, was forced to spend an evening at home while his mother attended a performance of the "Ballet Russes de Serge Diaghilev." His parents felt he was too young and Kirstein was banned from the company's entire Boston visit. His diary entry for that day reads, ". I will never forgive mother" and when reminiscing on that day years later he commented, "For years I tried to find onstage the magic that I was robbed of here." It is more than conjecture to credit this incident with the planting of the seeds of Kirstein's passion and enthusiasm for dance. Lincoln Kirstein is the son of the wealthy Boston family whose fortune came from the well-known Boston depart ment store, Filene's.^ By 1933, at age 27, Kirstein had already helped establish and edit a highly regarded literary journal Hound and Horn, and he had assisted Romola Nijinsky, ^Choreographed by George Balanchine, 19 35. 2 Lincoln Kirstein, Thirty Years: Lincoln Kirstein's The New York City Ballet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1978), p. 4. ^Joseph H. Mazo, Dance Is a Contact Sport (New York: Saturday Review Press, E.~p I Dutton and Co., Inc., 1974), p. 25. wife of the great Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, with her biography of her husband. He actively pursued art as well as dance and wrote many published essays on both subjects. Kirstein also wrote and published a novel. Flesh is Heir, and with Edward M. M. Warburg he co-founded the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, which has been "credited with being the germinal source out of which grew New York's 4 Museum of Modern Art." However active he was in the art world, it was the muse Terpsichore who held his heart: "Ballet became an obsession with me. For more than the ordinary influence or attractions of Harvard, the ballet seemed my real education. As time passed, I was increasingly magnetized toward some direct participation in it."^ This participation was to give America its first indigenous ballet company. This took on a reality when, in 19 33, he brought George Balanchine from Paris to the United States to set up and direct a school and company to represent American ballet. The initial plan was to set up the school in a new wing of the Morgan Memorial Museum in Hartford. This was with the assistance of Kirstein's friends, A. Everett Austin, then director of the museum, and Edward M. M. Wargurg, a 4 Quoted in Bernard Taper, Balanchine ; A Biography (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1974), pp. 159- 160. 6 Harvard classmate who added financial backing. Warburg's generosity was a major factor in bringing about the reality of Kirstein's dreams. In reference to his negotiating with Balanchine and Vladimir Dimitriev, who acted as Balanchine's manager, Kirstein stated, "Edward Warburg permitted himself to be idealistically involved in my highly irresponsible 7 negotiations." The site of the school was changed, due largely to Balanchine's and Dimitriev's disapproval of Hartford. However, there had also been considerable protests from Hartford residents who felt the establishment of a school by outsiders in the Museum to be unfair competition.® Kirstein and Warburg eventually opened up the School of American Ballet in New York City on January 1, 1934, in 9 a studio that had once belonged to Isadora Duncan. Announcing the creation of the school, John Martin, the only full-time dance critic in the United States at that time, wrote in The New York Times on October 23, 1933: In spite of all skeptics who said it could never be done, the actual preliminaries in the establishment of an American ballet are now under the auspices of the Memorial Museum in Hartford. The organizers of the project are A. Everett Austin, director of the ^Quoted in ibid., p. 160. ^Kirstein, Thirty Years, p. 31. ^Quoted in Anatole Chujoy, The New York City Ballet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1953), p. 21. g Ibid., p. 26. ^Kirstein, Thirty Years, p. 35. museum; Lincoln Kirstein, one of the editors of "Hound and Horn" and perhaps our most energetic "balletomane" . and E. M. M. Warburg.