The American Ballet was the first professional ballet company George Balanchine created in the United States. The company was founded with the help of Lincoln Kirstein and Edward Mortimer Morris Warburg, managed by Alexander Merovitch and populated by students of Kirstein and Balanchine's School of American Ballet. Having failed to mount a tour, American Ballet began performing at the "Old Met." After being allowed to stage only 2 dance performances (Orfeo and Eurydice in 1936 and an evening of dances choreographed to the music of Igor Stravinsky in 1937), Balanchine moved the company to Hollywood in 1938. The company was restarted as the American Ballet Caravan and toured North and South America, although it too folded after several years.
Famous quotes containing the words american and/or ballet:
“Someone is always at my elbow reminding me that I am the grand-daughter of slaves. It fails to register depression with me. Slavery is sixty years in the past. The operation was successful and the patient is doing well, thank you. The terrible struggle that made me an American out of a potential slave said “On the line!” The Reconstruction said “Go!” I am off to a flying start and I must not halt in the stretch to look behind and weep.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
“Anyone who has a child today should train him to be either a physicist or a ballet dancer. Then he’ll escape.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)