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:
“I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)
“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)