Lincoln Kirstein - Early Life

Early Life

Born in Rochester, New York, the grandson of a successful Rochester clothing manufacturer, he grew up in a wealthy Jewish Bostonian family and attended Berkshire School, graduating in 1926; his father was president of Filene's Department Store when Lincoln entered Harvard.

In 1927, while an undergraduate (he graduated in 1930), he was annoyed that the literary magazine The Harvard Advocate would not accept his work. With a friend Varian Fry, who later married his sister Eileen, he convinced his father to finance their own literary quarterly, the Hound & Horn. Moving in 1930 to New York, the quarterly became an important publication in the artistic world and lasted until 1934 when Lincoln decided to fund George Balanchine instead.

His interest in Balanchine and ballet started when he saw Balanchine's Apollo performed by the Ballet Russe. He became determined to get Balanchine to America. Together with Edward Warburg (a classmate from Harvard), they started the School of American Ballet in Hartford, Connecticut, in October 1933. In 1934, the studio moved to the fourth floor of a building at Madison Avenue and 59th Street in New York City. Warburg's father invited the group of students from the evening class to perform at a private party. The ballet they did was "Serenade", the first major ballet choreographed by Balanchine in America. Just months later Kirstein and Warburg founded, together with Balanchine and Dimitriev, the American Ballet.

This became the resident company of the Metropolitan Opera. That arrangement was unsatisfactory because the Opera would not allow Balanchine and Kirstein artistic freedom.