Making Ballet American: Modernism Before and Beyond Balanchine

by Andrea Harris

George Balanchine's arrival in the United States in 1933, it is widely thought, changed the course of ballet history by creating a bold neoclassical style that is celebrated as the first American manifestation of the art form. In Making Ballet American, author Andrea Harris challenges this narrative by revealing the complex social, cultural, and political forces that actually shaped the construction of American neoclassical ballet. Situating American ballet within a larger context of modernisms, the book examines critical efforts to craft new, modernist ideas about the relevance of classical dancing for American society and democracy. Through cultural and choreographic analysis, it illustrates the evolution of modernist ballet during a turbulent historical period. Ultimately, the book argues that the Americanization of Balanchine's neoclassicism was not the inevitable outcome of his immigration or his creative genius, but rather a far more complicated story that pivots on the question of modern art's relationship to America and the larger world.

284 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2017

About the author

Andrea Harris is an Associate Professor of dance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Certified Movement Analyst. She is the author of several essays on dance history, with particular expertise in American modernist dance during the Depression through Cold War periods. She is the winner of the 2016 Honorable Mention for the Gertrude Lippincott Award, awarded for the best English language article on dance published that year by the Society of Dance History Scholars. She holds an MFA in Dance from Texas Christian University, and a PhD in Theatre Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been on the dance faculties of the Universidad de las Américas, Sam Houston State University, the University of Oklahoma, and Texas Christian University. As a performer, she choreographed numerous works and danced with companies including Contemporary Dance/Fort Worth, Li Chiao-Ping Dance, and the Martha Graham Dance Company.