ABSTRACT
The current vogue for dance theater is part and parcel of a backlash against exemplary modernists like Balanchine who sought to "purify" their dances by jettisoning everything deemed extraneous to the medium in which they worked. (For Balanchine, this meant the progressive elimination of narrative, mime, decor, costume and other theatrical inessentials.) But Balanchine's relation to modernism is considerably more complicated than that. His quest for purity of medium is complimented by his "neoclassical" desire for a renewed connection to older choreographic traditions.
