ABSTRACT
In 1975, the erudite and cantankerous Lincoln Kirstein delivered the following broadside against the ‘soi-disant “modern”-dance’: ‘Essentially, the modern dance tradition is a meager school and is without audience, repertory, or issue; it never gained a mass public, a central system, nor a common repertory…’ 1 It was, in other words, no threat to opera house ballet and, more particularly, no threat to the New York City Ballet, the company that Kirstein and George Balanchine founded in 1933.
