Marian Smith

Published in Ballet Review in 2019, this article examines Balanchine’s tenure at the Met from 1935 to 1938. My sources include Lincoln Kirstein’s diary, the Met scrapbook, a damning letter by Paul Cravath, and interviews made in the 1970s with dancers in Balanchine’s company. I argue that the Met had one set of goals for Balanchine’s work there and Kirstein had another. I also show how Balanchine’s “Johnny One-Note” number in the Broadway show “Babes in Arms” (1937) and its text (by Balanchine’s pal Larry Hart) can be read as revenge for the Met’s pearl-clutching reaction to Balanchine’s Aida choreography.

In Aida, “…The American Ballet…executed some of the most astonishing figures that ever shocked a Met audience.” (And Wettergren wore an “Egyptian nose”!) Danton Walker, New York Daily News, Met archive

Unidentified ballet by Balanchine, photo published in an Indiana paper. Met archives

Dancers at the School of American Ballet, 1936. Photo by Alfred Eisenstädt for LIFE Magazine.