© Alfred A Knopf Publishers Page This book is avilable from: Amazon Renee Renouf reviews

Kirstein, second child and first son of first generation Americans of Afkanezi Jews, also fostered the American literary and painting scenes from the time he managed to enter Harvard University until he became thoroughly engrossed in the creation of his enduring legacy, support to George Balanchine and Balanchine’s vision of a ballet school and company. Kirstein’s interest in the two previous passions endured throughout his life and continued to engage his attention and his support, emotional and fiscal. Lincoln Kirstein’s prodigiously active life was sustained by the fortune Lewis Kirstein acquired through Filene’s, the Boston-based department store; its administration passed from pere Kirstein to frere George. Though straining at its periodic confines, Lincoln Kirstein never had to worry overly much about his next dollar; fortunately for the dance world, Kirstein focused his fiscal freedom for its benefit.

It’s hard to assess how much the Kirstein family patterns influenced Lincoln’s early scholastic diffidence; perhaps both the times and his milieu were simply too rigid, too imbued with the puritan ethic and parental ambitions to create a more balanced childhood and adolescence. Lincoln got from his parents cultural exposure through his mother Rose, nee Stein, daughter of an affluent clothing merchant in Rochester, New York. His admirable qualities of social responsibility was the gift of his father, Lewis; Lincoln translated that into rigorous artistic patronage. This largesse first blossomed at Harvard with the literary journal, Hound and Horn. He helped launch the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art, acknowledged precursor to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City.

Lincoln Kirstein’s biographer, Martin Duberman, a retired professor of history, author of fourteen other non-fiction books, enjoyed access to virtually all the papers relevant to the Kirstein family: the Dance Division of the New York Public Library, Yale and Harvard relating to friends and colleagues, his sister Mina’s papers at Smith College, Archives of American Art at the Museum of Modern Art, The Ransom Center, University of Texas, privately held correspondence, a host of interviews and the Library of Congress.

Salacious or serious, comments and entries are verified in copious notes, 65 pages worth, including numerous references to Kirstein’s see-saw between hetero and homosexual attachments.

Duberman divided thirty-one chapters into six parts: Youth reveals the Kirstein family relationship patterns with Lincoln’s lifelong emotional attachment to his elder, only sister Mina and the family’s European exposure prior to Lincoln’s entry into Harvard. Through Mina Lincoln met the Bloomsbury Set, Maynard Keynes, Lydia Lopokova. Via roommate Francis Cabot Lowell Lincoln observed, “I no longer needed a passport” to Brahmin Boston. Lincoln Kirstein attended Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in Europe and admired Leonid Massine.

Beginnings recounts Lincoln’s move to New York City and jhis role in the early Museum of Modern Art. He ghosted Romola Nijinsky’s biography of Vaslav, periodically bailing her out of debt, while exposing himself to left wing causes and mystic G.I.Gurdjieff. He also encountered George Balanchine for the first time. I have heard Lincoln first wanted Massine though Balanchine became the ultimate choice.

Part Three, Launching covers 1933 through 1936. Kirstein brought Balanchine to the United States, started the School of American Ballet on Madison Avenue, arranged for the initial ballet performances at the Hartford Athenaeum and private performances at the Warburg estate where Serenade was first performed. It covers the short-lived contract with the Metropolitan Opera and Kirstein as organizer of Ballet Caravan.

Part Four, Expansion, brings Kirstein’s involvement with Ballet Caravan to a close, including its South American tour. Nelson Rockefeller’s used Kirstein to buy art for MOMA, before Lincoln’s service in the U.S. Army during World War II; then came Ballet Society and the beginnings of New York City Ballet at City Center, 1948-1950.

 

Ballet Caravan’s demise was due to the Sol Hurok cartel. Civic cultural associations were interested in the fledging group of American born and bred dancers but their increasing popularity came into conflict with Hurok’s control of musical artists and performance venues. Associations and venues hued to Hurok’s line or lost artists and events. Lincoln was not inclined to add Ballet Caravan to Hurok’s roster. The same Hurok control forced de Basil to take the Original Ballets Russes to Latin America during World War II.

A South American tour, arranged through Nelson Rockefeller as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, permitted some Ballet Caravan dancers to remain together, their numbers augmented by John Kriza, Todd Bolender; Alicia Alonzo; Nicholas Magallanes. That nucleus comprised other historic names of mid-twentieth century American ballet included; Gisella Caccialanza; Marie-Jeanne, William Dollar, Lew Christensen, Ballet Caravan veterans The repertoire comprised Americana and neo-classicism: Billy The Kid; Filling Station; Yankee Clipper; Balanchine provided Serenade; Concerto Barocco; Ballet Imperial. Lincoln’s wife, Fidelma Cadmus, Fido, joined the ensemble.

Chapter nineteen includes Kirstein’s army deferment for purchasing Latin American art for MOMA, forerunner to its Latin American Art Department, a brief reunion with Balanchine, then visiting ballet master at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Colon.. Lewis Kirstein’s sudden death seventy-five was eulogized by political, labor and Jewish philanthropic leaders, including Massachusetts Governor Leverett Saltonstall, New York’s Mayor Fiorella La Guardia, U.S. Justice Felix Frankfurter, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Chapter twenty covers Kirstein’s WW II Army service, age thirty-six. Losing thirty six pounds, he organized a soldier art exhibit at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. His labors enjoyed Life Magazine coverage with National Gallery of Art, including a small catalogue, and the Library of Congress exhibitions. Helped by influential friends, Kirstein joined the U.S. Arts and Monuments Commission as a private. The fall of 1944 he was assigned to interpret for the advancing forces,. becoming a monument specialist in January 1945 for General Patton’s forces. As a Private first class. Kirstein collaborated with a fellow Harvard student, Captain Robert Posey, locating eight buildings crammed with Hebraica from all over Europe and the noted salt mine art cache near Salzburg.

This Section concludes with Ballet Society and New York’s City Center.

Part Five, Maturity, covers Kirstein’s role in New York City Ballet’s occupancy of City Center, the brief City Center directorship, Lincoln Center planning, particularly the New York State Theater, his love affair with Japanese culture. Kirstein brought the Japanese Imperial Household Musicians, their gagaku music with bugaku, its all male dance form, to the United States, followed by New York City Ballet’s tour of Japan and Australia.

Part Six, Decline, covers 1964 until Kirstein’s death in 1996 at eighty-nine. Kirstein participated in the 1965 Civic Rights march in Montgomery, Alabama; he is pictured holding a young African-American boy on his shoulders. Hastily writing a play, Kirstein was hospitalized for one of his severe bipolar episodes. The play bombed. He wrote about the sculptor Elie Nadelman, whose gigantic sculptures adorn the New York State theater’s foyer, a book on Vaslav Nijinsky and one on New York City Ballet. He suffered a heart attack and endured successful by-pass surgery.

The last chapters record the deaths not only of Balanchine, but his sister Mina, his brother George, his wife Fido. A struggle over the management of School of American Ballet, supported by the entire teaching faculty, pitted him against Anne Bass of Texas, a large supporter of Peter Martins in Martins’ new role as the NYC Ballet director. Kirstein won, but progressively sidelined himself as he grew frailer. He supported Paul Taylor, managed to produce several books until his final two years. He saw old NYCB colleagues periodically until illnesses confined him to his home on East 19th Street where he died in his sleep January 5, 1996.

Lincoln Kirstein seriously pursued the arts, practicing painting, poetry and prose when young. His support of artists, balletic and otherwise was amazing. Duberman also records mammoth psychological breakdowns, all requiring hospitalization one physical restraint.

Duberman’s account of Fido’s character is sensitively treated, particularly the difficulties her introverted character sustained with the social rigors of Kirstein’s civic and artistic life

Kirstein was bi-sexually oriented, principally homosexual in most of his lengthy associations; Duberman records book, line and verse in detail. One might expect this for at least seven of Duberman’s non-fiction titles involve gay or homosexual subjects. Kirstein made little secret of his proclivities. Dealing with possible patrons and governmental administrators, Lincoln still came across as a brilliant, driven, multi-faceted, opinionated, personally self-effacing visionary.

His correspondence was direct, conscientious, his ability to connect with a stranger quite touching. I experienced these two sides of the man. While he adopted Gurdjieff ‘s motto of never explaining nor apologizing, Lincoln Kirstein’s life embodied noblesse oblige. Focused as it was on dance, we are so much richer for his unswerving dedication.