The George Balanchine legacy is complicated, and I’m not even going to pretend to grasp its varied dimensions. That said, one interesting bit I’ve come to call the “Baby Balanchines” changed the landscape of dance in America profoundly more than half a century ago. The resources applied at this inflection point would commit much of dance in America to Balanchine’s style for generations – and at great expense to others across the universe of dance in America.
The Immigrant and the Impresario
Today our story begins in 1904 with the birth of George Balanchine in St. Petersburg in the Russian Empire, the son of an opera singer and composer. Three years later, Lincoln Kirstein is born in Rochester, New York, son of a salesman. George spent his youth in ballet training, Lincoln’s wealthy family sent him to private school and eventually Harvard.
The two intersect in London when Kirstein sees Balanchine perform as Koschei in Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballet Russes Firebird. Kirstein eventually convinces Balanchine to come to the United States, and together with Edward Warburg and Vladimir Dimitriew, they form the School of American Ballet (SAB) in 1934. Kirstein’s support of Balanchine’s vision was complete, enabling him “to do exactly what he wants to do in the way he wants to do it.” Balanchine, and thus SAB, fully embraced the Russian Imperial Ballet School (now Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet) approach to ballet training.
Balanchine and Kirstein spawn a number of ballet ventures (including the American Ballet, Ballet Caravan, and Ballet Society which would eventually consolidate into the 1948 formation of the New York City Ballet (NYCB), but before they do, American Ballet and Ballet Caravan merge into American Ballet Caravan, and Nelson Rockefeller (as Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs) arranges a tour of South America.
Just a few years later, Kirstein would become managing director of New York’s City Center, and with this engagement, brought the resources of the Rockefeller Foundation to ballet (and opera).
In 1950, Lew Christensen becomes NYCB Ballet Master, and just three years later, relocates to the west coast to direct the San Francisco Ballet.
Space to Dance
By the 1960s, the New York City Ballet is well-established, having toured North America, South America, Europe, and Asia (more than once with U.S. State Department support) and even a couple televised Nutcrackers (see the 1958 version).
New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller signs a bill in 1961 authorizing the construction of the New York State Theater for the 1964 World’s Fair – with a combined state and city allocation of $30 million (this would be over $300 million today). This space, would become the new home of the New York City Ballet, was designed to Balanchine’s specifications and completed at a cost of $19.3 million.
Essentially simultaneously, work begins on the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC), which opens in 1966 and becomes the official “summer home” of the New York City Ballet.
Artistic Concentration – The “Baby Balanchines”
In 1963, the Ford Foundation launched three national arts and humanities initiatives – one to “increase the supply of quality curators and directors for the nation’s museums of fine arts,” one to strengthen “the role of independent arts schools and conservatories of music in setting standards for professional training”, and, most interesting here, one to “develop the country’s training and performing resources in ballet.”
The Foundation appropriated $8 million for a national program to help develop training and performing resources in ballet, a medium that only in the last three decades has become an important American art form. The major components of the program are:
Ford Foundation Annual Report, 1963, page 12.
- strengthening of the School of American Ballet as a national center for advanced professional training;
- support of a cooperative system between the School of American Ballet and ballet teachers in different parts of the country to improve the professional preparation of promising young dancers;
- strengthening the role of the New York City Ballet as a national company. The increased funds will help the New York City Ballet perform services for professionally developing companies elsewhere, and will provide partial assistance to new works needed in the company’s repertoire.
- assistance to the San Francisco Ballet Company and School through a matching grant for their long-term development;
- matching support for new professional companies and schools in Boston, Houston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.
Ford backed Balanchine’s own New York operations (School of American Ballet and City Center of Music and Drama with almost $6 million, and picked five (eventually six) companies based largely on Balanchine’s recommendations and extended massive funding – Boston Ballet ($144k), Houston Ballet ($174K), National Ballet ($400K), Pennsylvania Ballet (now Philadelphia Ballet) ($345K), San Francisco Ballet ($644K), and Utah Civic Ballet (now Ballet West) ($175K) was added in the following year.
This $8 million ballet program (though only $7.8 million was disbursed) represented more than 6% of new project appropriations by the Ford Foundation in 1963, and in today’s dollars would exceed $78 million. Balanchine offered his advice, music, costumes, and choreography, and the artistic leadership of these institutions were deeply connected to Balanchine, the person, and so the “Balanchinian” legacy was baked-in from the beginning.
By the mid-1960s, Balanchine’s individual concept of dance stood on a foundation of at least seven of the best-funded schools/companies in the country and two performance venues.
Economic Concentration
Even with the loss of the National Ballet in 1974, the remaining six Balanchine-legacy companies represent a combined annual budget around quarter-billion dollars, and half of the ten largest dance companies in the country (and Ballet West is #12, which is pretty extraordinary given its home city). Economic concentration just happens in the absence of intervention (for a fun diversion, check out the Yard Sale Model), and this works in at least a couple ways for these companies – these are big cities (#24, #4, #23, #1, #6, #17, and #122 by population today; #13, #7, #9, #1, #4, #12, and #65 in 1960 – Salt Lake City is definitely an outlier in this group), so they generally have access to sizeable audiences (and patrons). At the very top, the New York metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is home to some 20 million people, each providing an average of about $4.56 to this one company every year (the Salt Lake City MSA is much more generous – about $10.75 per person per year for Ballet West).
All of these companies are the biggest ones (by budget) in their local regions:
| The Big Company | Budget Ratio | The Second Biggest Company |
| Boston Ballet | 15 | Jose Mateo Ballet Theatre |
| Houston Ballet | 45 | Metdance |
| Philadelphia Ballet | 14 | Koresh Dance Company |
| New York City Ballet | 2 | American Ballet Theatre or Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater |
| San Francisco Ballet | 9 | Alonzo King LINES Ballet or ODC Dance |
| Ballet West | 15 | Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company |
This disparity isn’t unique to the Baby Balanchines – it’s true throughout dance economics (and economics in general…). Washington, D.C. lost the National Ballet, but its big company is now The Washington Ballet, 6 times larger than Step Afrika! and Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet is about 17 times larger than Spectrum Dance Theater.
Dive Deeper
This is but a hint of the Balanchine legacy – for a contemporary view, checkout Harper’s Magazine, September 1964, “Ballet in America: One-man Show?“
Life Magazine, June 11, 1965, “Mr. B Talks about Ballet“
Vanity Fair, December 1998, “Balanchine’s Dream“
Dollars for Dance: Lincoln Kirstein, City Center, and the Rockefeller Foundation
New York Times, May 8, 1977, “Kirstein The Man Who Brought Us Balanchine“
National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities, Vol 37, Issue 1, “George Balanchine and the United States“