In October 1933 when George Balanchine was brought to the United States through the efforts of Lincoln Kirstein, the need to establish an indigenous tradition of ballet in the United States did not register as a pressing national priority. For one, the country had barely begun the long process of recovery from the worst financial crisis in its history.Footnote 1 If the bold actions begun earlier that year during the Roosevelt administration's “Hundred Days” had brought a new general sense of hope, the daily reality for most Americans was still quite grim, and would remain so for many years to come. In urban areas including New York City, where the Balanchine–Kirstein ballet enterprise would find a home, discontent among workers and the currency of progressive and socialist politics bred the fear—or anticipation—that the country might be on the brink of open revolution.
It was just not owing to politics or trying economic conditions that a new ballet company was not an urgent matter, however. As a growing body of scholarship has demonstrated, ballet and other forms of dance had already established quite deep roots in the U.S. by the early 1930s, and the Depression years would have proved an extremely fruitful period for the further development of dance in America with or without the addition of Balanchine to the mix. At the time that Balanchine and Kirstein were organizing their new venture, the country offered myriad pedagogical opportunities for aspiring dancers, whether in the numerous schools of ballet run by native and émigré instructors or the increasingly dominant institutions of modern dance.Footnote 2 Modern dance had in fact come to be understood as the more viable and appropriate idiom in which to create a uniquely American movement vocabulary distinct from ballet, which was dismissed by many as a decadent Old World import that could not truly speak to the experiences of the young nation, much less advance the left-wing political beliefs to which numerous choreographers and performers—many of whom were women and Jews (or both) from marginalized immigrant populations—were passionately committed.
Having not yet turned thirty years old and left-leaning in his politics, Kirstein was by no means unsympathetic to the dire challenges facing his fellow citizens in the early 1930s, nor was he unaware of prevailing trends in the arts more generally and dance in particular (see Photo 1). A co-founder and editor of the modernist literary quarterly Hound and Horn and closely involved in the newly opened Museum of Modern Art, Kirstein was similarly well versed in the current state of dance in the U.S. and abroad. He had published several articles defending the continued relevance of ballet and notoriously critiquing what he regarded as the unstructured and overly individualized aesthetics of modern dance (Kirstein Reference Kirstein1930, Reference Kirstein1931).
Lincoln Kirstein and Gisella Caccialanza, likely taken summer 1936. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
It is without question, however, that the circumstances of Kirstein's birth had inured him to the widespread despair that pervaded so much of the country. His family's wealth and social prominence allowed him to cultivate wide-ranging interests in literature and the visual and performing arts during one of the bleakest periods of American history.Footnote 3 But the same social distinction that had made his projects possible in the first place was also partly to blame for the shaky public debuts of Balanchine and Kirstein's first performing company, the American Ballet. Geared to a small, Ivy League elite of which Kirstein and his business partner Edward Warburg were consummate exemplars, the 1935 Adelphi Theater debut of the company was shockingly tone deaf to the realities of the moment, and was famously dismissed by dance and music critics alike as the somewhat amateurish offerings of a troupe that should rightfully be called “les ballets américains.”Footnote 4
The elitist and out-of-touch repertoire of the American Ballet has found a congenial foil in the output of another institutional predecessor of the New York City Ballet, the chamber-sized touring organization called Ballet Caravan—the second significant performing company to emerge from the Balanchine–Kirstein ballet enterprise. In contrast to the American Ballet, the Caravan has been understood as a more independent organization, operating separately if concurrently alongside the American Ballet and School of American Ballet in the later 1930s. Ballet Caravan has earned this status on the one hand due to the special leadership role that Kirstein played in its formation and management, and on the other owing to the distinctly American agenda of its aesthetic program.Footnote 5 Kirstein himself stressed his central role in the Caravan's organization, first in his pamphlet Blast at Ballet (1938a, 41–48) and later in Thirty Years, his diary-style history of NYCB:
Early in 1936 it had come to me that, all else failing, I had best attempt to form some sort of company by myself. … I decided to organize a small troupe on my own and call it Ballet Caravan. It would be self-sufficient, using a dozen of our best dancers, who would also serve as stage managers and stagehands. We could travel by bus and truck with our own lighting equipment, portable switchboard, drapes, and bits of scenery. (1978, 68)
This article revisits the genesis and first season of Ballet Caravan to show how the troupe was not in fact conceived in such independent and determinative terms, and was hardly an American-focused, much less a politically leftist endeavor in its inception. This new account of the Caravan's origins draws upon journalistic accounts of the company's first season and archival materials related to its performances,Footnote 6 as well as Kirstein's diaries and correspondence.Footnote 7 These sources not only reveal the contradictions in Kirstein's published writings on the Caravan, but more notably, they change our understanding of the troupe's initial relationship with the American Ballet and the complex landscape of dance performance in the 1930s. In short, Ballet Caravan was in its initial conception neither a dancer-driven initiative nor a carefully conceived attempt by Kirstein to pursue an American artistic agenda. Instead, the Caravan was a hastily organized affair, conceived of barely six weeks prior to its first performances in July 1936 as a practical response to an array of institutional crises facing the American Ballet, including Balanchine's health problems and Edward Warburg's increasing disinterest in remaining involved with the enterprise. If we are to regard the Caravan as Kirstein's from the outset, it was “his” not necessarily as an intentional aesthetic or institutional endeavor, but rather as an insurance policy to secure the continued existence of the ballet enterprise in which he was so invested, both literally and personally, in the event of the withdrawal of Balanchine or Warburg (or both). More simply put: Ballet Caravan in 1936 was not the Ballet Caravan that it would subsequently become. In fact, just like the American Ballet, the troupe was not particularly engaged with the political and economic realities of the 1930s and was for the most part an internal response to institutional challenges rather than a bold experiment in external engagement.
Most scholarly accounts of the Caravan (by dance scholars as well as a notable number of musicologists) have focused on its later repertoire, with particular attention granted to the troupe's two most popular ballets, both premiered in 1938 and the only two works to have outlived the company's five-year lifespan: Filling Station and Billy the Kid.Footnote 8 These and other ballets of the Caravan's later seasons, including Yankee Clipper and City Portrait, evince an explicit commitment to native and vernacular themes, inspired by and in turn contributing to regionalist and politically activist trends in the visual and performing arts in Depression-era America.Footnote 9 As will be shown below, however, these influences were for the most part absent from the Caravan's debut season. What is more, the Caravan's 1936 season saw the debut of the earliest choreographic efforts of Erick Hawkins, works previously unknown to dance scholars. But far from pointing to an earlier softening of Kirstein's adamant opposition to modern dance, these early works by Hawkins provide further evidence that the Caravan's early profile was firmly grounded in the aesthetics of ballet modernism to which the young impresario was so committed.
As the following new historical account of the origins and first season of Ballet Caravan shows, during the troupe's first year of existence, it was not the boldly experimental and politically engaged troupe that it would subsequently become. Far from a carefree and democratic collective, the Caravan was closely controlled and supervised by Kirstein in almost every respect. Its activities in 1936 accordingly rehearsed many of the missteps of the early repertoire of the American Ballet, offering ballets in an art-for-art's sake and Diaghilevian idiom that were novel mostly with respect to the more modest scale of their execution and the unconventional venues in which they were performed. In the eyes of many critics, these somewhat superficial modifications were reason enough to praise the Caravan as a more successful version of the American Ballet, even as it replicated many elements of the aesthetic program of its parent organization. The American Ballet and Ballet Caravan thus reveal themselves, at least in the Caravan's first season of the summer and fall of 1936, as more contiguous than distinct, sharing personnel, aesthetic values, and choreographic styles, as well as the involvement of Balanchine himself. Although the success of the troupe's first year allowed Kirstein to strike out more definitively on his own to pursue the explicitly American agenda for which it is mostly celebrated today, during this early phase, Ballet Caravan was for all intents and purposes the American Ballet's Caravan.
Formation of Ballet Caravan and Bennington College Debut
Despite the fact that Ballet Caravan has been accorded a certain institutional independence in the pre-history of the New York City Ballet, the organization has seldom been the subject of sustained scholarly attention in and of itself.Footnote 10 And although the Caravan has figured in various historical accounts and other scholarly contexts, the precise reasons for its creation in 1936 and its relationship to the wider ballet enterprise of Balanchine and Kirstein have remained obscure. Echoing Kirstein's own accounts cited above, Anatole Chujoy's The New York City Ballet posits the Caravan as conceived of and led by the ambitious impresario, who sought a fresh institutional start following the American Ballet's unsteady first season as the resident troupe at the Metropolitan Opera (1953, 75–8). In addition to allowing Kirstein the opportunity to pursue a more explicitly American repertoire—something the American Ballet itself had yet to create—the Caravan fulfilled a more practical short-term need to provide employment to the American Ballet's dancers until their duties resumed at the Met later in the year (Chujoy Reference Chujoy1953, 77). Debra Hickenlooper Sowell's (Reference Sowell1998) account of the Caravan's formation, by contrast, tells this story in reverse. The Caravan's genesis is instead credited to the initiative of several of the dancers themselves—notably the Christensen brothers, who had prior experience making their own way as performers on vaudeville and variety circuits—in order to provide interim employment of their own accord (Sowell Reference Sowell1998, 122–4). It was only after the dancers started organizing this ad hoc touring group, as Lew Christensen recalled, that Kirstein became involved and the plans for the troupe became more substantive (123). Martin Duberman's biography of Kirstein tells a more complicated story of the Caravan's formation, calling the troupe an attempt to create “a viable prospect for the summer” in the wake of the American Ballet's unsuccessful season at the Met (2008, 315). Kirstein was motivated by a range of concerns: discontent with the lackadaisical commitment of Edward Warburg (Kirstein's main financial partner in the American Ballet enterprise), concerns over Balanchine's ill health, and new prospects on Broadway (after the successful premiere of On Your Toes), as well as a desire to pursue a new artistic agenda focused more exclusively on original work by American choreographers (Duberman Reference Duberman2008, 315–8).
Despite their differences, these three accounts all maintain that Ballet Caravan was conceived of to complement or supplement the activities of the American Ballet in some respect. Early press accounts and promotional materials suggest that there was indeed a close relationship between the two entities. Kirstein evidently took great pains to maintain the group as an official affiliate of the American Ballet, not as a distinct organization, and the Caravan's association with the company (and by extension the Metropolitan Opera) was an important selling point for the troupe. An early promotional brochure created for the first season describes the Caravan membership as “twelve accomplished dancers, all members of The American Ballet Ensemble which has recently completed its first season with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.”Footnote 11 Press coverage of the Caravan's first summer season of touring in July and August 1936 followed suit, identifying the troupe as composed of dancers from the American Ballet and making prominent reference to its affiliation with the Metropolitan Opera. The first of these was John Martin's introduction of the Caravan, the lead item in his Sunday column: “Its personnel consists of twelve dancers and a company manager from the ranks of the American Ballet” (Martin Reference Martin1936a).Footnote 12 “Ballet Caravan Forms To Give Performances: Twelve Members of American Ballet in New Group,” announced an unsigned notice in the New York Herald-Tribune, adding in the article itself that the group “has been formed with the approval of the directors of the American Ballet” (“Ballet Caravan Forms” 1936). Similar talking points with prominent references to the American Ballet and the Met appear in press for the Caravan's other summer performances (“American Ballet at Westport” 1936; “American Ballet Group” 1936; “Ballet Numbers” 1936; “Summer Theatres: Ogunguit Playhouse” 1936). Still other notices mention only its opera affiliation, describing the troupe as “young dancers from the Metropolitan Opera,” leaving out the American Ballet entirely (“Summer Theatres” 1936a, 1936b).
The company's roster attests to the almost indistinguishable boundaries between the Caravan and the American Ballet. Twelve dancers, seven women and five men, formed the core of the group: Ruby Asquith, Ruthanna Boris, Gisella Caccialanza, Harold Christensen, Lew Christensen, Rabana Hasburgh, Erick Hawkins, Albia Kavan, Charles Laskey, Eugene Loring, Annabelle Lyon, and Hannah Moore (Kriegsman Reference Kriegsman1981, 57; Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936b). All had been affiliated with the School of American Ballet and its company in the two years since its opening in 1934, though many had acquired extensive training and performing experience elsewhere. The leaders of the group were two of Kirstein's protégés, dancer and choreographer Douglas Coudy, also his lover at the time,Footnote 13 who was the company manager, and Lew Christensen, the group's ballet master (Martin Reference Martin1936g). In addition, William Dollar, one of the principal male dancers of the American Ballet, choreographed a ballet for the company's first season, as well as appearing with Kirstein in a lecture-demonstration in the fall.Footnote 14 Despite this close relationship, Dollar is not named among the company members and is explicitly identified in the press as “not a member of the present company, but of the American Ballet, of which the Ballet Caravan is an offshoot” (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1936a). Such minute distinctions reveal the unique institutional profile of the Caravan. Even as it claimed to be completely contiguous with its parent organization, it was apparently regarded as separate enough that Dollar's status had to be affirmed as that of a guest choreographer and not a company member.Footnote 15 The core dancers, however, felt no need to distinguish between their affiliation with the Caravan and the American Ballet, and continued to take class at the School of American Ballet, where the Caravan's initial rehearsals also took place (Interview with Annabelle Lyon, 1979).Footnote 16 Annabelle Lyon recalled virtually no distinction between her work for the Caravan and the American Ballet. When asked whether early rehearsals were “preparation for a new company with a new name,” Lyon pointedly clarified to her interviewer that the Caravan was not thought of as something they were doing “instead of the American Ballet,” but was rather something just for the summer “to give us work when the company was not functioning” (Interview with Annabelle Lyon).
These contradictory views on the Caravan's institutional independence could be attributed to the fact that the troupe was a distinct latecomer to the 1936 summer season. Despite his claim in Thirty Years that he developed the plan for the Caravan in “early 1936” (Kirstein Reference Kirstein1978, 68), Kirstein's diaries and press coverage of the company attest to a more compressed time frame for the group's formation. Kirstein first mentions the very concept of a summer touring group in a diary entry dated May 28 and again on May 31, when he uses the “caravan” moniker (LK Diaries). John Martin's introductory report on the Caravan, published in the last days of June, explicitly characterizes the group as latecomers (Martin Reference Martin1936a).Footnote 17
Ballet Caravan gave its first performances at Bennington College's summer dance institute, and this engagement has been understood as symbolic of the troupe's indebtedness to both the aesthetics and institutional structures of modern dance (Garafola Reference Garafola2005b). Such observers include Kirstein himself—an erstwhile critic of what he regarded as modern dance's less structured and more idiosyncratic movement vocabularies (Manning Reference Manning1993, 259–65)—who years later averred that, “Modern Dance may be said to have launched Ballet Caravan” (Kirstein Reference Kirstein1978, 69). Sally Banes characterizes the Caravan's organizational model as “more like the small American modern dance company than the traditional ballet troupe,” and speculates that Kirstein's embrace of modern dance was a cunning strategic decision (1999, 83). As Banes explains, “in attempting to create an alternative to the émigré Russian companies that he had come to despise,” most notably Colonel de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, “despite his classical taste he looked for allies in the modern dance world” (1999, 83). This common-enemy theory is entirely plausible, since as Mark Franko and Gay Morris have observed, ballet and modern dance in America for much of the mid-twentieth century developed and defined themselves in a subtle if sometimes unacknowledged dialogue with one another as well as through a shared antagonism toward existing popular and commercial dance cultures (Franko Reference Franko2002, 107–23; Morris Reference Morris2006, 38–63).
According to the research of Janet Mansfield Soares, Kirstein approached Bennington founder and director Martha Hill directly to request a slot for the Caravan on the festival's program, which was ultimately granted over the objections of Hill's associate Mary Jo Shelly (Soares Reference Soares2009, 83–85). Surviving journalistic and archival sources suggest that the Caravan's performances on July 17 and 18 were somewhat hastily arranged, like the formation of the company itself only six weeks earlier. John Martin's June 28 column announcing the formation of the Caravan makes no mention of the Bennington performances, which were subsequently announced in his column of July 5, barely two weeks in advance (Martin Reference Martin1936a, Reference Martin1936b).Footnote 18 Kirstein for his part mentioned the Bennington dates in a July 9 letter to his parents, then vacationing in France,Footnote 19 and first referenced the engagement in his diary on July 15 (LK Diaries).
The Caravan's engagement was evidently intended to provide ideological balance and new perspective to the Bennington Festival's offerings (see Photo 2). As Soares explains, Hill justified the inclusion of the troupe based not only on her latent affinity for ballet, but also on the grounds that “Kirstein's new effort might ferret out choreography that championed a healthier American spirit and perhaps serve as a counterbalance to the angst and browbeating of the leftist voices” (2009, 84). The Caravan's performances were ultimately presented separately from the official festival programs, however, perhaps in a conciliatory gesture to Shelly and other more partisan stakeholders.Footnote 20 This distinct status was made plain in press accounts, which describe the Caravan's performances as “unscheduled,” “unexpected,” and “outside the regular festival series.”Footnote 21 All of which is to point out that the Caravan was initially included in Bennington's activities owing to its balletic credentials as an affiliate of the American Ballet. In other words, the troupe's affinity with modern dance circles might be better understood as a result, not necessarily a cause, of its Bennington debut.Footnote 22
Members of Ballet Caravan, likely taken summer 1936 at Bennington College. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
Despite this outsider status, the company received a much warmer welcome than it had anticipated for its performances, which evidently “added to the eclectic mix of dance offerings without much commotion” (Soares Reference Soares2009, 88). According to Kirstein's diaries, the dancers were worried enough about their reception that they had mentally prepared themselves for “even heckling,” but in the end the festival was more than generous and accommodating to the Caravan (LK Diaries, July 24). The group even earned special praise from Martha Graham, with whom Kirstein had begun to cultivate a close and mutually admiring relationship.Footnote 23 “Miss Graham was charming and demonstrative,” according to Kirstein, and “said she realized we were in different worlds but she firmly believed in our destiny and in the vitality of the classic form” (LK Diaries, July 24).
Summer on the Road
Although its Bennington debut positioned the Caravan among the leading and most influential exponents of modern dance, the company's subsequent performances would embrace the ethos of the latter in a different way, that is, by patching together a summer season through a heterogeneous itinerary of colleges, civic auditoriums, movie theaters, and other popular and private venues. Although the barnstorming journeys of Anna Pavlova had followed similar circuits (to much larger audiences), the more immediate model for the Caravan was the touring enterprises of Ted Shawn, Doris Humphrey, and Martha Graham.Footnote 24 This was perhaps no surprise since the woman responsible for the Caravan's management, Frances Hawkins, had made her name booking talent for such artists, most notably as a manager for Graham, and enjoyed direct entrée to the inner circles of modern dance. Along with Hill, Hawkins also no doubt helped facilitate the Caravan's appearance at Bennington, since she had worked at the festival as an administrative assistant in 1935 and in later seasons helped manage publicity (Kriegsman Reference Kriegsman1981, 15). Kirstein was well aware of Hawkins's unique portfolio, including her vaudevillian pedigree, and saw it as an asset for the Caravan's efforts.Footnote 25
According to Kirstein's diaries, he first met with Hawkins on June 5 to discuss the possibility of her managing the Caravan, only a week after he had first mentioned the idea of the troupe, and on June 16 she was officially contracted to manage the tour. “The mechanics of traveling seem far easier than I thought,” Kirstein noted in late July, “due mostly to the efficiency of our manager Francis [sic] Hawkins a very nice person indeed” (LK Diaries, July 24). Although Hawkins did not remain with the group for the entirety of the tour, she was “on hand at all important junctions and very helpful” (LK Diaries, August 7). In contrast to the recollections of Lew Christensen and others that the Caravan was a dancer-led initiative, Kirstein's diaries suggest that this story was in fact a cunning public relations gambit of Hawkins's invention. In part to contravene the perception that the Caravan represented an institutional schism with the American Ballet, Hawkins advised Kirstein to downplay his involvement and instead pretend that the concept for the troupe had originated with the dancers themselves.Footnote 26 Thus despite Kirstein's perceived ownership of the Caravan, the success of the troupe's first summer season—launched at the seat of modern dance and continued in a series of popular venues—might be credited more to Hawkins's unique professional network and expertise rather than any distinct strategy on his part. This success is all the more notable given the extremely short lead-time that Hawkins had to arrange the tour at all.
If it is sometimes unclear where, what, and for whom the Caravan performed on each stop of its first summer tour, the overall complement of dances it presented is well documented. Many of the dances in this repertoire outlasted the summer, moreover, and were presented in several engagements in the fall of 1936 and in the Caravan's subsequent seasons. Initially the repertoire included four one-act ballets, two of which were typically presented at any given performance. Lew Christensen's Encounter, set to Mozart's Haffner Serenade, is described by turns as a “classic ballet,” “in the classic manner,” or a “neo-classic ballet,” and featured costumes “after drawings of J. G. Von Schadow” but did not have any literal plot (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1936a; Martin Reference Martin1936g; Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936a; “Summer Theatres: Ogunquit Playhouse” 1936). Eugene Loring contributed the more narrative “ballet pantomime” Harlequin for President—initially called Harlequin's Election (“Dance Notes” 1936)—a commedia dell'arte–inspired “satire on contemporary politics” with music by Scarlatti and costumes by Keith Martin (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1936a; Martin Reference Martin1936g; Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936a; “Summer Theatres: Ogunquit Playhouse” 1936, see Photos 3 and 4). The choreography for the “character ballet” Pocahontas has been generally credited to Christensen (Martin Reference Martin1936g)—one account claims it was “composed by the group jointly” (Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936a)—with an original score by Elliott Carter and costumes “after the engravings of Theodore de Bry” (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1936a; Martin Reference Martin1936g). William Dollar's Promenade used Ravel's Valses nobles et sentimentales, featured costumes “after Horace Vernet,” and was said to be based “on the modes and manners of the ascendant middle class of France in the period just after the revolution” (“Summer Theatres: Ogunquit Playhouse” 1936). In keeping with the insistence on Dollar's special status with respect to the Caravan, Promenade was sometimes identified as “the only ballet composed outside the ranks of the company” (Martin Reference Martin1936g).
Annabelle Lyon and Eugene Loring, posing in costume for Harlequin for President. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
Eugene Loring in costume for Harlequin for President. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
In Blast at Ballet, Kirstein maintained that the decision to include work by a variety of choreographers was an intentional strategy on his part: “Realizing the danger Diaghilev risked by never having more than two choreographers at his disposal at one time, and only five in his entire career, I started off by mounting four works by four different dancers” (1938a, 42). As will be shown below, there was a darker side to this strategy having to do with Balanchine's poor health, but in any event, Kirstein's decision was most likely born of necessity given the haste with which the company was organized and the inexperience of his young choreographers.
What is indisputable, however, is that Kirstein had primary artistic purview over the Caravan's repertoire, and most of the season's ballets were based on concepts that originated with him. In early June at Ashfield (his family's estate in western Massachusetts), Kirstein met personally with Elliott Carter to discuss the commission of Pocahontas (LK Diaries, June 9) and coached Christensen through its conception and creation (LK Diaries, July 4). The music, décor, and libretto for William Dollar's Promenade similarly originated with Kirstein, who consulted Vernet's Incroyables et Merveilleuses engravings at the Metropolitan Museum in his research on the ballet's costume designs (LK Diaries, July 2, 9). Christensen's Encounter and Loring's Harlequin were the two exceptions, although both were clearly pursued with Kirstein's approval and ongoing consultation (LK Diaries, June 5, 11).
On the Caravan's initial programs at Bennington, these four ballets were to be rounded out by a complement of “divertissements,” comprising “national dances and solos to music of Glinka, Prokofiev, Brahms, Corelli, and many other composers” (Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936a). An early promotional brochure describes them as the concluding part of each program, calling them “a series of divertissements demonstrating in national dances and ballet solos the virtuosity of the company.”Footnote 27 Nine such dances were created, and as many as seven were to be included on a program.Footnote 28 Although none of these short pieces is credited to a specific choreographer, Kirstein's diaries indicate that company manager Douglas Coudy was responsible for at least some of them (LK Diaries, July 2). Interestingly, this embrace of the crowd-pleasing divertissements as a rousing closing act shows an affinity with the practices of performers such as Pavlova and La Argentina, against whom Kirstein in other contexts would position his own institutional efforts.Footnote 29 The Caravan's divertissements were apparently more bewildering than engaging, however, perhaps providing context for Marjorie Church's remark in a Dance Observer review of the Bennington performances that the Caravan's dancers “seem a bit lost in eclecticism, at present, both of style and of technique” (Church Reference Church1936). (Additionally, this extensive musical repertoire was all performed on the piano.Footnote 30 What effect this might have had on the overall ethos of the shows is debatable—lending the performances either a more coherent or more monotonous quality—it remains a virtuosic feat in its own right.)
The Caravan's debut programs at Bennington can be regarded as a template for its eclectic approach to programming during its first year. The first performance paired the classic Encounter with the more narrative Harlequin, while the second included Promenade and Pocahontas, the latter of which was incomplete, but performed in part “so we could see what it looked like” (“Dance Notes” 1936; LK Diaries, July 24). The first program was rounded out by a series of seven divertissements, but for the second night, Kirstein decided to scrap the shorter pieces entirely, since “there wasn't enough good stuff to save it” (LK Diaries, July 24) and it is not clear to what extent they were included in subsequent engagements.Footnote 31 Variety continued to be a goal for the Caravan, however, with the American-themed and narrative ballets complementing more abstract fare on its programs, with the combinations of ballets remaining flexible.
The Caravan's fifth ballet, added to the repertoire partway through the summer tour, was The Soldier and the Gypsy, a “character ballet in seven scenes” with music by Manuel de Falla and choreographed by Douglas Coudy (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1936a; Martin Reference Martin1936g). The ballet was a condensed retelling of Carmen, albeit with a different score, and featured costumes by Charles Rain “unconventionally of Spanish flavor” (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1936a). Denby praised the narrative quality of the ballet, reporting that it was “an interesting attempt to combine dancing with parlando movement, so to speak” (1936, 52). Like Pocahontas and Promenade, the concept, score, and décor (and in this case even the casting) for this ballet originated with Kirstein, who in mid-July mentions the idea of “a Spanish ballet on Carmen for Ruthanna Boris” to be created by Coudy (LK Diaries, July 15 and August 13). Although the Caravan has been characterized as a democratically run organization in which there were no stars and decisions were made collectively (Sowell Reference Sowell1998, 123–4), the addition of this fifth ballet at the insistence of Kirstein provides evidence to the contrary. According to Kirstein's diaries, there was grumbling in the ranks about this particular decision, as several of the dancers thought that the troupe's funds might have been better spent to augment their salaries (August 29). Thus despite his own Popular Front politics, magnanimous labor relations toward the troupe's dancers did not always trump Kirstein's own artistic vision and priorities for the Caravan.
In addition to these five ballets, early press accounts mention a sixth work called Rondo, a “ballet in classic style” choreographed by Erick Hawkins to music by Carl Maria von Weber, which would occasion one of the more tumultuous episodes in the Caravan's early history (“Ballet Caravan Forms” 1936; Martin Reference Martin1936a; Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936a).Footnote 32 This ballet was in fact abandoned in rehearsal after the dancers revolted against its confusing and overcomplicated choreography, with the situation becoming so dire that Hawkins was briefly voted out of the Caravan by his fellow dancers, to be reinstated later after careful politicking on the part of Kirstein (LK Diaries, June 5, 9, 11, 16, 24, 25 and July 2, 4). Unlike the dancers, Kirstein remained committed to Hawkins's ballet despite seeing its faults as it was under development, at first describing it as “too full of difficulty but may be OK when cleaned up” (LK Diaries, June 16) but later recognizing that the ballet was “impossibly difficult and complex and the kids hate to do it” (June 24). Kirstein felt a keen sense of loyalty to Hawkins, since the dancer had been the first consulted about the idea of the Caravan, and Kirstein cites this early enthusiasm, as well as his talent, as a reason for keeping him on (May 28, July 2).
Rondo is mentioned in two previews of the Caravan's summer activities (“Ballet Caravan Forms” 1936; Martin Reference Martin1936a), and in an August report in the UK-based Dancing Times, which perhaps was written and filed before the ballet was definitively scrapped (Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936a). In addition to references in the press, Rondo is listed alongside Encounter, Pocahontas, and Harlequin in an early Caravan promotional brochure; however, none of the ballets is attributed to specific choreographers, suggesting that Kirstein may have been hedging his bets.Footnote 33 Its contentious backstory aside, Rondo is notable as a choreographic credit for Hawkins one year earlier than what is generally regarded as his first ballet, the 1937 Show Piece (also created for the Caravan). Kirstein's advocacy for Rondo also demonstrates his early belief in the talent of Hawkins, who would ultimately achieve his greatest success not in ballet but in modern dance as the partner (and sometime husband) of Martha Graham, who first became personally and artistically enamored of the dancer in the wake of the Caravan's 1936 Bennington performances.Footnote 34
Following its Bennington debut, the Caravan stayed in the immediate vicinity for several performances in Vermont, performing on July 20 in Burlington, presented by the University of Vermont's Summer SessionFootnote 35, and the following day before a capacity audience in the gymnasium at Middlebury College, at the invitation of Professor André Morize's summer French program.Footnote 36 The Caravan would return to northern New England in mid-August, performing in Keene and Claremont, New Hampshire; Dorset, Manchester, and Woodstock, Vermont; and then after a considerable journey up the coast, Skowhegan, Maine (“Ballet Closes Tour” 1936; LK Diaries, August 29). John Martin reported that several of these engagements were part of a larger arrangement with a chain of movie theaters.Footnote 37 Kirstein's diary mentions this theater owner by name and reports a generous gesture on his part after a lightly attended performance at a movie theater in Keene: “Mr. Latchi the Greek proprietor of a string of 14 movie houses refused his percentage (some $10) because we'd made no complaints” (LK Diaries, August 29). Demetrius Latchis was in fact the name of the theater owner, a Greek immigrant whose name still adorns a theater complex in Brattleboro, and whose Claremont, New Hampshire, venue, where the Caravan performed in August, was called the Latchis Theatre.Footnote 38
If the Caravan was practical enough to accept gigs dancing in movie theaters—and well-behaved enough to endear itself to the owners—the group also made itself available to more exclusive clients. On two occasions it scheduled what amounted to command performances in summer enclaves of the East Coast elite. The above-mentioned performance in Manchester, Vermont, on August 18 was one such engagement, evidently not arranged by anyone as recently arrived to America as Mr. Latchis. The Caravan was instead the evening entertainment for a gala dinner in Manchester, reported only in a society column, which, true to convention, is composed almost wholly of the names of couples slated to attend the event and mentions only in passing the “ballet caravan” that was to perform (“Manchester Plans Ballet Caravan” 1936).Footnote 39
The Caravan received more extensive, albeit similarly nominal, coverage for a semi-private engagement in East Hampton, Long Island, on August 9. Mrs. Lorenzo E. Woodhouse was the hostess of the benefit performance, which was held in the gardens of the “playhouse” on her estate (see Photo 5).Footnote 40 No fewer than two additional social events were held in advance of the Caravan's East Hampton performance. First was a July 30 reception and tea “for the Southampton and East Hampton patrons' invitation committee for the Ballet Caravan” hosted by Mrs. Henry Austin Clark at her home, Four Acres (“Brothers to Honor” 1936; “Nancy Van Vleck” 1936). Over thirty women are listed as having attended this gathering, all of whom were members of the “patroness committee working for the success of the performance of the Ballet Caravan” (“T. H. Wrights” 1936).Footnote 41 The second advance event was a July 31 luncheon for “several Southampton members of the junior committee who will act as ushers at the performance of the Ballet Caravan,” hosted by Miss Elizabeth Clark (presumably Mrs. Clark's daughter) at the Beach Club (“Maureen V. Smith” 1936). What is more, the Caravan's performance held a prominent enough place on the summer social calendar that it merited mentioning amid the byzantine comings and goings of individuals not directly involved in the planning of the performance: “Mrs. John A. Topping of Greenwich, Conn., who is visiting Mrs. William A. Lockwood at Ivy Cottage, will be guest of honor at a luncheon to be given by Mrs. Harry L. Hamlin Sunday at the Hedges. The party will see ‘Ballet Caravan,’ at Mrs. Lorenzo E. Woodhouse's Playhouse later” (“East Hampton Planning” 1936).Footnote 42
Ballet Caravan performance in East Hampton, Long Island, 1936. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
Although the Caravan's East Hampton performance and its ancillary events are mentioned in over a dozen society notices, no details as to the program are mentioned, much less the names of any of the dancers, or Kirstein or Coudy. As was perhaps the case in Manchester, the Caravan was merely the entertainment du jour, not invited due to any special interest on the part of the hosts in their artistic agenda. Although Kirstein's diary does not explain how the engagement came about, it does capture its uninspiring atmosphere, describing Mrs. Woodhouse as “a dreary white woman who was dashed because I wouldn't let her play her Wurlitzer in the intermission” and the assembled audience as “cold and Republican” (August 13). Underscoring the off-the-books status of this engagement is its absence from John Martin's column.Footnote 43
However unsatisfying they may have been, these engagements demonstrate how the Caravan was both willing and able to operate in multiple spheres during its first experimental season. It benefited not just from Frances Hawkins's knowledge and expertise in the ways of modern dance and vaudeville, but also from the Kirstein family's standing among the East Coast establishment—the same kind of connections that had made possible the American Ballet's first performances at the estate of Frieda and Felix Warburg in White Plains, New York, in June 1934. Notably, these engagements are not mentioned in Kirstein's published accounts of the Caravan, not quite in keeping with the populist and politically leftist ethos that he would cultivate for the troupe in later seasons.
The Caravan's adaptability was also demonstrated by the first of its two extended engagements of the summer—an appearance in a weeklong production of Molière's The Would-Be Gentleman at the Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut, beginning on August 3.Footnote 44 This English-language production was produced by Theatre Guild co-founder Lawrence Langer and starred vaudeville star and “master pantomimist” Jimmy Savo in his first speaking role as M. Jourdain.Footnote 45 The Caravan was credited by name in advertisements for the play, a high-low admixture—Louis XIV meets vaudeville—that in retrospect was entirely in keeping with the eclecticism of its summer activities (see Photos 6 and 7). The engagement also served the Caravan's mission of providing choreographic experience for its dancers, since the troupe was responsible for four original incidental dance numbers. For music they turned to Lully's original comédie-ballet score, with Lew Christensen's Mozartian Encounter also adapted as an interpolated number (Martin Reference Martin1936c; Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936b). Of the original dances, Eugene Loring created the Dance of the Tailors and the Ballet of the Cooks, while Christensen was responsible for a ceremonial dance in the play's Turkish scene, in addition to Encounter (Martin Reference Martin1936c; Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936b). The fourth new number, the Ballet of the Peacock Among the Roosters, is attributed to Erick Hawkins—like the above-mentioned Rondo a choreographic credit one year earlier than his 1937 Show Piece (Martin Reference Martin1936c; Rhodes Reference Rhodes1936b). In the end, some of the company's efforts would be for naught. According to Kirstein's diary, Loring's ballets “looked neat” and were presumably given in their entirely, while only half of Hawkins's Peacock ballet made the cut, and only the last movement of Christensen's Encounter was ultimately included (August 7).Footnote 46
Posed photo from The Would-Be Gentleman, Westport, Connecticut, 1936. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
Posed photo from The Would-Be Gentleman, Westport, Connecticut, 1936. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
The troupe's second extended engagement of the summer was also its last—a week-long “dance festival” at the summer stock theater owned and operated by Walter Hartwig in Ogunquit, Maine (see Photos 8–10), beginning August 31 and closing on Labor Day, September 7 (“American Ballet Group” 1936; Martin Reference Martin1936e; “Summer Theatres” 1936a and 1936b). Unlike its weeklong appearance in Westport, this series of performances included all five works of its core repertoire in three different programs.Footnote 47 According to one account, it was “believed to be the first time in this country that a ballet company is playing a week's series from its own repertoire in the summer season” (“Ballet Closes Tour” 1936). Of its offerings at Ogunquit, Harlequin for President was evidently better received than it had been in the Hamptons, and even elicited vocal acclaim from the otherwise quiet theater-goers:
Ogunquit Playhouse, 1936. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
Members of Ballet Caravan, likely taken summer 1936 in Ogunquit, Maine. From the personal papers of Annabelle Lyon.
Ogunquit Playhouse Program for Ballet Caravan, 1936. Douglas Coudy Scrapbook, *MGZRS 00-1604, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Used with permission of the Ogunquit Playhouse.
The highlight of the evening was the end of the ballet called Harlequin for President, a satire on contemporary politics, which a few weeks ago aroused the indignation of certain conservatives in the audience on Long Island. In Ogunquit, where there is an equally conservative audience, the interpretation of the satire seemed a bit different, and there were shouts of “Bravo” from the front rows—the first time this season that the patrons have ever raised their voices during a production. (“Summer Theatres: Ogunquit Playhouse” 1936)
This same review claims that this was the first time that a ballet group had been presented on a summer theater program. Kirstein's diaries describe the audiences as “sparse but enthusiastic,” and that the weather was “cool and damp” (September 25). Kirstein also maintains that it was the Ogunquit performances that had occasioned the addition of The Soldier and the Gypsy to the company's ballets, since without a repertoire of five ballets they would not have been able to secure the engagement—a successful and satisfying end to what only two months earlier had appeared to be an uncertain summer of touring (LK Diaries, August 29).
The Caravan Continues, Fall 1936
Buoyed by its summertime success, the Caravan carried on into the fall, with several performances in New York City and in surrounding regions. In fact, on September 6—the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, while the Caravan was still performing in Maine—John Martin's column announced the troupe's most significant booking to date: the opening performances of the Young Men's Hebrew Association (YMHA) dance season, opening a season including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Anna Sokolow (Martin Reference Martin1936f). In its two performances, the group presented the five core works from its summer tour: on October 31, Promenade, The Soldier and the Gypsy, and Encounter, and on November 1, Encounter, Pocahontas, and Harlequin for President (see Photo 11).Footnote 48 Prior to this New York debut, on October 13 Kirstein and members of the Caravan presented a lecture-demonstration on “the development of the ballet” at the New School, the third event in a series termed “The Dance in the Social Scene” (Martin Reference Martin1936h; “Music Notes” 1936). These two engagements at key institutional homes of modern dance point to Kirstein's larger ambitions for the group's permanence and aesthetic independence. The Caravan also went back on the road to New England, performing on October 20 in Montpelier, Vermont, at the invitation of the town's Theatre Guild and two days later at Amherst College at the invitation of the campus group the Amherst Masquers,Footnote 49 in addition to appearing at Smith CollegeFootnote 50 and in Hartford and in Danbury, Connecticut.Footnote 51
YMHA Program for Ballet Caravan, 1936. *MGZB Caccialanza, Gisella (Programs), Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. Used with permission of the 92 Street Y.
Kirstein's decision to continue the Caravan's activities into the fall did not lend much credence to the claim that the troupe was merely a summer adjunct of the American Ballet. And indeed, despite the insistence on the Caravan's collaborative relationship with the American Ballet, there had been rumors of schism from the start, made all the more plausible given how quick Kirstein had been to assert the cordial relations between the two entities. John Martin's initial report on the Caravan quoted the organizers as maintaining that the group is “neither a secession from nor a part of the American Ballet, but a collective arrangement of its members, and enjoying the good wishes of the directors of the American Ballet itself” (Martin Reference Martin1936a). “It represents a round dozen of the youngsters who have danced at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet this season,” reported Russell Rhodes in The Dancing Times, alluding more directly to contentious politics, “and emphasis is placed on the fact that there is a rift in the ranks of the ballet, but that the directors have wished this little group luck in their summer enterprise” (1936a). Economic necessity was also cited as a practical rationale for the existence of the group, promoted via the innocent cover story concocted by Frances Hawkins: “Its personnel consists of twelve young members of the American Ballet,” as Martin reported, “who were anxious to keep at work and earn a livelihood during the long interval when the parent organization was inactive” (Martin Reference Martin1936g). And in fact, the majority of the fall performances of the Caravan did not interfere with the American Ballet's duties at the Metropolitan Opera, whose 1936 season would not begin until December 21 (“Twenty-One New Singers” 1936). The Ballet's opera duties thus resumed at the start of December, meaning that Kirstein had to secure a special dispensation for only one of the Caravan's performances, on December 1 in Hartford, the troupe's final performance of 1936 (LK Diaries, October 12).
If the Caravan's schedule worked around the American Ballet's obligations at the Met, it did begin to assert a more independent status in the course of its summer tour and into the fall. A brochure prepared for the company later in this first season maintains explicitly that the Caravan, despite drawing its membership from the American Ballet, “is a separate entity and its entire repertory is newly composed by its own dancers.”Footnote 52Musical America in a November report termed it “a group of thirteen dancers from the American Ballet, but independent from the parent organization,” even as the headline of this same notice calls it a “unit” of the American Ballet (“Ballet Makes Debut” 1936). Most notably, Edwin Denby's review of its October performance at the YMHA refers to the group as the “American Ballet Caravan,” commonly regarded as the name invented by Kirstein for the South American tour of the combined remnants of the two companies in 1941 (“Ballet Makes Debut” 1936). That this amalgamation appears in association with the group from its earliest days, and would continue to be associated with the Caravan (especially after the collapse of the American Ballet in 1938), shows how the two branches of the organization remained more or less institutionally contiguous during this first year, two interdependent units of the larger Balanchine–Kirstein enterprise.
Kirstein's Blast at Ballet ascribes both nonchalance and intentionality to the formation of the Caravan and parrots Frances Hawkins's talking points to emphasize the interest of the dancers themselves in pursuing a new kind of ballet: “So I organized a small troupe of dancers from our own school, which had been incidentally very successful, and from among those of the American Ballet proper who were dominantly interested in classic ballet choreography applied to native themes” (Kirstein Reference Kirstein1938a, 41). Kirstein even posited larger ambitions for the group, calling it “in microcosm a permanent laboratory for classic dancing by, with and for Americans” (1938a, 42). As Kirstein's own diaries reveal, however, his decision to form the Caravan did not in fact arise purely from his own interests or those of the dancers. The Caravan was a venture thrust upon him by necessity—a response to a constellation of dire circumstances suddenly facing the American Ballet.
These challenges facing the American Ballet centered first and foremost on Balanchine's ongoing ill health. In July 1934, Balanchine had suffered a shocking seizure-like attack in Kirstein's presence, which was never definitively diagnosed and perhaps resulted from the lingering effects of tuberculosis (LK Diaries, July 12, 1934).Footnote 53 Balanchine's health was a continual source of consternation, not the least during the period leading up to the American Ballet's official company debut in March 1935 at the Adelphi Theater. In the months prior to the formation of the Caravan, Balanchine's condition took another turn for the worse. On May 25, 1936, Kirstein recorded that Balanchine was home sick for several days “with fever and a flare up in his lungs,” such that William Dollar had to oversee the Ballet's rehearsals at the Met, “rather sloppily though they seem to come out ok on the stage” (May 25, 27). Balanchine's health episode was severe enough, especially in light of previous incidents, that it sent Kirstein “into pitch of how to organize for activity without him,” and even prompted him “to think of what to do if Balanchine died: Loss of Met. Dispersal of the troupe” (May 27).
At the same time that Kirstein saw Balanchine's life in danger once again, the American Ballet's summer performance schedule was also looking bleak. Following its Adelphi debut in 1935, the company had been relatively active during the summer months, with performances at the Lewisohn Stadium in upper Manhattan, the Robin Hood Dell in Philadelphia, and a benefit performance in Westchester County. Prior to the summer of 1936, things were looking similarly promising, as the troupe had been tentatively slated to appear not just again at Lewisohn Stadium but also at Jones Beach for several weeks of performances. In late May, however, just as Balanchine was falling sick, this engagement fell through because the Lewisohn management insisted that the group not reprise its existing repertoire but rather present new work, which the company was not in a position to do (May 25). “The Stadium, Jones Beach etc all seem to be dubious for some reason or another,” Kirstein wrote in his diary, and was in ongoing discussions with Warburg about how to deal with this situation (May 25, 27). By May 28 the Lewisohn engagement was also out of the picture: “Stadium doesn't want us. Hence 3 w[ee]ks of work in July is out: rather depressing for the kids” (May 28).
This loss of work would not have been so devastating in and of itself had it not been for another related challenge, that is, Edward Warburg's increasing disinterest in the American Ballet. “The kids w[oul]d go and come back,” Kirstein noted after the July engagements fell through, “but I hate to let them go for the whole summer as I fear Warburg w[oul]d lose interest” (May 28). Warburg for his part was not just losing interest in the American Ballet, but was resistant to the idea of the Caravan and even cited trumped up legal concerns to delay the signing of Frances Hawkins's contract, which only made Kirstein's resolve stronger: “Warburg thinks up all sorts of possible horror for the Amer[ican] Bal[let] in the Caravan but in spite of him I shall continue even if it am[oun]ts to a break” (June 11). Kirstein soon after managed to get Warburg to admit that he wanted out of the Ballet, that his involvement amounted to “being screwed without pleasure,” and he only continued to remain involved out of a sense of guilt (June 24). Despite his ambivalence, Warburg remained with the company for the summer and into the following year, and only deepened his financial investment, acquiescing in August 1936 to Balanchine's request for a $5,000 Stravinsky commission for the coming season, which would result in the ballet Jeu de cartes (August 1).
Even if Kirstein was increasingly frustrated with Warburg and to a certain degree wanted the Caravan to himself, the troupe did not represent a definitive break with Balanchine. And even though Balanchine's bad health had been one of the precipitating events that had led to the creation of the Caravan, he was healthy enough to be consulted regularly about the Caravan's activities over the course of the summer. Only a week after Kirstein had been contemplating the choreographer's imminent death, Balanchine was again on the mend and wasn't “as sick as we feared. Mainly a question of rest” (LK Diaries, June 4). Soon after, Balanchine was back in the studio for the Caravan's initial rehearsals and, notably, advised Erick Hawkins not use Debussy but rather the sonatas of Weber for his new ballet (LK Diaries, June 5). Balanchine decamped the following day to Westport, Connecticut, to convalesce but would remain involved in the planning of the Caravan's season (LK Diaries, June 6). In mid-June, Kirstein and Coudy made a special trip to Westport to update him on the progress of the Caravan, in a meeting at which William Dollar was also present. Balanchine had “mental reservations” about the Caravan, specifically about whether “the boys can do choreography,” and was reserved in expressing this opinion owing to Dollar's presence (LK Diaries, June 17). At the end of June, Balanchine returned to the city to observe the progress of the Caravan's first three ballets. He apparently concurred with the growing concerns about Hawkins's Rondo, deeming it “too confused,” but like Kirstein saw greater potential and declared that, “in four years he would be excellent choreographer” (LK Diaries, June 25). Christensen's Encounter, by contrast, “had taste and brilliance and was complete,” and while he was not taken by Loring's Harlequin ballet, he thought it would be a popular success (June 25).
When the Caravan came to Westport for its appearance in The Would-Be Gentleman, Balanchine was again back in the mix, but still not fully recovered. On the one hand he was “full of necessity to have Stravinsky and Gershwin ballets and two months of rehearsals,” but at the same time declared himself too weak to sign a first edition of Noverre he had purchased as a gift for Kirstein (LK Diaries, July 28). Kirstein and Balanchine met on August 1 in Westport to discuss the future of the Ballet, and both were evidently at peace with Warburg's potential defection, in part because they agreed that “as soon as [he] has no responsibility will give twice as much cash” (LK Diaries, August 1). As he had done earlier in the summer, Balanchine came to rehearsal and provided a good deal of “useful criticism” about the incidental dances for the play and “was very nice with the kids” (LK Diaries, August 7). Kirstein still had concerns about his health, however: “Doesn't seem terribly well. He coughs and is not a dry atmosphere here” (August 7). These lingering worries lend some credence to Kirstein's claim to have recruited multiple choreographers for the Caravan so as not to depend entirely on one figure, albeit for practical and not necessarily artistic reasons.
Balanchine's involvement, however sporadic, gives lie to the status of the Caravan as an exclusively Kirstein-driven vehicle and entirely separate from the American Ballet. While the Caravan's dances were still in preparation, moreover, Kirstein readily noted the influence of Balanchine: “Choreography will continue straight through from George Bal. but it must have this chance” (LK Diaries, June 11). This influence was obvious not just to Kirstein but to some critics, showing how also with respect to its initial choreographic style the Caravan remained closely aligned with its parent organization. A review of the Caravan's Hartford performances captures the Balanchine ethos that pervaded the repertoire:
As for the choreography itself, no one is going to deny that it shows the impress of the troupe real maitre, George Balanchine. It is not to be otherwise expected. It has much of his free style, in which the classic restraint is rather unlaced, but in which the classic manner and form is always there. It has his penchant for continual movement, particularly of the ensemble as a whole; his sense of build-up and climax; his partiality for the athletic. The neo-Romantic touch is continually there, in the spirit of Promenade especially. (“Ballets Are Brilliantly Performed” 1936)
Not only had the dancers internalized their master's technique, however, they had also gleaned the better qualities of his style, eschewing his more experimental inclinations. As one critic noted, approvingly, their choreography “happily does not employ the grotesqueries to which Balanchine has been too often drawn” (“Ballets Are Brilliantly Performed” 1936).
The Caravan and the American Ballet
Ballet Caravan has often been posited as the most explicitly American of the several antecedent companies of the New York City Ballet. “At first our ideas were disjointed and vague,” as Caravan dancer Ruthanna Boris recalled, “but gradually they connected themselves and emerged as a beautiful, possible dream—a dream of American ballet dancers dancing America!” (Boris Reference Boris1937), and in reviews of its debut season, Edwin Denby called the troupe “pleasantly un-Russian” (1936, 52). Such enthusiasm aside, it is evident that there was very little that was explicitly American about Caravan's first season, aside from the nationality of its dancers, choreographers, and designers. This should not be regarded as a failure of the organization, for Kirstein's belief in an American ballet company was rooted in the eminent adaptability of the danse d'ecole in new contexts. And to be sure, the makeshift quality and hodgepodge venues of the Caravan's first tour certainly distinguished it from its more established European forebears and its contemporary competitors, most notably de Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo.
Nevertheless, it is remarkable to what extent the repertory of the Caravan's first season remained within the aesthetic comfort zone of the Franco-Russian tradition consolidated and cultivated by Diaghilev and his followers. Even as Kirstein's Caravan sought to shed the pejorative “ballets américains” label that had dogged the American Ballet since its first performances, it was for all intents and purposes still heavily indebted to the aesthetics of the “Russianballet,” for which the Caravan was supposed to be the antidote, as Kirstein maintained in Blast at Ballet. Its ballets featured repurposed classical music by Scarlatti, Mozart, Ravel, and de Falla, and were based on material from the French Revolution to Carmen. Despite Kirstein's claim of pursuing stripped-down production values, each of the Caravan's ballets included an explicit credit for costumes, whether for the actual designer or the artist who had inspired them, in keeping with Diaghilevian practice, and all works were in the one-act format long codified by the Ballets Russes. The earliest days of the Caravan confirm in a very direct way Nancy Reynolds's observation that Kirstein quite consciously modeled his aesthetics and career as an impresario on the great Diaghilev (Reynolds Reference Reynolds, Lynn, Nancy and Norman1999). In another respect, Kirstein's mentor-like (and sometimes erotic) relationships with the Caravan's young and exclusively male choreographers should similarly be understood as an implicit if not explicit emulation of Diaghilev.
Diaghilev aside, the Caravan's repertoire in its first year was not appreciably different from the initial offerings of the American Ballet, and certainly not much more American, except in its being choreographed, danced, and designed by Americans. Following the American Ballet's example, the Caravan presented only one work with an explicitly American subject and a newly commissioned score by an American composer, Christensen and Carter's Pocahontas—the same way that the collegiate satire Alma Mater had been the American Ballet's only native calling card. Loring's Harlequin, with its American political subject matter, only partially passes muster on this account, given its commedia dell'arte aesthetic and score by Scarlatti. It might seem odd that the Caravan reproduced the very aesthetic that it was trying to break free from, virtually replicating the Europhile model of its parent organization. But in light of the internal politics discussed above, however, in which the Caravan was not an independently conceived organization but rather an insurance policy designed to keep the American Ballet from collapsing, this convergence of style is perhaps less surprising.
If in its repertoire the Caravan had produced an aesthetic alignment with the American Ballet, in other respects the troupe emerged as a more successful foil to its parent organization, especially in the modest scale of its productions values. Margaret Lloyd of the Christian Science Monitor explicitly praised the Caravan as a more satisfying kind of American ballet than had been attempted by the first seasons of the American Ballet. Although both organizations excelled in the youthful exuberance of their performers, it was the Caravan that had leveraged its talents and acknowledged its limitations appropriately, and had more fully lived up to the name of its parent organization:
The American Ballet, having only youth and vivacity to work on and being pushed too far ahead of its capacities, has not yet risen adequately to its assignment. Having for chief choreographer the Russian, Georges Balanchine, and being mainly of American constituency, it was unable to blend the opposing psychologies. But that was only one trouble. The larger difficulty lay in their being rushed to a task they were not ready for.
The Ballet Caravan was organized last summer soon after the close of the opera season, for the purposes of developing a truly American ballet, giving the young dancers a chance to compose for themselves and an opportunity to work together in that cooperative spirit which makes for unity. … During [the summer season] they have built up a repertoire, strengthened their resources, while earning their own way, and probably enlarged their visions for the future. (Lloyd Reference Lloyd1936a)
Like Lloyd, Denby similarly praised the naïve and genuinely American ethos of the Caravan, whose charm and commitment compensated for any apparent faults in technique or execution:
There is an American freshness and an American modesty that is charming. There may be as yet the usual faults of beginners—lyricism, too timid a dramatic attack, too little concentration choreographically, and occasionally by some dancers more projection than the moment warrants. But the important thing is that young talents get a chance and that the enterprise as a whole is lively and real and part of us. (Denby Reference Denby1936)
Kirstein in Blast at Ballet downplayed the successes of the Caravan's first summer tour, calling it “more of a hard vacation than work, a feeling-out of our future” and that it was “of not much interest except to the dancers and myself” (1938a, 42). But somewhat ironically, the Caravan in fact represented the best and most consistently successful offerings of the Balanchine–Kirstein enterprise as a whole. By not attempting to emulate the large-scale, high-budget, cross-country touring of the de Basil company—as the American Ballet had unsuccessfully tried the previous fall—the Caravan became something of a sleeper hit. Despite the congruence of their aesthetics, the different institutional footprints of the American Ballet and its Caravan are striking. The American Ballet had made its debut in a Broadway theater and subsequently aligned itself with the Metropolitan Opera, one of America's most establishment performing arts organizations, and one in which dance was treated as subordinate. The Caravan, by contrast, was more independent and adaptable, and had improvised an organizational model out of a variety of institutional resources in a structure that, if somewhat makeshift and fragile, placed dance, more specifically original choreography, in the foreground. Its tour boasted several innovations with respect to the institutional positioning of ballet performance in the existing cultural infrastructure, performing in venues previously not hospitable to ballet, whether city halls or summer stock theaters.
The Caravan's institutional models were indeed not entirely new, having been employed successfully by Pavlova and numerous modern dance companies. But John Martin saw the Caravan's innovations as something distinctive and hailed the company's summer season as an example that others should emulate to fill the otherwise fallow months of the summer. Given Martin's previous antipathy toward the American Ballet more generally and bad blood with Kirstein in particular, his unqualified praise is worth quoting at length:
Starting out the middle of July with very little advance preparation, the company has managed to play twenty-five performances in seven weeks. This seems to constitute a record of sorts, for available statistics reveal no other instance of a Summer tour of anything like so extended a character by any company of dancers hereabouts. …
That such a courageous venture should succeed is excellent on its own account, but its principal value lies rather in the possibilities which it has uncovered for the field at large. If so much can be done by an unknown company and a booking method known technically as “wildcatting,” it becomes at once apparent that there is an extensive Summer territory for dancing to be opened up, and profitably, if the matter is approached in a more formal matter. It would seem to be a matter well worth looking into. (Martin Reference Martin1936g)
With his experiment thus deemed a success, Kirstein was eager to keep the Caravan going. Even before the 1936 summer tour had concluded, he was busy brainstorming ideas and setting his own goals for the group's 1937 season. During the Maine engagement, he wrote in his diary that he saw the first season the “foundation for 8 weeks of solid work next summer and 2 months in the fall” (August 29). The coastal atmosphere of Ogunquit—“with the rollers of the Atlantic dashing in all along the miles of beach” as Kirstein later recounted (Reference Kirstein1938b, 56)—inspired him to begin planning one of the Caravan's ballets for the coming season, Yankee Clipper (August 29). And if the American Ballet and Metropolitan Opera still remained part of Kirstein's overall strategy, by the end of 1936 he was beginning to regard the Caravan as his primary professional affiliation. In correspondence from Kirstein to his father, letters sent through October appear on letterhead for the School of American Ballet, on which he was listed with the catch-all title of “Treasurer-Secretary.” Beginning with a letter dated November 4, Kirstein's preferred writing stock would be letterhead for Ballet Caravan, of which he was the “Director.”Footnote 54 Although it had begun as a practical, perhaps short-term response solution to long-term challenges facing the American Ballet, the would-be summer Caravan was here to stay.
