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Making Ballet 1
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Making Ballet 1 provides a choreographic analysis of the ballet Billy the Kid, produced by Ballet Caravan in 1938 with choreography by Eugene Loring, music by Aaron Copland, design by Jared French, and libretto by Lincoln Kirstein. This analysis challenges previous readings of the ballet as patriotic or conservative Americana. Instead, it places Billy the Kid within the internationalism and antifascism of the cultural wing of the Popular Front, in which its creative team was deeply enmeshed. Given those origins, the ballet exemplifies the cultural front’s initiative to critique the nation’s past and re-imagine its future. Drawing on archival sources and movement analysis, this interchapter argues that Billy the Kid was an attempt to infuse American ballet with international modernist theories of how to intensify the social relevance of the theatre.
Title: Making Ballet 1
Description:
Making Ballet 1 provides a choreographic analysis of the ballet Billy the Kid, produced by Ballet Caravan in 1938 with choreography by Eugene Loring, music by Aaron Copland, design by Jared French, and libretto by Lincoln Kirstein.
This analysis challenges previous readings of the ballet as patriotic or conservative Americana.
Instead, it places Billy the Kid within the internationalism and antifascism of the cultural wing of the Popular Front, in which its creative team was deeply enmeshed.
Given those origins, the ballet exemplifies the cultural front’s initiative to critique the nation’s past and re-imagine its future.
Drawing on archival sources and movement analysis, this interchapter argues that Billy the Kid was an attempt to infuse American ballet with international modernist theories of how to intensify the social relevance of the theatre.
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