The man who Americanized ballet behind the scenes

THE WORLDS OF LINCOLN KIRSTEIN

By Martin Duberman

Knopf, $37.50, 736 pages, illus.

REVIEWED BY STEPHEN GOODE

Lincoln Kirstein isn’t a name you’re likely to know unless you are a fan of classical ballet, or

someone interested in the arts in general who happened to live in New York City in the 20th century. But if you’re either of those (or both), Kirstein’s name will be instantly recognizable, though you may have some trouble defining precisely what it was that made Kirstein famous.

That’s understandable because Kirstein, who died in 1996 at the age of 88, was very often the powerful (but less public) force behind artists with names far better known than his, but who, without his efforts, would very likely never have become so widely known and admired.

Kirstein, for instance, was instrumental in bringing the great Russian choreographer George Balanchine from Europe to America in the 1930s, where Balanchine blossomed not only as a teacher and choreographer of classical ballet and a dancer, but also as a widely respected choreographer of Broadway shows and Hollywood films.

And most who know ballet’s history in this country believe that without Kirstein’s unremitting hard work and personal sacrifice through good times and bad, the American School of Ballet would never have become the great institution it is, nor would it have exerted the enormous influence on dance in America that it has.

The list goes on. Kirstein played important roles in the development of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and in the creation of Lincoln Center and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. He helped further the careers of artists he admired such as photographer Walker Evans and painter Honore Sharrer.

And he was a published poet who wrote monographs on the sculptor Elie Nadelman and the painters Paul Cadmus and Pavel Tchelitchev, as well as several very good books on dance that remain essential works.

Kirstein knew a host of the movers and shakers of his time, including people as various as politician Nelson Rockefeller, the poet Wystan Auden, novelist E.M. Forster, painter Andrew Wyeth, and many, many others whose names remain well known.

Kirstein’s was a rich life full of magnificent material for a biographer, and Martin Duberman in his new and very long and well-illustrated book, “The Many Lives of Lincoln Kirstein,” makes good use of it, at least most of the time.

Mr. Duberman, professor emeritus of history at City University of New York, does very well indeed on the first half of Kirstein’s long life. The future balletomane’s father, Louis, never went beyond grade school but rose to become an executive at Filene’s, the Boston department store, a close friend of Supreme Court associate justice Felix Frankfurter and an adviser to Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

His mother, Rose Stein, was the daughter of a successful Rochester, N.Y., businessman who dealt in men’s clothing. Lincoln Kirstein was born in Rochester in 1907 and educated at Berkshire School and Harvard.

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