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PARTISAN REVIEW
Clearly, Kirstein takes a very dim view of the idea that art is es–
sentially a matter of "self-expression." His models and mentors are
(of course) Balanchine and Stravinsky, those exemplary "Neoclas–
sicists" who reshape older traditions in modernist terms, rather than
attempting to reinvent the choreographic wheel. The very notion
that art might emerge wholly from "within" the artist strikes them–
Kirstein suggests - as a form of blasphemy:
[Balanchine and Stravinsky] represent a non-romantic type of
twentieth century "maker" (rather than "creator") . They use (the
word) "creation" sparingly in regard to their own work, agreeing
that once the term referred only to One before whom there was
nothing but an undifferentiated void, and after whom every–
thing was successive rediscovery or adaptation . We speak loosely
of a new dress as a "creation" or attend classes in "creative"
writing; these strike them as heresies as undignified as they are
unlucky.
But in Kirstein's view this is precisely the heresy of modern
dance ; the choregrapher "competes" with God, attempting to create
an utterly new vocabulary of movement. The limitations of the
modern dancer are those that beset any artist who refuses to ac–
quaint himself with - or avail himself of-the cumulative resources
of tradition . By contrast, Kirstein suggests that "ballet's vocabulary
depends on muscular and nervous control deriving from four cen–
turies' research in a logic combining gross anatomy, plane geometry,
and musical counterpoint." And the resulting artwork draws upon a
collective wisdom that transcends the limitations of individual "cre–
ativity."
This may sound like a purely aesthetic argument, but it is, in
fact , ethical as well; for Kirstein's insistence that the choreographer
collaborate with the objective, inherited resources of tradition also
helps promote what he calls "the conquest of untidy egotism." And
the modern dance choreographer who is determined to go it alone,
to forsake these inherited riches, is accused of being (at least im–
plicitly) antisocial, insofar as he is presumably either unable or un–
willing to create within the shared, impersonal, inherited conven–
tions of classical ballet. Indeed, this recalls Rayner Heppenstall's
argument that "Isadora Duncan's objections to ballet are pattern–
objections for nearly all the modern world ." It also follows that the
privileged form of early modern dance was the
solo,
whereas classical
