May 4
Born Today:
Lincoln Kirstein
We have impresario and philanthropist Lincoln Kirstein (1907-1996) to thank for the New York City Ballet. After seeing the ballet Apollo (1928) by George Balanchine (1904-1983), Kirstein was determined to entice Balanchine to settle in the United States and start a professional ballet company on the East Coast. In 1933, they established the School of American Ballet and the following year, Balanchine debuted his first American piece, Serenade (1934). True to his word, Kirstein supported Balanchine in founding a school first, and the founding of the company followed in 1946, christened NYCB in 1948. Kirstein remained the general director of NYCB until 1989.
Also Born Today: Norwegian ballet dancer/choreographer Jorunn Kirkenær (1926-2021) performed in the 1940s and 1950s and founded a school in 1966. Film star Audrey Hepburn (1929-1993) studied ballet both before and after WWII, but severe malnutrition from the war damaged her ability to pursue dancing professionally. She turned instead to acting, starring in Gigi (1951) on Broadway, and the movie Roman Holiday (1953), her breakout film. Over the next decade, she danced in musicals Funny Face (1957) with Fred Astaire (1899-1987), and My Fair Lady (1964). Spanish flamenco dancer Carmen Salazar Vargas, known as La Camboria (1931-2021) toured Europe and befriended writer Agatha Christie. Vargas died from COVID in 2021.
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Movies: The Barkleys of Broadway released in 1949, Daddy Long Legs released in 1955, on Audrey Hepburn’s birthday.