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Lincoln Kirstein Quotes

The domain of the ballet dancer is not earth but air.

The domain of the ballet dancer is not earth but air.

Lincoln Kirstein
Air, Dancer, Ballet

In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.

Lincoln Kirstein
Independent, Expression, Order
Lincoln Kirstein (1952). “The Classic Ballet, Basic Technique and Terminology”

While photography to Cartier-Bresson is constantly an intuitive process, it is never purely instinctive. It is founded on continuous intellection, on ceaseless consideration during all moments previous to, or preparatory for, the pressing. It does not only operate in the blinding flash of a moment seized; it works all the time. The snatched picture merely cuts across the vein of observable incident or accident which is always beating, whether or not the fingers actually press.

Lincoln Kirstein
Photography, Cutting, Doe

The candid camera is the greatest liar in the photographic family.... It is anarchic, naïve, and superficial.

Lincoln Kirstein
Liars, Candid Camera, Cameras
Lincoln Kirstein (2012). “Walker Evans: American Photographs: Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Edition”, The Museum of Modern Art

Transplanting the ballet to the United States is like trying to raise a palm tree in Dakota.

Lincoln Kirstein
Inspirational, Tree, Ballet

If one had to define one essential gift with which a dancer needs to be endowed, there might be a rush of answers. A beautiful body, grace of line, graciousness of spirit, joy in the work, ability to please, unswerving integrity, relentless ambition towards some abstract perfection. Certainly all these factors determine a dancer's character, and every element exists in some combination within the performing artist's presence.

Lincoln Kirstein
Beautiful, Dance, Integrity

Dance design is not simply one element; it is that without which ballet cannot exist. As aria is to opera, words to poetry, color to painting, so sequence in steps - their syntax, idiom, vocabulary - are the stuff of stage dancing.

Lincoln Kirstein
Dance, Vocabulary, Color
Lincoln Kirstein (1970). “Four Centuries of Ballet: Fifty Masterworks”, p.5, Courier Corporation

She was chronologically in luck. She corresponded to necessity.

Lincoln Kirstein
Luck

Ballet dancers are a self-chosen elite. To survive and surmount years of disciplinary preparation and seasons of even more arduous performance requires rigid determination and almost mindless self-abnegation. One other factor is difficult to predetermine: without a certain admixture of hysteria - sometimes masking as self-obsession, sometimes even counterfeiting incipient madness - performers, at once acrobats, artists, and animals, make little public impression.

Lincoln Kirstein
Dance, Determination, Artist
Lincoln Kirstein (1970). “Four Centuries of Ballet: Fifty Masterworks”, p.10, Courier Corporation

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