A Mordkin offshoot, two founders and a three-week debut, 1937–1940.

American Ballet Theatre began under a shorter name. English Wikipedia says the company was founded in 1939 by Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant, who set out to build “a large scale company with an eclectic repertory”, and that the pair and a small group from the Mordkin Ballet formed Ballet Theatre. In an online exhibition on Google Arts & Culture, the company says the Mordkin Ballet was founded in 1937 by Mikhail Mordkin, a dancer from the Imperial Moscow Ballet who had partnered Anna Pavlova, and describes it as the precursor of Ballet Theatre.

The aim was stated from the start. The company history that PBS published for the series American Masters on 22 April 2015 says that when the company was launched in the autumn of 1939, the plan was to build a repertoire of established ballets of the past and to encourage new works by young choreographers wherever they might be found.

The curtain went up on 11 January 1940. The company’s exhibition says the opening work at New York’s Center Theatre in Rockefeller Center was Michel Fokine’s Les Sylphides, danced by a cast that included Anton Dolin, Nana Gollner and Lucia Chase herself. The same night brought Mordkin’s Voices of Spring; Giselle, staged by Dolin after Jean Coralli, followed on 12 January with Annabelle Lyon and Dolin in the leading roles; Fokine’s Carnaval and Adolph Bolm’s new Peter and the Wolf came on 13 January; and Antony Tudor’s Jardin aux Lilas on 15 January. The company says the three-week debut presented eighteen ballets by eleven choreographers, and that the run could not be extended because Disney’s Pinocchio was already booked into the theatre.

English Wikipedia lists Tudor as resident choreographer from 1940 to 1950, and the company’s exhibition says he came to be called its “artistic conscience”.

Co-directors, a new name in 1957 and a spring home at the Met.

The leadership settled in 1945. English Wikipedia says the stage designer Oliver Smith joined that year and became co-director with Chase, and both the PBS history and Dance Magazine give their joint direction as 1945 to 1980. The PBS history says the company toured continental Europe in 1950. In 1957, English Wikipedia says, Ballet Theatre changed its name to American Ballet Theatre, the name it still uses, usually shortened to ABT.

A permanent New York stage came later. English Wikipedia says that in 1977 the company began its spring season at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, which became its official venue, and that autumn seasons were held at New York City Center before moving to the David H. Koch Theater, the house shared with New York City Ballet.

The directors’ list is short. Mikhail Baryshnikov became artistic director in 1980, succeeding Chase and Smith. English Wikipedia gives 1989 for the handover to Jane Hermann and Oliver Smith; the PBS history gives 1990, and Dance Magazine dates Hermann’s shared leadership 1990 to 1992. The PBS history says former principal dancer Kevin McKenzie was appointed in October 1992. English Wikipedia says McKenzie established the associate school, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, in 2004, and appointed Alexei Ratmansky as artist in residence in January 2009, a post he held until June 2023.

Dance Magazine reported on 9 May 2022, in a piece by Claudia Bauer, that ABT had named former principal dancer Susan Jaffe its next artistic director, effective December 2022, as McKenzie retired after his thirtieth season in charge. The magazine said Jaffe had been hired into the corps de ballet by Baryshnikov in 1980 and promoted to principal three years later, and had led Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre since July 2020. The Associated Press, reporting the same day, said she left the stage in 2002 and had served eight years as dean of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.

A national title, a photographers’ archive and a repertoire company’s name.

A ballet or dance company rarely has a product to put on a shelf, so its visual identity is carried mostly by people in motion. Each season is announced with a set of images, usually dancer photography shot in a studio or on location months before the productions open, and those pictures travel onto brochures, banners, bus sides, programme covers and social posts. The logo tends to sit quietly in a corner while the photograph does the work. Repertory posters add a second layer: a classic full-length ballet may keep a recognisable image for years, while new commissions and mixed bills get their own typography and colour, so a company has to decide how far each title can drift from the house style before it stops looking like part of the same family.

The name on the poster is not always the name on the building. Many companies perform in theatres they do not own, and many venues present companies they do not employ, so the two identities have to share space on the same tickets, signs and web pages without one swallowing the other. Touring sharpens the problem, because a company may appear in a different city each week under a local theatre’s branding, and its mark has to read clearly at small sizes beside someone else’s. Schools, youth companies, community classes and digital channels add further sub-brands, often given their own wordmark or colour so that a parent booking a class and a regular buying a season ticket can each find their way through the same system.

From Ballet Theatre to America’s National Ballet Company.

The name is the core of the identity. The PBS history says that on 27 April 2006, by an act of Congress, American Ballet Theatre became America’s National Ballet Company, printing the phrase with a registered-trademark sign. English Wikipedia describes the same 2006 recognition and notes that ABT is the parent company of the school, whose Studio Company was formerly known as ABT II.

The early image of the company was made by photographers rather than by a design office. The 1940 exhibition the company assembled on Google Arts & Culture credits its pictures of the debut season to André Kertész, who photographed Les Sylphides and Peter and the Wolf, and to Fred Fehl, Maurice Seymour, Walter Garrison and Louis Melançon, and it opens with the printed programme for the 1940 debut of Ballet Theatre.

The anniversaries have been marked on screen. PBS says the American Masters film American Ballet Theatre: A History, directed by Ric Burns for the company’s 75th anniversary, premiered on 15 May 2015, with filming that began in 2006 and included rehearsals at the company’s New York studios and performances in Paris and Havana. English Wikipedia also lists Frederick Wiseman’s 1995 documentary Ballet and the 1972 film A Dancer’s Life about the company.

For a design guide, American Ballet Theatre shows a company whose identity is a name and a place: Ballet Theatre opening at the Center Theatre in 1940, the word American added in 1957, and a spring season at the Met since 1977. Compare the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center guides. For this guide we use sylph white, lilac garden, curtain crimson and midnight rehearsal with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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