hine and Vladimir Dimitriev to come to America in order to open a ballet school in Hartford, Conn., far away from the enticements of Broadway. Since the stage at the Hartford Museum was too small for ballet performances Balanchine refused the offer. Kirstein searched the island of Manhattan until he found an appropriate place. The School of American Ballet (SAB) opened at 59th Street and Madison Avenue on January 1, 1934. At first there were only adult students, and the school operated in conjunction with Catherine and Dorothy Littlefield, who already had a company in Philadelphia and had been on a European tour. Dorothy taught at SAB. Harold and Lew Christensen were among the students.During evening classes at SAB, Balanchine, in order to teach performance skills, choreographed an abstract ballet upon his students using Tchiaikowsky's Serenade for Strings; called Serenade; this was his first ballet for American dancers. At the request of Edward Warburg's father, it was first performed in 1934 on the lawn of the Warburg estate in Connecticut. A few months later the group of "four" formed a small company called The American Ballet. It was for this company that Balanchine used, for the first time, an American theme in his ballet Alma Mater.In 1935 The American Ballet became the ballet company of the Metropolitan Opera Co., but as with the Maryinsky Opera, Balanchine had problems with the management. His dances in Carmen overshadowed the singers. He was able to persuade the Metropolitan to have his dancers do a Stravinsky Festival in 1937, for which he choreographed Card Game. To keep the dancers employed during the summer, Ballet Caravan was created. Many of the young dancers, including Lew Christensen, William Dollar, Eugene Loring, and Erick Hawkins, had a chance to choreograph for this company. In the spring of 1941 Ballet Caravan and the American Ballet joined forces to tour Latin America under the sponsorship of the State Departmen...
