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Harvey Lichtenstein, 2nd from right, dancing with Bennington College Dance Group in 1953. Photo: Lloyd Studio |
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Program from Feb 16, 1955 BAM performance by Mary Anthony and Company, including Harvey Lichtenstein |
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Harvey at BAM in 1967 |
He was awarded a scholarship to Bennington College, where he majored in dance while studying literature as well. Back in New York, he danced with the New York City Opera corps de ballet. He then worked in fundraising at Brandeis University, where he continued dancing, setting and rehearsing Maslow’s pieces and studying dance.
Family responsibilities led him to stop dancing and pursue arts administration to set him on a path which would eventually lead him to BAM. He received a Ford Foundation fellowship in arts administration at New York City Ballet in the company’s first year at Lincoln Center. He gained approval from impresario Lincoln Kirstein for his then-novel idea for a ticket subscription package. As Lichtenstein said in his oral history, “... working next to someone like Balanchine, with Jerome Robbins... it was clear to me that this was really what I wanted to do. This really stoked my passion and really charged me up. Plus the fact that I had a broad interest in music and painting, and then I began to get involved in theater. It was clear that this was where my path lay.”
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Harvey Lichtenstein. Photo: Catherine Noren |
“But when I spoke to Morton Baum, who was chairman of both the City Opera and the City Ballet companies, I told him that I was being offered this job and I was prepared to accept it, and he said to me—he said two things. He said, “First of all,” he said, “you know, Harvey, those of us who have been involved in the cultural life of the city”—which he had been; he and Neubold Morris had founded City Center, and they were deeply involved in the cultural life of the city. And he said, “We have been looking at the Brooklyn Academy of Music for years, and really have come to the conclusion that nothing can be done there. It’s a lost cause. It’s finished.” And I said, “Well, I mean, you know a lot more about it than I do, and that may indeed be true, but nobody else is offering me a theater to run, and I really would like to give it a try.”
—Sharon Lehner and Susan Yung
Such a nice read.
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