American Ballet Theatre
ballet company
American Ballet Theatre (ABT) is a classical ballet company based in New York City, founded in 1939 by Lucia Chase and Richard Pleasant. Through 2019, it had an annual eight-week season at the Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center) in the spring and a shorter season at the David H. Koch Theater in the fall; the company tours around the world the rest of the year. The company was scheduled to have a 5-week spring season at the MET preceded by a 2-week season at the Koch Theater beginning in 2020. ABT is the parent company of the American Ballet Theatre Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and was recognized as "America's National Ballet Company" in 2006 by the United States Congress.
History
In 1939 Pleasant and Chase committed to the creation of "a large scale company with an eclectic repertory". The pair and a small group from Mordkin Ballet formed Ballet Theatre. Their new company's first performance was on 11 January 1940. Chase began developing the company's repertoire of well-known full-length ballets, as well as original works, amidst financial issues. In 1945 Oliver Smith joined Ballet Theatre and became co-director with Chase.
In 1957 the company changed its name to American Ballet Theatre.
“American Ballet Theatre” enters the record as ballet company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what American, Ballet and Theatre can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“American Ballet Theatre” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, American, Ballet and Theatre provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q463443. The first chronological checks are 1939, 2019, 2020 and 2006.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “American Ballet Theatre” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.