James Steichen grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma and attended the University of Virginia and University of Chicago before completing a PhD in musicology from Princeton University. Prior to his doctoral studies he worked for five years in the development office at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and he currently serves as Director of Individual Gifts at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.

Named a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

"Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise does exactly what an excellent, archivally rooted book should: it invites new connections, opens avenues for interpretation, and raises questions to be taken up elsewhere." -- Sophie Benn, Journal of the Society for American Music

"...a richly researched and gracefully written book on the tangled origins of the New York City Ballet and its associated School of American Ballet." -- Modernism/modernity

"Steichen's book not only provides new insight into Balanchine but also provokes readers to think more critically about the role of institutions and the contingencies of history in shaping artistic legacies." -- Theatre Survey

"...the writing style is welcoming and the research is excellent. Summing up: Highly Recommended" -- CHOICE

"Of all the performing arts, dance may be the most difficult to reconstruct. This is true, too, for the metaphorical dance between Kirstein and Balanchine, requiring the artful stitching together of memoirs, diaries, correspondence, newspaper reviews and occasional photographs. Steichen connects the dots, reads between the lines and offers up what should become the standard account of the complex personal and institutional dynamics that drove the Balanchine-Kirstein enterprise." -- Twentieth-Century Music

"...beautifully written, and full of well-researched information and perceptive insights." -- Dance Chronicle

"Well-written and deeply researched, Balanchine and Kirstein's American Enterprise challenges at almost every turn received wisdom about Balanchine's first decade in the United States and the nature of his relationship with Lincoln Kirstein. It is the first book focused on Kirstein's ballet activities to make full use of his diaries and letters, to comb the contemporary press, to view Balanchine's popular enterprises in tandem with his 'high art' ones, and to consider those enterprises, along with Kirstein's, within the broader context of ballet in the 1930s." -- Lynn Garafola, Professor Emerita of Dance, Barnard College

"This book dramatically widens our understanding of the birth of American-style ballet in the 1930s, by looking equally at the usual hero, Balanchine, and at his younger partner and fellow-dreamer, Lincoln Kirstein. Steichen's meticulous examination of the two men's often self-contradictory 'enterprise' offers the pleasures of great scholarship - freshness, transparency, intelligence - coupled with exhilarating prose." -- Elizabeth Kendall, author of Balanchine & the Lost Muse: Revolution & the Making of a Choreographer