Professor Nicholas Jenkins: I think if you were going to lay out the major mountain peaks of Lincoln's achievements, you would look at this thing first that was at the very center of his life, which was the classical ballet.
Curator, Samantha Friedman: In 1933, Kirstein invited the renowned Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine to join him in America to help him establish a uniquely American ballet.
Professor Jenkins: And together he and Balanchine set up a company and a school, what has now become the New York City Ballet and the School of American Ballet.
They never had a contract in all the decades that they worked together, because they were almost a single two-person unit. Even if they weren't especially close as friends or companions, they had this deep investment in this art that they both believed in. Those companies that they started together went through some very, very hard times. But Lincoln was always thinking about how to make things possible in a way that probably to a lot of people at the time seemed impossible.