"For My Brother: A True Story By Jose Martinez Berlanga" 1943 KIRSTEIN, Lincoln

KIRSTEIN, Lincoln

[189] pp.

The Hogarth Press

1943

7 1/2" x 5 1/4"

Jacket is by the theatre designer William Chappell, a close friend of Edward Burra.

Original publisher's yellow cloth, 2000 copies were printed. It is known that most copies of the book, stored in a warehouse, were destroyed in a Nazi air raid. Woolmer 503.

José “Pete” Martinez-Berlanga (March 13, 1913 - January 30, 1997) was a male dancer with whom Lincoln Kirstein maintained a liaison until his marriage. Martinez was from Los Angeles, where he had received his early dance training, and had entered the School of American Ballet as soon as he came to New York. Kirstein and he lived together, and when Lincoln Kirstein married Fidelma Cadmus in 1941, she moved into their apartment with them temporarily. Robert McVoy was a fellow dancer of Pete Martinez in Lincoln Kirstein’s company. Theodore "Ted" Starkowski was George Platt Lynes's lover. Mel Fillini was a Broadway actor. Ralph McWilliams was the new “addition” to the circle of friends after Pete Martinez went away to Norfolk searching for being enlisted.

José Martinez, who died in 1997, less than a year after Lincoln Kirstein, was a droll and witty young man of Mexican origin. Those who knew the two men in the 1930s said he was capable of endlessly amusing his lover, and that of all the men in his life, Martinez was the man that Kirstein most likely loved the most. Kirstein loved gossip and other men’s tales of their sexual exploits, and this love of storytelling drew him to Martinez. In addition, Martinez was handsome, and many artists painted, drew, and photographed him. Fidelma Cadmus drew him, Paul Cadmus drew and painted him, and George Platt-Lynes created a beautiful series of photos of him nude in a windowlike aperture, wearing a large straw hat.

Martinez was a member of Ballet Caravan. Organized by Kirstein, this company toured the United States, visiting many smaller cities as well as large ones. Their repertoire was very different from the classical companies, Colonel de Basil’s Ballet Russe and the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, the two offshoot companies from the original Sergei Diaghilev companies. Other young male dancers added to the company during this period were Nicholas Magallanes and Francisco Moncion, both of Latin American origin and both of whom were to remain with George Balanchine and Kirstein throughout their long careers. Magallanes was discovered by Kirstein’s painter friend Pavel Tchelitchev, roaming the streets of New York. Tchelitchev not only used him as central figure in his large painting Phenomena, but brought him to Kirstein to study dance. He immediately showed talent and became one of the leading dancers of what eventually became the New York City Ballet.

*front panel of dustjacket & front flyleaf only lacking spine rear panel & rear flyleaf*