Cole Porter--Modernist?

Possibly.

While residing in Paris in 1923, the all-American songwriter noted for such pop standards as “Let’s Do It,” “Too Darn Hot,” and (my favorite) “In the Still of the Night” composed Within the Quota, a “jazz ballet” (or “ballet-sketch” according to the Yale online catalog of Porter material), for the avant-garde dance company, Les Ballet Suedois (apparently, second only to the Ballets Russe). A “comic tale about a Swedish immigrant to America” (Anderson), the ballet was a hit in Paris, but on Broadway—not so much.

The cubist painter Gerald Murphy (another American expat) designed Within the Quota’s décor and costumes and, according to some notes, wrote the libretto (The New Yorker ran an intriguing article on Murphy and his wife, Sara, in the magazine’s August 6, 2007 edition). Jean Borlin, Les Ballet Suedois’s principal dancer, choreographed the piece.

Porter premiered his jazz ballet on October 25, 1923--four months before George Gershwin premiered Rhapsody in Blue (February 1924). Apparently, Porter considered Within the Quota as his “legitimate” work, his “one effort to be respectable” (qtd. in Kisselgoff)

Alas, I’ve not seen Within the Quota, and I’ve yet to read anything that considers it within a “modernist” context (although many commentators do link Porter to the “Lost Generation,” but, collectively, that group’s status as “modernist” is often queried). The question of Cole Porter as Modernist invites investigation--and a little re-tooling of the great lyricist’s creative biography. Sadly, I’m still up to my neck in another expat modernist (or two), so Cole Porter must wait.