Elements of ragtime and jazz blended with early twentieth-century modernism create an utterly unique, toe-tapping tableau in SKYSCRAPERS. Subtitled “A Ballet of Modern American Life,” composer John Alden Carpenter (1876-1951) described SKYSCRAPERS (1926) as “a ballet which seeks to reflect some of the many rhythmic movements and sounds of modern American life.

It proceeds on the simple fact that American life reduces itself essentially to violent alternations of work and play, each with its o...