When I was two years old, I started taking dance classes. I remember twirling to “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” in a small room made for small people, wearing a pink leotard and tutu and ballet slippers.

In 1929 an American critic, Henry McBride, observed that “the centre of the world has shifted” from Paris to New York. America did not just have cultural capital—it was becoming the West’s cultural ...