Introduction -- A Cold War Welcome: The Bolshoi Ballet's 1959 Tour of the United States -- Bringing an American Report Card to Russia: American Ballet Theatre's 1960 Tour of the Soviet Union -- A Question of Taste: The Bolshoi Ballet's 1962 Tour of the United States -- "Ballet Is a Flower": New York City Ballet's 1962 Tour of the Soviet Union -- Epilogue: Exchange in the Twenty-first Century.
Summary:
"During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice-versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.