Noam Bizan is a first-year History PhD student at the University of Cambridge.
Image by Krisha Cabrera
Introduction
‘Anyone who has ever laboured under the illusion that art and politics don’t mix [was] disabused of that idea with the Bolshoi Ballet’s summer appearance,’ declared the American dance critic Gay Morris in his review of the Bolshoi Ballet’s 2014 tour of the United States. [1] Other critics were confused: were they watching the premier ballet company of Russia, or the Soviet Union? Alastair Macaulay from the New York Times remarked that ‘it was hard not to think of politics when watching the Bolshoi’s repertory—which was entirely pre-glasnost.’[2] This schism between American and Russian aesthetics had roots in the Cold War when American dance critics analysed Bolshoi tours to determine how Westernized the Soviet Union was becoming.
This paper compares American dance critics’ coverage of the Bolshoi’s American tours of 1966, before détente, and 1975, during détente. Coverage of these tours changed alongside US-Soviet relations, but not in the way one might expect. Rather than emphasizing politics during times of heightened US-Soviet tensions, like in 1966, critics focused on artistry and mutual exchange. Meanwhile, they explicitly discussed politics during periods of rapprochement, like in 1975. Before détente, Cold War ideological lines were clear: Americans did not question that the USSR was their enemy. Dance critics could therefore discuss how US-Soviet ballet exchanges crossed cultural boundaries comfortably, without questioning their fundamental understanding of their place in the Cold War. However, once détente was underway and it became unclear whether the Cold War was ending, American dance critics redrew the line between Soviet and American ballet, attempting to understand their place in the world without binary Cold War boundaries.
Background
The Cold War was not just a simmering military conflict, but also an active struggle for supremacy through art, a non-traditional form of diplomacy to counter ineffective meetings and summits.[3] In the ‘Cultural Cold War’, the US and USSR both sought to portray themselves as the superior society and export their values to the other side of the Iron Curtain.[4] After Stalin died in 1953, Khrushchev ushered in the Thaw period of more open Western-Soviet relations,[5] and the US and USSR signed their first cultural exchange agreement in January 1958, officially the ‘Agreement Between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Exchanges in the Cultural, Technical, and Educational Fields.’[6] The agreement emphasized the principles of ‘equality, reciprocity, and mutual benefit,’ which meant that for each American tour of the USSR, a comparable Soviet tour would have to come to the US.[7] Cultural exchange agreements were renewed every two to three years until the USSR collapsed in 1991.[8] Ballet was prominent in US-Soviet cultural exchanges because it was essentially the official state art of the Soviet Union, a matter of pride and international prestige.[9] Ballet was also considered an effective cultural diplomacy tool because dance and music were seen as universal languages which did not require translation. Cultural exchanges continued under Brezhnev, who succeeded Khrushchev in 1964 and sought to de-escalate US-Soviet relations. This began the period of détente, from the late 1960s to 1979, characterized by various US-Soviet trade and disarmament agreements.[10]
American dance critics saw dramatic differences between Soviet and American ballet. Soviet ballets adhered to Socialist Realism, a socialist utopian aesthetic.[11] Socialist Realist ballets, or drambaleti, emphasized narrative and dramatic content over choreographic variety.[12] During the Thaw, some Soviet choreographers began promoting choreographic symphonism, which focused on dance and music over narrative, including Yuri Grigorovich, the Bolshoi’s artistic director from 1964 through détente.[13]
Some Russians escaping the Revolution immigrated to the US and opened ballet schools and companies across the country.[14] George Balanchine, founder of the New York City Ballet, was the most influential of these immigrants. His ballets were abstract and plotless, with choreography that underlined the music rather than visually imitating it.[15] This starkly contrasted with drambalet’s reliance on narrative and the composition of music to fit the story, but was like choreographic symphonism in its emphasis on dance over narrative.[16]
These similarities indicate that the polarization of American and Soviet ballet was more a matter of Cold War art politicization than of objective differences. Americans saw themselves as the leaders of individual freedom and democracy, and the Soviets as the conservative heirs to tsarist Russia.[17] These stereotypes crossed over to American dance critics’ interpretation of the Bolshoi’s tours, promoting American ballet as innovative and denouncing Soviet ballet as conservative.[18] Instead of transcending borders with the universal languages of dance and music, such performances could reinforce the mental boundaries of the Cold War, undermining the goals of the very cultural diplomacy of which they were a part.
The Bolshoi Ballet’s American Tour of 1966
The Bolshoi toured the US for the first time since Brezhnev’s rise to power in spring-summer 1966. In February and March 1966, American and Soviet officials were in the process of renegotiating their fifth cultural exchange agreement. Shortly after the end of the Thaw, and with the US having recently escalated its involvement in the Vietnam War, US-Soviet relations were cooling.[19] Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Charles Frankel hoped that the new agreement would ‘open a bridge to Moscow, even though the political waters underneath are even chillier than usual because of Vietnam.’[20] With the Vietnam War and following a difficult cultural exchange negotiation, the Cold War context of the Bolshoi’s 1966 tour was clear. American dance critics could therefore blur the boundaries between the American and Soviet people.
Critics presented the American public’s fervent reception of the Bolshoi’s tour without mentioning the political tensions behind it. Walter Arlen of the Los Angeles Times noted the ‘frenetic… sold-out house’ that went ‘wild’ with ‘prolonged, deafening, near-hysterical applause.’[21] Clive Barnes of the New York Times described how the Bolshoi’s closing performance in New York was used as a spectacle of brotherhood, with American and Bolshoi dancers partnering to walk across the stage after the last curtain.[22] This was also a symbolic union of the US and USSR, embodying cultural exchange boundary-crossing despite Cold War tensions.
Critics demonstrated how the Bolshoi crossed cultural boundaries by emphasizing its dancers’ Americanization. Barnes reported that the troupe attended a modern dance performance for ‘their first sight of the American dance avant-garde.’[23] Critics highlighted Maya Plisetskaya’s enthusiasm for American culture, a notable victory given her status as the Bolshoi’s prima ballerina. They quoted Plisetskaya explaining that ‘in the United States I was struck by all the comforts of life,’ implying that those comforts were lacking in the USSR,[24] and presented her luxuriating in designer clothes.[25] Gossip articles detailing Plisetskaya’s diet and fashion blurred the line between Soviet and American cultures beyond ballet.[26]
Some critics presented the relationship between American and Soviet dancers as so genial that there appeared to be no boundaries separating them at all. Regarding a joint New York City Ballet-Bolshoi rehearsal, critic Walter Terry described how Bolshoi dancer Vladimir Vasiliev and his New York ‘counterpart’ Edward Villella learned from one another, and bragged that Vasiliev was ‘tremendously impressed’ with Villella.[27] Barnes reported that ‘Red Russian, White Russian… and just plain ordinary American’ were seen ‘prancing, promenading, parading’ together at a party, and declared that ‘if all differences could be settled by dancers we would have no more differences—except about who was to dance what!’[28] Cold War tensions were reduced to a light-hearted joke, with seemingly no borders in the way of US-Soviet friendship.
The Bolshoi Ballet’s American Tour of 1975
The Bolshoi Ballet’s American tour of 1975 was its first full-company tour since 1966.[29] Détente had begun in those nine years, peaking with the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty in 1972. 1973 saw further de-escalation with more nuclear agreements, but re-escalation with the Yom Kippur War. Brezhnev met with Presidents Nixon and Ford in 1974, but tensions mounted again in 1975 when Moscow repealed the US-Soviet trade agreement. Cooperation in 1975 also increased, however, with the joint US-Soviet space mission in July and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in August.[30] As the détente’s ambiguous progress made US-Soviet relations unclear, American dance critics debated Cold War boundaries more explicitly. Was détente bringing the USSR closer to the West, or did the two sides remain polarized?
As in 1966, audiences were enthusiastic but now reports on that enthusiasm were saturated with politics. For example, a Baltimore Sun reporter commented that ‘in this era of détente, you have to stand in line to see… the Bolshoi.’[31] Variety emphasized the tour’s Cold War context by cynically using the Soviet view of Americans to describe audiences’ enthusiasm as ‘the irresistible appeal of Communistic terpsichore for the amusement-hungry capitalistic bourgeoisie.’[32] Mocking Soviet Cold War rhetoric revealed how prominent the Cold War remained in American minds.
Few things embodied the complexities of Cold War boundaries like defectors, who crossed physical, cultural, and ideological borders. As Leningrad’s Kirov Ballet stars Natalia Makarova and Mikhail Baryshnikov defected in 1970 and 1974, respectively, while touring in the West, dance critics focused on them during the Bolshoi’s 1975 tour. Arlene Francis and John Gruen, for instance, presented Baryshnikov and Makarova’s defections as part of their search for ‘more freedom generally,’ although the dancers insisted that they defected solely for artistic reasons.[33] Critics maintained the Cold War rhetoric of American freedom versus Soviet oppression regardless of contradictory evidence.
Some reviews of choreography suggested that the USSR was Westernizing. Some critics saw Yuri Grigorovich as a modernizer because of his shift from drambalet to choreographic symphonism. Barnes noted that ‘the Bolshoi today is a far remove from the Bolshoi of 20 years ago’ with ‘stagnant’ traditions, but a ‘breathing, growing company.’[34] New York Times critic John Rockwell quoted Vladimir Vasiliev crediting cultural exchange for Soviet Westernization. Vasiliev explained that ‘we have seen many foreign companies—English, Danish, French, American,’ but that before cultural exchanges began, ‘we didn’t experience any influence from the outside. We were enclosed in our own style and methods.’[35] The Bolshoi’s modernization was presented as an inherently Westward shift since the company had developed by physically and culturally crossing the border to the West.
Meanwhile, some critics emphasized the persistence of ideology hindering Soviet ballet’s Westernization. Barnes maintained that the Bolshoi was ‘a Soviet company,’ with ‘an almost complete disparity of taste between Russia and the West.’[36] According to the Baltimore Sun’s Zelda Cameron, Soviet ballet was inherently ‘difficult to relate to’ for American audiences because of their societal differences.[37] The contrast between reviews underscoring the differences between the US and USSR and reviews suggesting that the USSR was Westernizing revealed the ambiguity that détente had brought to the Cold War. Whichever side of the debate critics were on, their reviews emphasized the political context behind US-Soviet ballet exchanges that the 1966 reviews veiled.
Conclusion
US-Soviet ballet exchanges by definition entailed the physical crossing of borders, as Soviet ballet dancers, choreographers, musicians, and officials travelled across the US and vice versa. But they also sparked—and necessitated—constant crossing of immaterial, ideological boundaries. When those boundaries were clear, critics felt comfortable blurring them by focusing on US-Soviet friendship. When détente made them unclear, however, critics politicized even the Bolshoi’s choreography. It was precisely because US-Soviet ballet exchanges successfully pushed the bounds of Cold War narratives that American dance critics incessantly upheld those bounds, which defined their place in the global order.
Ballet remains political in US-Russian relations. Considering the Bolshoi’s choice to perform numerous Soviet classics in 2014, Morris noted that ‘the company reflects the increasing conservatism, repression, and inward turn of the Putin regime.’[38] The tour was subject to protests, with Ukrainian Weekly reporting nearly 100 people outside a theatre chanting ‘ballet yes, Putin no.’[39] In 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Western-Russian ballet exchange froze. Russian ballet and orchestra tours of the West were cancelled and Western-Russian choreographic collaboration halted collaboration.[40] Cultural boundaries between the US and Russia continue to be negotiated, erased, and redrawn decades after the ostensible end of the Cold War.
Notes
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[1] Gay Morris, “Art and Politics: The Bolshoi Ballet at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival,” DanceView (Washington, DC: DanceView 31, no. 4, Autumn 2014).
[2] Alastair Macaulay, “Planting Their Feet in a Soviet Past, From Tone to Style to Repertory: [The Arts/Cultural Desk],” New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast), July 29, 2014, C2.
[3] David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War (New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 4-5.
[4] The cultural Cold War was waged on many fronts, from theater, film, television, music, and chess to science, technology, scholarly research, agriculture, tourism, and athletics. For more on science and technology, look at Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (Penn State University Press, 2003). For athletics, look at Robert Edelman and Christopher Young, The Whole World Was Watching: Sport In the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020). For music, look at Danielle Fosler-Lussier, Music In America's Cold War Diplomacy (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2015), Kiril Tomoff, Virtuosi Abroad: Soviet Music and Imperial Competition During the Early Cold War, 1945-1958 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), and Lisa E. Davenport, Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting America in the Cold War Era (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2009). For theater and cinema, look at Caute, The Dancer Defects. For dance other than ballet, look at Catherine Gunther Kodat, Don't Act, Just Dance: The Metapolitics of Cold War Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2015), Clare Croft, Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), and Naima Prevots, Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1998). For ballet, look at Cadra Peterson McDaniel, American-Soviet Cultural Diplomacy: The Bolshoi Ballet’s American Premiere (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2015) and Anne Searcy, Ballet in the Cold War: A Soviet-American Exchange (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2020).
[5] Eleonory Gilburd, To See Paris and Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2018), 6.
[6] Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 15.
[7] Quote: Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 19; Comparable American and Soviet tours: Searcy, Ballet In the Cold War, 5.
[8] Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War, 16.
[9] Jennifer Homans, Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet, 1st ed (New York: Random House, 2010), 342.
[10] William J. Tompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev, Seminar Studies in History (Harlow: Longman, 2003), xi-xvii.
[11] Christina Ezrahi, Swans of the Kremlin: Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012), 30.
[12] Ezrahi, Swans of the Kremlin, 32.
[13] Ezrahi, Swans of the Kremlin, 115.
[14] Homans, Apollo’s Angels, 450-51.
[15] Matilde Butkas “George Balanchine,” in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, Cambridge Companions to Music (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), ed. Marion Kant, 225.
[16] Searcy, Ballet in the Cold War, 100.
[17] American view of itself: Searcy, Ballet in the Cold War, 33; American view of USSR: Searcy, Ballet in the Cold War, 17-18.
[18] Searcy, Ballet in the Cold War, 18.
[19] Tompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev, 39-40.
[20] David K. Willis, “Culture Bridges East-West Gaps: Culture Builds Bridges,” Christian Science Monitor (1908-Current File), March 4, 1966, 1.
[21] Walter Arlen, “Ballet Fans Thrilled by ‘Highlights,’” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995), June 28, 1966, C12.
[22] Clive Barnes, “Dance: The Last Good-by: Bolshoi and Friends Offer a Gala Sunday Evening as Grand Finale for Old Met,” New York Times (1923-Current File), May 6, 1966, 54.
[23] Clive Barnes, “West Leaps Language Barrier to Meet East: U.S. Modern Dance Sampled by Bolshoi Ballet in Brooklyn,” New York Times (1923-Current File), April 30, 1966, 28.
[24] Ninette Lyon and Diana Vreeland, “Fashions in Living: Maya Plisetskaya: A Second Fame: Good Food,” Vogue (New York: United States: Condé Nast), April 15, 1966, 146-148.
[25] Diana Vreeland, “Fashion: Maya Plisetskaya… the Dynamics of Beauty,” Vogue (New York: United States: Condé Nast), October 1, 1966, 188-191.
[26] Ivor W. Boggiss, “The Fashions: Maya,” Women’s Wear Daily 112, no. 106 (New York, United States: Penske Business Corporation), May 31, 1966, 8.
[27] Walter Terry, “The Bolshoi Ballet,” Invitation to Dance (New York, NY: WNYC), May 1, 1966. MGZTO 7-71, Dance Audio Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
[28] Clive Barnes, “Bolshoi A Go-Go a Lively Affair: Dancers Demonstrate Skill as Twisters at a Party,” New York Times (1923-Current File), May 10, 1966, 50.
[29] “Bolshoi Ballet in Shrine Programs,” Los Angeles Times (1923-1995), April 4, 1975, H11.
[30] Tompson, The Soviet Union under Brezhnev, 50.
[31] “Soviet Culture Exhibits Attract Sellout Crowds,” Baltimore Sun (1837-1995), August 3, 1975, A9.
[32] Robert J. Landry, “Story-Dance Still USSR’s Top B.O. Export; Return Of Bolshoi,” Variety (Archive: 1905-2000), April 30, 1975, 70.
[33] Arlene Francis, “Interview with John Gruen Incorporating Interview with Rudolf Nureyev,” Arlene Francis Show, WOR, January 22, 1975. MGZTL 4-245, Oral History Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
[34] Clive Barnes, “Dance View: Grigorovich Makes The Difference,” New York Times (1923-Current File), May 25, 1975, 116.
[35] John Rockwell, “A Tender and Heroic Spartacus,” New York Times (1923-Current File), May 4, 1975, 142.
[36] Clive Barnes, “Dance View: What Makes the Bolshoi Different?,” New York Times (1923-Current File), May 18, 1975, D1.
[37] Zelda Cameron, “Paradoxes of the Bolshoi,” Baltimore Sun (1837-1995), June 1, 1975, D10.
[38] Morris, “Art and Politics: The Bolshoi Ballet at the Lincoln Center Summer Festival.”
[39] Andrij Baran, “Ukrainian Community Protests Bolshoi Ballet’s Performances,” Ukrainian Weekly, August 17, 2014, 4.
[40] Zachary Woolfe, “Putin’s Maestro, and the Limits of Cultural Exchange in Wartime,” New York Times, March 2, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/arts/music/ukraine-putin-valery-gergiev-anna-netrebko.html. Alex Marshall, “War Brings New Iron Curtain Down on Russia’s Storied Ballet Stages,” New York Times, April 15, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/arts/olga-smirnova-ballet-bolshoi-ukraine-war.html. Spencer Bokat-Lindell, “Opinion | Putin’s Getting Sanctioned, but Russia’s Getting Canceled,” New York Times, March 9, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/09/opinion/ukraine-russia-cancel-culture-putin.html.
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