Throughout the 1940s-1960s, the United States (U.S.) faced geopolitical conflicts with the Soviet Union (USSR) amid rising tensions of political domination and widespread propaganda. One of the ways that the country fronted these conflicts was through state-sponsored ballet tours, which sought to advance political and cultural diplomacy between the U.S. and USSR, as well as throughout Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. During these tours, the U.S. ballet companies promoted American democracy through George Balanchine’s neoclassical style that opposed Czarist ballet and ideology. The government-funded tours successfully used ballet as a form of soft power with their influence on audience reception, Soviet defection, and the reforms of Perestroika and Glasnost, opposing Soviet Communism and asserting national supremacy, while inadvertently bringing into question true American freedom.
Figure 1. Anna Pavlova posed in Dying Swan. Emily Austin, 2021, London Museum.
The First U.S. Tour for Political Diplomacy
American ballet tours first began as a soft power during World War II, when Communists and the Axis Powers created anti-capitalist propaganda that spread to Latin America, portraying the U.S. as an unequal and exploitive culture. The State Department addressed these threats against American democracy and the strains that they were creating in the U.S.- Latin America relations by establishing the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA) in 1940, headed by Nelson A. Rockefeller, which sought to counter Communist and Axis control through artistic cultural exchange. In 1941, Rockefeller worked with New York City Ballet (NYCB) co-director Lincoln Kirstein to transform the independent ballet company, Ballet Caravan, NYCB’s predecessor, to become American Ballet Caravan, a cultural ambassador of American identity for the U.S.’s first diplomatic ballet tour to South America. The American Ballet Caravan toured 60 cities that were susceptible to Communist influence through Roosevelt’s OIAA “Good Neighbor” act. This act was the first model for using artists and ballet companies for the purpose of political diplomacy and exchange, laying the framework for future State Department funding. The American Ballet Caravan presented repertoire such as George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco, a “pure” modernist choreography that used staccato movement and musicality to directly contrast traditional plot driven Soviet ballet, and is still performed by the NYCB today The company’s tour was significant in reaching neoclassical audiences, as Balanchine’s avant-garde style created in 1935 contrasted centuries of classical European and Russian repertoire that Latin America had been exposed to through Anna Pavlova’s Ballet Russe tours to Latin America and the U.S. in 1915. Pavlova’s dancing, specifically her performance of Dying Swan, made a lasting impression on Latin American audiences, according to a 1940 NYT article stating, “They remember Pavlova, and it is hard to convince them that there is any style of dancing other than Pavlova’s”, making the American Ballet Caravan tours’ objective even more difficult. The state sponsored tours’ initial motive was to lessen anti-Capitalist and anti-American propaganda in Latin America, however this purpose soon shifted amid rising tensions in the Cold War.
1 “Domestic Projects for Export—Politics and the Dancing Body,” Library of Congress
2 “Spotlight on Estancia,” New York City Ballet
3 Estancia performance video, Vimeo video
Tours to Latin America and Japan
In the aftermath of Stalin’s death, U.S. ballet tours focused on asserting nationalism when President D. Eisenhower established the President’s Emergency Fund for International Affairs (1954), a political diplomacy initiative that worked with both the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the CIA’s Operation Lincoln program to sponsor American ballet companies such as the Limón Dance Company, the Martha Graham Dance Company, American Ballet Theatre (ABT), and New York City Ballet (NYCB) for soft-power tours. Although many influential companies were selected for the tours, artists such as Katherine Dunham and Eleo Pomare who expressed racial injustices in their works were not seen as ideal ambassadors by the American National Theatre Academy (ANTA) panel for the tours, compared to artists such as Alvin Ailey who depicted the African-American experience less directly, bringing into question how much of the “liberated” American experience the government wanted to promote through the international tours. The USIA was an executive agency created by Eisenhower to combat anti-American sentiment and anti-American sentiment and promote cultural diplomacy, and the CIA’s Operation Lincoln was the command center for the 1954 Communist fear driven coup d’état against Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán and was used to provide further funding and resources for Eisenhower’s initiative. The Limón Company was the first troupe selected by the ANTA to dispatch to Latin American cities since the company reinforced the CIA’s overthrow by positioning Limón, a Mexican immigrant, to represent growing political relations in order to distract Latin American nations CIA’s operations.
Moreover, the Martha Graham Company’s preceding 1955 tours targeting Asia and the Middle East opposed both Communist influence and The Bolshoi Ballet’s 1955 tour through distinctions in the companies. Graham’s diverse company, codified performances such as Frontier (1935) and American Document (1938) depicting idealized themes of the West, and collaborations with Japanese American choreographer Isamu Noguchi made her work more accessible to Japanese political leaders and reflected true cultural exchange when compared to The Bolshoi Ballet, an institutionalization of Czarist Russia directed for the elite. The tours received high praise from Embassy officials, noted by the Library of Congress that, “The uniquely American aspect of her art,” the American Embassy in Tokyo reported, “was eloquent ideological testimony of America’s cultural depth and vitality”, although Graham claimed that her works were not politically intentioned but rather that they unearthed universal truths, a key idea that concentrated democratic ideology and publicity in the propagandist tours.
4 Ruth Page, “The Dance: Among Latins; A Few Notes on a South America Tour,” New York Times, July 28, 1940, https://www.nytimes.com/1940/07/28/archives/the-dance-among-latins-a-few-notes-on-a-south-american-tour-current.html
5 Croft, Clare. “Ballet Nations: The New York City Ballet’s 1962 US State Department-Sponsored Tour of the Soviet Union.” Theatre Journal 61, no. 3 (2009): 421–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40587353
6 Rennie, Mcdougall. n.d. “Dance as Propoganda.” Gagsonian. https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024/10/23/essay-dance-as-propaganda/.
7 “Cleaning up America’s Backyard: The Overthrow of Guatemala’s Arbenz – Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training.” n.d. ADST.org. Accessed May 19, 2026. https://adst.org/2016/06/cleaning-americas-backyard-overthrow-guatemalas-arbenz/.
8 “Operation Lincoln.” n.d. CIA. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/doc_0000608379.pdf.
9 Rennie, Mcdougall. n.d. “Dance as Propoganda.” Gagsonian. https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024/10/23/essay-dance-as-propaganda/.
10 Mcdougall. n.d. “Dance as Propoganda.” Gagsonian.
11 “Standford dance scholar examines how ballet challenged the Soviet regime.” n.d. Stanford Arts. google.com/url?q=https://arts.stanford.edu/stanford-dance-scholar-examines-how-ballet-challenged-the-soviet-regime/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1779047633765308&usg=AOvVaw0K58Nl8HmZAhRDkWLi_8Lf.
Figure 2. ABT company taking a curtain call after a performance in Moscow. David Lynche, 1960, Library of Congress.
U.S. and USSR Tours 1959-1962
As the Iron Curtain began to fade, the U.S. and USSR signed the Lacy–Zarubin Agreement, which intended to create cultural and political exchange through scientific and artistic integration for two years, supported by the President’s Emergency Fund’s ballet tours. The Bolshoi Ballet was the first company in the exchange to tour the opposing side, receiving high praise according to the Bolshoi’s artistic director who wrote a letter to his wife noting that, “people screamed, cried, and tore up their programs after an audience demanded 17 curtain calls”, although U.S. critics said that the Soviets technique was “dated”.
Figure 3. ABT 1960 tour advertisement poster, 1960, Library of Congress.
Moreover, ABT’s 1960 tour also proved to be moderately successful when compared to NYCB’s 1962 tours which had sold out tickets and higher Soviet reception, despite its intersection with the Cuban Missile Crisis which left dancers in mistrust and fear through the lack of communication they received. However, despite these conflicts dancers still found a greater cultural understanding by the end of the tours through intersections in American and Russian training. Balanchine’s Serenade opened every Soviet tour, serving as a metaphor for the blends between U.S. and Soviet culture through Tchaikovsky’s music and the dances traditional Soviet structure and symmetry, combined with modernist angularity and speed. By the end of the tour, Kirov Principal Valery Panov even said, “the New York style would come to my mind every time I tried to work out a choreographic pattern. Now there was a bit of the US in Soviet pirouettes”, illustrating true cultural amalgamation despite ideological differences.
12 Rennie, Mcdougall. n.d. “Dance as Propoganda.” Gagsonian. https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024/10/23/essay-dance-as-propaganda/.
13 Rousell, Camille. 2025. “Dancing Through Diplomacy: Ballet’s Role in United States-Soviet Union Relations.” Yira. https://yris.yira.org/column/dancing-through-diplomacy-ballets-role-in-united-states-soviet-union-relations/.
14 Kelley, Peter. 2020. “Diplomacy on point: Anne Searcy’s book explores role of ballet in US-Soviet Cold War relations.” University of Washington. https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/09/29/diplomacy-on-point-anne-searcys-book-explores-role-of-ballet-in-us-soviet-cold-war-relations/.
15 Luke, Sayers. Ballet in the Cold War: A Soviet-American Exchange, by Anne Searcy. Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History 14 (2022): 109–11. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48783031.
16 Clare, Croft. “Ballet Nations: The New York City Ballet’s 1962 US State Department-Sponsored Tour of the Soviet Union.” Theatre Journal 61, no. 3 (2009): 421–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40587353.
Figure 4. A photograph capturing Michael Baryshnikov completing a grand jeté. Toronto Star, 1981, Erin Combs.
U.S. Influence on Defection and Glasnost and Perestroika Reforms
The democratic and somewhat idealized values that the U.S. promoted created a long lasting influence on Soviet audiences through their changed perceptions on defection and liberty. Balanchine’s neoclassical style broke traditional barriers and imperial ideology, influencing renowned dancers such as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Rudolf Nureyev, and Natalia Makarova to defect to the West in hopes to pursue similar modernist choreography. Baryshnikov defected in 1974 after seeing NYCB’s 1974 tour to Leningrad, however, he was initially inspired by the democratic ideology of the early 1960s tour, when he famously told a French policeman after the Kirov Ballet’s 1961 tour, “I want to stay and to be free.” The tours’ influence can even be connected to the Glasnot and Petroskiva reforms (1986), which aimed to reconstruct the economy and promote the rights of “openness”, liberal values that were derived according to Yale Richmond, a former U.S. Foreign Service Officer who worked on the U.S.-Soviet exchanges, through the 1960s tours.
The U.S. State Department funded ballet tours promoted cultural exchange and national supremacy through Balanchine’s neoclassical choreography that deconstructed the framework and perceptions of traditional Soviet ballet. The tours enabled political and regime questioning from both sides of the Iron Curtain, leaving Soviets to examine their individual liberties and Americans to question the true heights of American freedom and democracy. The U.S. tours proved that ballet can surpass political and ideological differences, challenging traditional rhetoric that dance is nothing more than an artistic expression, but rather a catalyst for cultural and political diplomacy.
17 Lyndsey, Winship. 2022. “Dancers and dissidents: how ballet became a political football between east and west.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/mar/17/dancers-and-dissidents-how-ballet-became-a-political-football-between-east-and-west.
18 Jennifer, Buxton L. n.d. “PERESTROIKA PIROUETTES AND GLASNOST GLISSÉS: THE KIROV AND THE BOLSHOI BALLET, 1977-1991 J.”
Allen Hughes. 1962. “Americans in Moscow; New York City Ballet Begins Soviet Tour.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1962/10/07/archives/americans-in-moscow-new-york-city-ballet-begins-soviet-tour.html.
“ABT’s 1960 Tour of the USSR.” n.d. American Ballet Theatre. https://www.abt.org/the-company/about/abt-ussr-tour-1960/.
“April 17, 1959.” n.d. The New York Times TimesMachine. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1959/04/17/80769925.html?pageNumber=1.
“Cleaning up America’s Backyard: The Overthrow of Guatemala’s Arbenz.” n.d. Association for Diplomatic Studies & Training. https://adst.org/2016/06/cleaning-americas-backyard-overthrow-guatemalas-arbenz/.
“Cultural Diplomacy – Hope for America: Performers.” n.d. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/hope-for-america/cultural-diplomacy.html.
Clare Croft. 2010. “Funding Footprints: U.S. State Department Sponsorship of International Dance Tours, 1962–2009.” University of Texas at Austin. https://www.proquest.com/docview/748312264.
Clare Croft. 2009. “Ballet Nations: The New York City Ballet’s 1962 US State Department-Sponsored Tour of the Soviet Union.” Theatre Journal 61 (3): 421–42. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40587353.
Catherine Gunther Kodat. 2000. “Dancing Through the Cold War: The Case of ‘The Nutcracker.’” Mosaic 33 (3): 1–17. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44029692.
“Domestic Projects for Export: Politics and the Dancing Body.” n.d. Library of Congress. https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/politics-and-dance/domestic-projects-for-export.html.
“Dancing Through Diplomacy: Ballet’s Role in the United States-Soviet Union Relations.” n.d. YIRA. https://yris.yira.org/column/dancing-through-diplomacy-ballets-role-in-united-states-soviet-union-relations/.
“Diplomats of Dance: U.S. Companies Step into Role as Cultural Representatives Abroad—Part 2.” 2008. Dance USA. https://www.danceusa.org/ejournal/2010/11/04/diplomats-of-dance-u-s-companies-step-into-role-as-cultural-representatives-abroad.
Gagosian Quarterly. 2024. Rennie McDougall. “Dance as Propaganda.” https://gagosian.com/quarterly/2024/10/23/essay-dance-as-propaganda/.
Garafola, Lynn. n.d. “Why a Swan? A Seminar on Swan Lake.” JSTOR.
Gonçalves, Stéphanie. 2019. “Dien Bien Phu, Soviet Ballet, and the Cold War: The First Paris Tour, May 1954.” Dance Chronicle 42 (1): 53–77. https://www.jstor.org/stable/48539974.
Growcott, Amy, and Mattias Krantz. 2016. “Anna Pavlova as The Swan.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkFSBkl9mmo.
Jennifer Buxton. n.d. “Perestroika Pirouettes and Glasnost Glissés: The Kirov and the Bolshoi Ballet, 1977–1991.”
Kelley, Peter. 2020. “Diplomacy on Point: Anne Searcy’s Book Explores Role of Ballet in US-Soviet Cold War Relations.” University of Washington. https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/09/29/diplomacy-on-point-anne-searcys-book-explores-role-of-ballet-in-us-soviet-cold-war-relations/.
Krasvetz, Nikola. 2005. “Russian/U.S.: Bolshoi Ballet Presents Younger Troupe, Vigorous Repertoire.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. https://www.rferl.org/a/1060255.html.
Kara Y. Leaman. n.d. “Dance as Music in George Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco.” Vimeo. https://vimeo.com/495091183.
Lyndsey Winship. 2022. “Dancers and Dissidents: How Ballet Became a Political Football Between East and West.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2022/mar/17/dancers-and-dissidents-how-ballet-became-a-political-football-between-east-and-west.
Madellyn Sutton. 2020. “Initially Commissioned in 1941, Estancia Is an International Ballet in 69 Years in the Making.” New York City Ballet. https://www.nycballet.com/discover/stories/spotlight-on-estancia/.
“Mission of the United States Information Agency.” n.d. Eisenhower Presidential Library. https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/sites/default/files/file/people_to_people_BinderR.pdf.
“Operation Lincoln.” n.d. CIA Reading Room. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/doc_0000608379.pdf.
Page, Ruth. 1940. “The Dance: Among Latins; A Few Notes on a South America Tour.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1940/07/28/archives/the-dance-among-latins-a-few-notes-on-a-south-american-tour-current.html.
Phillips, Victoria. 2021. “Excerpt from Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy, Part 1.” Jordan Center NYU. https://jordanrussiacenter.org/blog/excerpt-from-victoria-phillips-part-i.
Rachel Marcy. 2014. “Dancers and Diplomats: New York City Ballet in Moscow, October 1962.” The Appendix. https://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/dancers-and-diplomats-new-york-city-ballet-in-moscow-october-1962.
Richmond, Yale. 2005. “Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: How the Arts Influenced Policy.” Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society 35 (3): 239–45. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2412394082/54148EC75D234F8FPQ/3?sourcetype=Books
Rousell, Camille. 2025. “Dancing Through Diplomacy: Ballet’s Role in United States-Soviet Union Relations.” YIRA. https://yris.yira.org/column/dancing-through-diplomacy-ballets-role-in-united-states-soviet-union-relations/.
Sebrena Williamson. 2022. “Dance as Diplomacy: Cultural Exchange During the Cold War.” The Collector. https://www.thecollector.com/cold-war-cultural-exchange-diplomacy/.
“Spartacus: The Bolshoi Ballet (1991).” 2020. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fha6rYtaLMk.
Spencer, George. 2021. “Cold War-Era Ballet Tours Were High-Stakes Artistic Displays.” University of Washington Magazine. https://magazine.washington.edu/cold-war-era-ballet-tours-were-high-stakes-artistic-displays/.
“Stanford Dance Scholar Examines How Ballet Challenged the Soviet Regime.” n.d. Stanford Arts. https://arts.stanford.edu/stanford-dance-scholar-examines-how-ballet-challenged-the-soviet-regime/.
“The Dance Dilemma: The Importance of Dance for Diplomacy During the Cold War.” n.d. University of North Carolina Asheville. https://libjournals.unca.edu/ncur/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/930-Mehta.pdf.
“Youtube. Bolshoi Ballet in New York (1950–1959).” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inndTb5pNW8.
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