TY  - BOOK
AU  - Prevots,Naima
TI  - Dance for export: cultural diplomacy and the Cold War 
SN  - 081956365X
AV  - GV1623 .P72 1998
U1  - 792.8097309045 21
PY  - 1998///
CY  - Hanover, London
PB  - Wesleyan University Press, Pulished by University Press of New England
KW  - Dance
KW  - Political aspects
KW  - United States
KW  - History
KW  - 20th  century
KW  - Cultural diplomacy
KW  - 20th century
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-159) and index; Introduction; by Eric Fowler --; Prologue --; Eisenhower's Fund --; Starting Out --; ANTA, the Dance Panel, and Martha Graham --; The Avant-Garde Conundrum --; Ballet and Soviet-American Exchange --; African-American Artists --; How Broad a Spectrum? --; On the Home Front --; Notes --; Members of the ANTA Dance Panel
N2  - "At the height of the Cold War in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower inaugurated a program of cultural exchange that sent American dancers and other artists to political 'hot spots' overseas. This peacetime gambit by a wartime hero to win the hearts and minds of Cold War enemies was a resounding success. As a journalist in the Far East noted, tours by American artists "dispelled the notion that Americans live in a cultural wasteland peopled only with gadgets and frankfurters and aton bombs." Never before had dance, theater, and music received direct government support, and although earmarked only for tours outside the country, the funding was a godsend to cash-starved American dance companies even as it put them on the international map.
Among the artists chosen for international duty were José Limón, who led his company on the first government-sponsored tour of South America; Martha Graham, whose famed ensemble criss-crossed southeast Asia; Alvin Ailey, whose company brought audiences to their feet throughout the South Pacific; and George Balanchine, whose New York City Ballet crowned its triumphant visits to Western Europe and Japan with an epoch-making tour in 1962 of the Soviet Union. The success of Eisenhower's program of cultural export led directly to the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts and Washington's Kennedy Center.
As historian Eric Foner points out in his introduction, the book offers a rare, behind-the-scenes glimpse of the politics of the dance world in the 1950s. Although, the blue-ribbon Dance Panel that chose the attractions for export went out of its way to be fair, it could not escape the prejudices of the time. With its fervent belief in high art, the panel disdained popular dance forms such as tap. At the same time, it had little patience with the avant-garde work of Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais that was beginning to transform modern dance." -- Book Jacket
ER  -