Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T18:52:43.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“Taking America's Story to the World”: Touring Jerome Robbins's Ballets: U.S.A. During the Cold War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

Stacey Prickett
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Between 1958 and 1961, Jerome Robbins's Ballets: U.S.A. company toured to European arts festivals with a repertory of new and existing works, most of which remain in performance more than six decades later. Cold War political and artistic imperatives intersected in choreography that circulated visions of “American” innovation and youthful vitality, danced to an eclectic range of scores by a mixed-race cast. Archival documentation of the funding process reveals discussions about aesthetic priorities and the choreographer's responsibility to the US government. Analysis of press coverage of the performances also considers the extent to which diplomatic objectives were achieved.

Keywords

arts festivalsBallets: U.S.ACold Warcultural diplomacyJerome Robbins
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , August 2020 , pp. 4 - 25
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Dance Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Allen, George. 1958. Letter from George Allen to Theodore Francis Green, September 19. Brussels Exhibition File, RG0306, U.S. Information Agency, Office of the Director/Executive Secretariat, Entry# P331: Subject files of the Director 1956–1972, Container 8. National Archives, College Park, MD.Google Scholar
American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) Dance Panel Minutes. 1957. November 14. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Collection 468, Box 101, folder 15. University of Arkansas Special Collections, Fayetteville, AR (hereafter Collection 468).Google Scholar
American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) Dance Panel Minutes. 1958a. Collection 468, Box 101, folder 15, March 20.Google Scholar
American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) Dance Panel Minutes. 1958b. Collection 468, Box 101, folder 15, December 18.Google Scholar
American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) Dance Panel Minutes. 1959a. Collection 468, Box 101, folder 15, May 21.Google Scholar
American National Theatre and Academy (ANTA) Dance Panel Minutes. 1959b. Collection 468, Box 101, folder 15, September 17.Google Scholar
“Athens Festival: Ballet Jerome Robbins.” Kathimerini. 2 September 1959. translated by Steriani Tzitsiloni.Google Scholar
“Attendance of More than 30,000,000 Estimated at U.S. Pavilion.” Office of the U.S. Commissioner General, Brussels Universal & International Exhibition, 1958, Brussels Exhibition File, RG0306, U.S. Information Agency, Office of the Director/Executive Secretariat, Entry# P331: Subject files of the Director 1956–1972, Container 8, National Archives, College Park, MD.Google Scholar
“Ballets: U.S.A. Scheduled.” 1958. Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph, October 25, 11. (S) Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) Clippings File (S)*MGZMD 46-73. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Ballets: U.S.A. Tour Analysis. 1960. August. (S) Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company). (S)*MGZMD 46-73. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Barnes, Clive. 1959. “N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz.” Dance and Dancers, November 13–14.Google Scholar
Casey, Nicolas. 2019. “Georgia Plans to Purge 300,000 Names from Its Voter Rolls.” New York Times, October 30. Accessed November 26, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/us/politics/georgia-voter-purge.html?searchResultPosition=2Google Scholar
Caute, David. 2003. The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Diplomacy during the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Clarke, Mary. 1961. “Ballets USA: The Jerome Robbins Season.” Dancing Times 612 (September): 747–749.Google Scholar
Congressional Record, Senate, August 21, 1958, p. 17388, Office of the U.S. Commissioner General, Brussels Universal & International Exhibition, 1958, Brussels Exhibition File, RG0306, U.S. Information Agency, Office of the Director/Executive Secretariat, Entry# P331: Subject files of the Director 1956–1972, Container 8. National Archives, College Park, MD.Google Scholar
Croft, Clare. 2015. The Dancer as Diplomat: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cull, Nicholas J. 2008. The Cold War and the United States Information Agency: American Propaganda and Public Diplomacy, 1945–1989. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Current Report on Cultural Presentations Program. 1961. Collection 468, Box 85 [folder 85-15]. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs Historical Collection (CU), University of Arkansas Special Collections, Fayetteville, AR.Google Scholar
Das, Joanna Dee. 2017. Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeFrantz, Thomas. 2001. “Simmering Passivity: The Black Male Body in Concert Dance.” In Moving History/ Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, edited by Dils, Ann and Albright, Ann Cooper, 342–349. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Dudziak, Mary L. 2000. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Foner, Eric. 2008. Give Me Liberty! An American History. Vol. 2. 2nd Seagull, ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Franks, A. H. 1959. “A New Experience.” Dancing Times 50 (589): 12–13.Google Scholar
Garafola, Lynn. 2005. Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Geduld, Victoria. 2010. “Dancing Diplomacy: Martha Graham and the Strange Commodity of Cold-War Cultural Exchange in Asia, 1955 and 1974.” Dance Chronicle 33 (1): 44–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 1996. Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 2001. “Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in American Concert Dance.” In Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, edited by Dils, Ann and Albright, Ann Cooper, 332–341. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 2003. The Black Dancing Body: A Geography of Coon to Cool. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon. 2012. Joan Myers Brown & the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: A Biohistory of American Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
I Azaryahu. 1959. July 27. (S) Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) Reviews File (S)*MGZMD 46-73. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Iton, Richard. 2000. Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture and the American Left. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Jerome Robbins’ “Ballets: U.S.A.” 1959. Programme. Piccadilly Theatre, London.Google Scholar
“John Jones.” n.d. MobBallet.org. Accessed September 17, 2017. http://mobballet.org/index.php/2017/01/13/john-jones/.Google Scholar
Joost, Henry, and Lipes, Jody Lee, dir. 2010. NY Export: Opus Jazz (film). Bar /Suozzi Productions, Thirteen for WNET.org, Supermarché and Act Zero Films.Google Scholar
Jowitt, Deborah. 2005. Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theatre, His Dance. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Kisselgoff, Anna. 2005. “Leaping a Generation Gap to Revive a Robbins Ballet.” New York Times, April 28. Accessed March 31, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/28/arts/dance/leaping-a-generation-gap-to-revive-a-robbins-ballet.html.Google Scholar
Kodat, Catherine Gunther. 2015. Don't Act, Just Dance: The Metapolitics of Cold War Culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Kosstrin, Hannah. 2018. Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kowal, Rebekah J. 2010. How to Do Things with Dance: Performing Change in Postwar America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Krenn, Michael L. 1996. “‘Unfinished Business’: Segregation and U.S. Diplomacy at the 1958 World's Fair.” Diplomatic History 20 (4): 591–612.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawrence, Greg. 2007. Dance with Demons: The Life of Jerome Robbins. New York: Putnam.Google Scholar
Lenart, Camelia. 2016. “Dancing Art and Politics behind the Iron Curtain: Martha Graham's 1962 Tours to Yugoslavia and Poland.” Dance Chronicle 39 (2): 197–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lhamon, W. T. Jr. (1990) 2002. Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lucas, W. Scott. 2003. “Beyond Freedom, Beyond Control, Beyond the Cold War: Approaches to American Culture and the State-Private Network.” In The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960, edited by Kabbendam, Hans and Smith, Giles Scott, 53–72. New York: Frank Cass Publishers.Google Scholar
Lynne, Gillian. 1961. “The Technique of Ballets: U.S.A.” Dancing Times 613 (October): 32–34.Google Scholar
Martin, John. 1958. “Dance: Robbins.” New York Times, September 14. Accessed September 30, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/1958/09/14/archives/dance-robbins-choreographers-new-ballets-usa-home-from-abroad-weeks.html?searchResultPosition=1.Google Scholar
Martin, John. 1961. “New York Sees Jerome Robbins’ Company in Works Created Especially for European Audiences.” New York Times, October 29. Accessed September 17, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/1961/10/29/archives/dance-ballets-usa-new-york-sees-jerome-robbins-company-in-works.html?searchResultPosition=8.Google Scholar
“Miscellaneous.” n.d. (S) Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) File (S)*MGZMD 46-192. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Monod, David. 2001. “Disguise, Containment and the Porgy & Bess Revival of 1952–1956.” Journal of American Studies 35 (2): 275–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Gay. 2006. A Game for Dancers: Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years, 1945–1960. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Nye, Joseph S. 2008. “Public Diplomacy and Soft Power.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616 (March): 94–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortiz, Aimee. 2019. “Emmett Till Memorial Has a New Sign. This Time, It's Bulletproof.” New York Times, October 20. Accessed November 26, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/us/emmett-til-bulletproof-sign.html?searchResultPosition=5.Google Scholar
“Patricia Dunn, 60, A Dancer in Films and on Broadway.” 1990. New York Times, May 5. Accessed January 7, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/05/obituaries/patricia-dunn-60-a-dancer-in-films-and-on-broadway.html.Google Scholar
Phillips, Victoria. 2020. Martha Graham's Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prevots, Naima. 1998. Dance for Export: Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Prickett, Stacey, and Tsintziloni, Steriani. 2016. “Dancing National Ideologies: The Athens Festival during the Cold War.” Congress on Research in Dance Conference Proceedings 2016 (Fall): 306–314. Accessed June 2, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1017/cor.2016.41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, choreo. n.d.a. “The Background of ‘Ballets: U.S.A.’” (S) Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) Clippings File (S)*MGZMD 46-8. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, choreo. n.d.b. Interplay (film). Accessed November 12, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozv3WfKTzDc.Google Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, choreo. 1959a. Letter to Robert Schnitzer, June 5, 1959. (S) Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) Correspondence File (S)*MGZMD 46-27. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, choreo. 1959b. Letter to Robert Schnitzer, June 18, 1959. (S) Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) Correspondence File (S)*MGZMD 46-30. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, choreo. 1961a. Events, Ballets: U.S.A. (dance film). *MGZHB 8-90 JRC. Jerome Robbins Dance Collection, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, choreo. 1961b. “I get great ideas for dance.” Ballets: U.S.A. Files, Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) (S)*MGZMD 46-59. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, choreo. (1959) 1990. Moves: A Ballet about Relationships (dance film). New York City Ballet. February 17. *MGZIA-4-6395 JRC. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Robbins, Jerome, and Brinson, Peter. 1959. “That Was Ballets: U.S.A. That Was.” Dance and Dancers, November 7–8.Google Scholar
Rossen, Rebecca. 2014. Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern Dance and Postmodern Dance. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savit, Eli. 2019. “Detroit's Schools Are Unconstitutionally Unequal.” New York Times, November 7. Accessed November 26, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/opinion/detroit-public-schools.html?searchResultPosition=11.Google Scholar
Schnitzer, Robert. 1959. Letter to Jerome Robbins, June 23. Hayward, Leland, 1902–1971. Records of Ballets: U.S.A. (Company) (S)*MGZMD 46-31. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Scholick, Jennie. 2018. “Poetry and Politics in Jerome Robbins's Age of Anxiety.” Dance Chronicle 41 (1): 78–98.Google Scholar
Shanley, John P. 1960. “Ballet on Television.” New York Times, January 10. Accessed November 1, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/1960/01/10/archives/ballet-on-television-jerome-robbins-discusses-specialized-demands.html?searchResultPosition=1.Google Scholar
Siegel, Marcia B. 1979. The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Stearns, Marshall W., and Stearns, Jean. (1968) 1978. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: Schirmer.Google Scholar
Taubman, Howard. 1958. “Brussels: Talented Youth, Jerome Robbins and the Julliard Orchestra Do U.S. Proud.” New York Times, July 17. Accessed November 9, 201.9 https://www.nytimes.com/1958/07/17/archives/brussels-talented-youth-jerome-robbins-ballet-and-the-juilliard.html?searchResultPosition=1.Google Scholar
Teachout, Terry. 2000. “Jazz and Classical Music: To the Third Stream and Beyond.” In The Oxford Companion to Jazz, edited by Kichner, Bill, 343–356. London: Oxford University. Press.Google Scholar
Vaill, Amanda, ed. 2019. Jerome Robbins by Himself: Selections from His Letters, Journals, Drawings, Photographs, and an Unfinished Memoir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Verso, Eddie. 2018. Interviewed by the author by phone. May 6.Google Scholar
Von Eschen, Penny M. 2004. Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wells, Elizabeth A. 2011. “West Side Story”: Cultural Perspectives on an American Musical. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, Ltd.Google Scholar
Whitfield, Stephen J. 1996. The Culture of the Cold War. 2nd ed. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, Matt, and Farrell, Anna. 1958. A Ballet In Sneakers: Jerome Robbins and Jazz Export (film). U.S. State Department.Google Scholar