Dance for Export

At the height of the Cold War in 1954, President Eisenhower inaugurated a program of cultural exchange that sent American dancers and other artists to political "hot spots" overseas. This peacetime gambit by a warrior hero was a resounding success. Among the artists chosen for international duty were Jose Limon, who led his company on the first government-sponsored tour of South America; Martha Graham, whose famed ensemble crisscrossed 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 of the Soviet Union in 1962. 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. Naima Prevots draws on an array of previously unexamined sources, including formerly classified State Department documents, congressional committee hearings, and the minutes of the Dance Panel, to reveal the inner workings of "Eisenhower's Program," the complex set of political, fiscal, and artistic interests that shaped it, and the ever-uneasy relationship between government and the arts in the US. CONTRIBUTORS: Eric Foner.

ISBN 0819564648   DEWEY edition DC21 ISBN13 9780819564641 (What's this?)   Pages 192 Publisher University Press of New England   Volumes 1 Imprint Wesleyan University Press   Weight (grammes) 413 Format Paperback   Published in Hanover Publication date 30 Apr 2001   Height (mm) 178 Writer of introduction Eric Foner   Width (mm) 254 Library of Congress GV1580   Spine width (mm) 13 DEWEY 792.8   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

"Prevots mines the wealth of primary source documents available, from accounts of Congressional hearings and foreign service dispatches to Boston Symphony archives, to unearth a wealth of information on the creation of American cultural diplomacy through dance. Her clear, concise, and accessible book integrates appropriate historical material relating to the artists and key players which gives the text a deep contextual richness." -- Shelley C. Berg, Southern Methodist University

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