Stéphanie Gonçalves - "Dance as a Weapon": Ballet and Propaganda in the Cold

War, France-Great-Britain, 1947-1968.

Introduction: Dance, a political art

Ballet has been connected to political powers since its creation in the Italian and
French Courts of the 15th Century. It was a noble art, reserved for men, focusing on virility
and elegance, ability and presence, qualities which were essential for the courtisan and the
honnête homme.1 Through ages, ballet continued to be linked to political spheres, sometimes
as an anticonformist position. For instance, in the 1930's in the USA, the New Dance Group
was created to raise social awareness.2 Their motto was “dance is a weapon” which definitely
put dance out of the well-spread stereotypes of white tutus, pink pointes and frail ballerinas.
Furthermore, dance was not only just a façade for idealized stories, but as such it was used as
a diplomatic tool becoming part of cultural strategies in the context of the Cold War.
The ambition to propagate an ideological model through the soft power3 of culture in
the Cold War has been underlined by several researchers.4 Fine arts, cinema, music and
music, were largely used by the Soviets and the Americans, because conventional weapons,
and particularly the atomic weapons, could not have been used.5 The atomic threat revealed
the extreme creativity of both superpowers, mobilizing everything they could to serve their
foreign policy, preferably areas they mastered. The role of dance has been discussed in
several mains studies revealing the lack of research about the European ground. First, Naima
Prevots’ Dance for export6 explains the role of American dance during the Cold War, pursued
by Clare Croft7 and Victoria Philips Gueduld8; Anthony Shay's book about folk dance in a

1
The courtisan was the ideal man of the XVIth century, followed by the concept of honnête homme in the
XVIIth century. See for example, N. Faret, L'honnête homme ou l'art de plaire à la Cour, Paris, 1630.
2
B. Rosen, The New Dance Group : Movement for a Change, London, Taylor&Francis, 2000 ; E. Graff,
Stepping left : Dance and Politics in the New York City, 1928-1942, Durham Duke University Press, 1997 ; V.P.
Geduld, « Performing Communism in the American Dance : Culture, Politics and the New Dance Group »,
American Communist History, n°1, 2008, pp.39-65 ; S. Prickett, « Dance and the Workers' Struggle », Dance
Research : The Journal of the Society for Dance Research, n°1, 1990, pp. 47-61.
3
J. Nye, Soft Power: the means to success in world politics, New York, Public Affairs, 2004.
4
S.J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 ; F. Stonor
Saunders, Who Paid the Piper ? The CIA and the cultural cold war, Londres, Granta Books, 1999 ; D. Caute,
The dancers defects, The struggle for cultural supremacy during the cold war, Oxford, Oxford University press,
2003 ; J.-F. Sirinelli, G.-H. Soutou (dir.), Culture et Guerre froide, Paris, PUPS, 2008 ; See also the review
made by G. Liska, « The Politics of "Cultural Diplomacy " : The Soviet Cultural Offensive. by F. C. Barghoorn;
Communist Propaganda Methods: A Case Study on Czechoslovakia. by Vladimir Reisky de Dubnic », in World
Politics, Vol. 14, No. 3, Apr., 1962, pp. 532-541.
5
T. Shaw, « The Politics of Cold War Culture », Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 3, n°3, Fall 2001, pp. 59-76.
6
N. Prevots, Dance for export, Cultural Diplomacy and the Cold War, Middletown, Wesleyan University Press,
1998.
7
Clare Croft, « Ballet nations : the New York City Ballet’s 1962 US State Department –Sponsored Tour of the
Soviet Union », Theatre Journal, Volume 61, Number 3, October 2009, pp. 421-442.

1
political perspective9; and recently Christina Ezrahi's work on the Soviet ballet, Swans of the
Kremlin10. These researches are a major progress in the study of the relationship of dance and
politics. Apart from the repertoire, they also emphasize this link through the complexity of
institutions and actors involved, and also through the possible impacts of such tours. The
process of traveling itself is also interesting: going abroad with a hundred of dancers was
never an everyday phenomenon, but always a striking and extraordinary event, all the more
when Soviets troupes visited Western capitals right in the middle of the Cold War. Ballet
offers some advantages others arts do not vis-à-vis its international use. It is a mix of visual
and acoustic art, which mobilized many senses and sensitivities. The fact that no language is
required to understand it, which means that no translation is needed, is another trump that was
not ignored by artists and civil servants in charge of the tours.11 Some “messages” can though
be shaped, through the esthetic or through the narrativity of some ballets.
In this paper, I will focus only on some aspects of this cultural war, with a focus on
French and British ballets, which have not been studied yet. The first aspect will be an
analysis of the actors at stake in the outgoing and incoming tours in France and Britain. The
second part will be devoted to the practical aspects of France and Great-Britain ballet
diplomacy, with a short focus on dancers, such as the British star Margot Fonteyn or the
French one Claude Bessy.

1. A functional approach in ballet: highlighting the actors at stake, France

When it comes to the organization of the tours, many different levels ranging from public
to private ones were mobilized in relation with the ballet tours in France and in Great-Britain.
They can be defined as “traditional” organizations as they are part of the cultural and artistic

8
Victoria Phillips Geduld, « Dancing Diplomacy: Martha Graham and the Strange Commodity of Cold-War
Cultural Exchange in Asia, 1955 and 1974 », Dance Chronicle, vol.33, n°1, 2010, pp. 44-81.
9
A. Shay, Choreographing politics, State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power, Middeltown,
Wesleyan University Press, 2002.
10
C. Ezrahi, Swans of the Kremlin, Ballet and Power in Soviet Russia, Pittsburgh, University of Pittsburgh Press,
2012.
11
TNA (The National Archives, London), FO371/122813, Visit to UK by Mr Bulganin and Mr Kruschchev
from Soviet Union, File NS1052/84, 18th February 1956, where « Mr Dodds Parker has suggested that the Soviet
leaders see a performance of Shakespeare instead of ballet or opera ». It is said : « But as Messrs. Bulganin and
Kruschchev speak no English, they may find this tedious. ». As a reply, ballet is finally prefered to theatre :
« Lord Reading [in charge of coordinating the visit in the Foreign Office] agrees with the third pargraph above.
British ballet is of a direct style to Russian ballet and Lord Reading thinks that the Russians would probably
appreciate it ».

2
exchanges in general, like painting exhibitions, theatre, films or literature and can be seen as
the increase of State control over cultural exchanges.12
Political importance of these exchanges is underlined by the fact that leaders of the
respective countries were often involved in the negotiations, as well as were the foreign
ministries of each country. Sometimes, their help in the negotiations – or on the contrary, their
impediment – were decisive: in May 1954, visit of the Soviet Ballet13 was cancelled due to
the battle of Diên-Biên-Phû in French Indochina, which serves as an edifying example.
French government, referring to public security, feared for demonstrations by anti-
communists and veterans inside and outside the Opéra de Paris.14 This visit was the first one
of the Soviet ballet outside USSR at this scale (one hundred dancers) and was a failure for
Soviet propaganda (which considered it as a snub) as well as French-Soviet diplomacy. Public
opinion was partly surprised of the cancellation. This can be interpreted as an act of
censorship by the Communist Party members. Many letters from unsatisfied and angry people
can be found in the French archives. Some called the cancellation a “scandal”, something that
France, “the country with human rights”, could not do, because it means the Soviet could not
perform at all. Some people considered this as a normal action as French were engaged in war
and could not tolerate Soviets coming to perform and entertain themselves in Paris. The
cancellation became a political issue – une affaire d'Etat – even though it should have been a
brilliant event of welcoming Soviets in Paris, in a peaceful exchange. This cancellation
affected the mind of French, Soviets and even British for many years. When the British
considered organizing an exchange with the Bolshoi ballet in 1956, they had in mind the Paris
“fiasco” of 1954.15 The Soviet dancers found a consolation prize in the fact that they could
dance in West-Berlin on their trip back to USSR.
One level below, we can find specific official organs sometimes established
particularly for cultural exchanges. Such organizations that were at the intersection of art and

12
See T. Gomart, Double détente..., p. 219. Bilateral agreeements for cultural exchanges with the Soviet Union
will be signed later.
13
In France, they were introduced as « Ballets soviétiques du Kirov et du Bolchoï ».
14
AN-P, 19900035/36, spectacles de Gala 1954-72, Ballets soviétiques, 1954. Archives in the Bibliothèque de
l'Opéra de Paris, OPERA.PRESSE.20., 1954. “Hommage aux Ballets Russes”, Magazine France-URSS, ,Mai
1954, n° 104, p. 3.
15
TNA, FO371/122983, N. Ponomareva has been charged with shoplifting, Letter from Sir Hayter, Moscow
Embassy, to Foreign Office, 3rd september 1956: « I think we cannot safely ignore the clumsy hint of blackmail
in regard to the visit of the Bolshoi ballet. I do not think even the Soviet governement is likely to cut off its nose
to spite its face quite to this extent, particularly after the fiasco of the Boslhoi visit to Paris. But no doubt they
will try to keep us on tenterhooks until the last minute ». TNA, BW2/540, Minutes of the Soviet Relations
Committee, 1955-1957, 2nd meeting, 10th May 1955, Appendix A, Paper A, p.2: “Owing to the cancellation by
the French governement of the Ballets performances in Paris, the French governement lost heavily (probably
about £25000) since they received no proceeds to of-set the Comédie Française expenses in Moscow».

3
diplomacy can be found in both countries, France and Great-Britain. In France, the
Association Française d'Action Artistique (AFAA) was the main public actor organizing all
the cultural exchanges under the auspices of the Foreign Office.16 The AFAA had links to
many other ministries such as the Ministry of Education, but was directly connected to the
Ministry of Cultural Affairs17 and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Also, the Commission
mixte franco-soviétique was one of the governmental organs concretely negotiating terms of
the incoming and outgoing companies. 18 This cultural commission also negotiated the
agreement on bilateral cultural exchange between the two countries.19 In parallel to these
public agencies, there was a private organ supporting mainly the Soviet ballet troupes coming
to France: the Agence Littéraire et Artistique Parisienne (ALAP), together with a man called
Fabrice Lumbroso 20 with his Spectacles Lumbroso. 21 This association was composed of
fellow-travelers who were interested in spreading the Soviet vision of ballet and conscious of
the message Soviets wanted to transmit. Thus, they considered Soviet artistic culture to be
superior to the American one. Indeed, 80% of the Franco-Soviet exchanges were organized by
the ALAP.22 Further down, personal and intimate links also form an important, but often
forgotten part related to exchanges. Fabrice Lumbroso and her secretary, Janine Ringuet, were
in the center of the organization.23 The Communist Party in France was also at the time an
important factor in the political and social fields24 and its influence cannot be forgotten in the
context of artistic exchanges. The Association France-URSS, which was a product of fellow-
travelers, but also supported by the French Communist Party (PCF), organized about 10% of
the shows in France.25

16
Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives in La Courneuve (MAEA-Paris), DGRCST, Cabinet du directeur
général, 1948-1968, Carton 24, AFAA 1946-1968 ; Archives Nationales, Pierrefitte (AN-P), 19840759,
Ministère Culture, Direction développement culturel, Service des affaires internationales, carton 13, AFAA
/19900035/29, Commissions et organismes auxquels participe l'Administration Générale, AFAA, Tournées,
Direction artistique. See also A. Angrémy, La diplomatie culturelle de la France, Paris, Conseil de la
coopération culturelle du conseil de l'Europe, 1970, p. 70.
17
From 1959, the head was André Malraux.
18
AN-F, 19840759, Ministère de la Culture, direction du développement culturel, service des affaires
internationales (1961-1982), 201 : URSS.
19
M.-P. Rey, La tentation du rapprochement, France et URSS à l'heure de la détente (1964-1994), Paris,
Publications de la Sorbonne, 1991, p. 279.
20
M.-P. Rey, La tentation du rapprochement,... p. 296 et T. Gomart, Double détente, Les relations franco-
soviétiques de 1958 à 1964, Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne, 2003, p. 84-89.
21
F. Lumbroso, Mémoires d'un homme de spectacles, Paris, Lieu commun, 1991. In the archives, see AN-P,
19840759, Ministère Culture, Direction développement culturel, Service des affaires internationales, carton 13,
AFAA / Ambassades.
22
M-P. Rey, La tentation..., p. 297.
23
T. Gomart, Double détente..., p.89.
24
S. Courtois, M. Lazar, Histoire du Parti communiste en France, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1995.
25
M-P. Rey, La tentation..., p .297.

4
 In Britain, the British Council was the institution devoted to cultural exchanges since
1934.26 For the Soviet exchanges specifically, the Soviet Relations Committee (SRC) of the
British Council was always in charge of the artistic exchanges with the Soviet Union.27 The
SRC had been created in 1955 especially to prevent friendship societies from having too big a
share of cultural exchanges. Friendship societies were considered by the British Council as
“undesirable agents” of the Soviet regime.28 As T. Shaw states29, “the British Council and its
offshoot, the Soviet Relations Committee (SRC), used "friendship" as a political weapon
behind the Iron Curtain”. “Friendship” here referred to scientific, educational and artistic
exchanges, which were previously organized by the friendship societies.30 The paradox - and
the strength of the British strategy - lies in the fact that the SRC was “the official
'governmental' organization (…) in an officially 'non-governmental' body, the British
Council”.31 But the SRC was deleted in 1959, partly due to Soviet suspicion towards SRC
which, from their perspective, had become a western political tool. 32 Inside the British
Council, another organ was organized, the Drama and Dance Advisory panel that took charge
of the coordination of the artistic tours. Issues related to incoming and outgoing artistic tours
were discussed in this body.33
In Britain, too, private actors functioned in parallel with public institutions. Famous
English impresario Victor Hochhauser and his wife Lilian were fundamental for the
successful artistic exchanges.34 Generally, impresarios, such as Sol Hurok in the USA35, were

26
P. M. Taylor, The Projection of Britain, British overseas publicity and propaganda, 1919-1939, Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 125.
27
TNA, FO 371/116816, Anglo-soviet cultural relations, composition of the committee on Anglo-soviet cultural
exchanges, 1955 ; FO 371/116817, Anglo-soviet cultural relations, committee on Anglo-soviet cultural
exchanges, 1955 ; FO 371/116818, Formation of Soviet Relations Committee of the British Council and record
of their meetings and activities in promoting, Anglo-Soviet cultural exchanges, 1955 ; FO 371/116819, Soviet
relations committee meeting, 1955 ; FO 371/116820, Soviet exchanges, sept. 1955; FO 924/1209, Anglo-Soviet
cultural relations, report on activities of Soviet Relations Committee of British Council, records of meetings,
1957 ; FO 924/1210, Anglo-Soviet cultural relations, report on activities of Soviet Relations Committee of
British Council, records of meetings, 1957 ; FO 924/1211, Anglo-Soviet cultural relations, report on activities of
Soviet Relations Committee of British Council, records of meetings, 1957.
28
TNA, FO371/116672, Activities of the British soviet friendship society, cultural exchanges and visits by
academics, 1955, confidential, october, « try and render the Societies ineffective. ». See also, TNA, BW2 540
Minutes of the soviet relations committee 1955 to 1957, 6th meeting, 28th july 1955, exchanges with the Soviet
union from 1st July 1955 : Paper B confidential : Reciprocal exchanges of drama 28th July 1955.
29
T. Shaw, « The Politics of Cold War Culture », Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 3, n°3, Fall 2001, pp. 59-76.
30
L. Nicholas, « Fellow travellers... », p.85, p.94.
31
A. Watanabe, « Cultural drives at the periphery : Britain's experiencies », History in Focus, 10, Spring 2006,
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/cold/articles/watanabe.html, consulted February, 19th2013.
32
A. Wanatabe, « Cultural drives... ».
33
TNA, BW120/1, Drama and Dance advisory committee's minutes of meetings, 1939-1957 ; BW120/2 drama
and dance advisory committee's minutes of meetings 1958-60 ; BW120/3 drama and dance advisory committee's
minutes of meetings 1961-1965.
34
Biographic File Hocchauser, Victoria & Albert Museum (VAMA), Theatre and Performance Archives,
London .

5
at the core of networks because Soviet were willing to negotiate with them. We have always
to keep in mind that these exchanges permitted to gain international money which could be
exchanged, instead of rubles, which could not.36 The financial profit is also another good
reason to tour, but not the main, as the Western public was massively present, but the money
was mainly earned by Western firms. In France, during the period 1953-1968, almost 4
million French saw Soviet artists, including circus, theatre etc...37 The Palais des Sports, with
the seating of 5000, became a regular staging place for Soviet troupes.
Finally, the third main actor, besides to public organizations and impresarios, were the
artistic companies. The ballet of the Opéra de Paris and the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, becoming
Royal Ballet in 195738, cannot be ignored because they have their say: their dancers are
touring. Thus, the strategic and economical aims from the public institutions and impresarios
cannot be seen just as cold and austere plans in the Cold War confrontations. The artistic
dimension, with an inner artistic chronology has to be considered: when touring abroad, a
ballet company show its best talented professional, the dancers, that have their own objectives
in their career. The company as a whole also has its own will to show the ballets in which its
dancers shine. That is why, in the long negotiations between the artistic, political and
economical actors, the repertoire is at the heart. The idea is to show the best of a company,
finding a balance between modern works – which are the labels of the company, grounded it
in the present and future – and classical works, mooring it in the long tradition of ballet, from
the XVth century onwards. Thus, the Royal Ballet is going to present abroad many Frederik
Ahston’s ballets or Mac Millan’s ballets, and at the same time, classical pieces such as The
Sleeping Beauty or La Fille Mal Gardée. For the repertoire, the public has to be taken into
account, as a Soviet public’s taste will differ from an American one. For example, the Soviet
public will prefer a realistic and narrative ballet rather than an abstract and modern one. The
balance is always fragile as the idea is to seduce and to please the public as well as to project
a “national” image of the ballet abroad.

35
S. Mikkonen, « Winning Hearts and Minds? Soviet Music in the Cold War Struggle against the West »,
Fairclough, Pauline (ed.) Twentieth Century Music and Politics, Farnham, Ashgate, 2012, p 14-15.
36
LAB8/3167 : Issue of labour permits for soviet artistes (sic), Letter from R.L. Speaight, Direcotr of East West
contacts, Foreign Office, to F. Pickford, Ministry of Labour, December 14th, 1964 : « At present the Russians are
sending here dance groups, orchestras and individual performers who earn high fees which are of course readily
transferable ; while British performers in the Soviet Union are often obliged to accept quite inadequate payment,
mostrly in blocked roubles ». This was confirmed in an interview by Sir John Tooley, march 2011.
37
T. Gomart, Double détente, p. 89.
38
Janet Sinclair, Leo Kersley « Royal Ballet », in Philippe Le Moal (dir.), Dictionnaire de la Danse, Paris,
Larousse, 2008, pp.375-376.

6
 In the following diagram, we can expose the triangle of actors, having in mind that hard
and long negotiations are al ways taking place, in case of outgoing as well as incoming tours.

Public
institutions
(POLITIC)

Ballet tours

Ballet
Impresarios companies
(ECONOMIC) (ARTISTIC)

Figure 1 : The triangle of actors in French and British Ballet tours.

2. French and British ballet tours in practice: objectives and reality

2.1. Objectives

Decision to expand French and British ballet tours abroad in spite of high costs and heavy
labor can be explained by three main reasons. First, the will of prestige and affirmation. The
Opera de Paris and the Royal Ballet companies wanted to show, as the Americans or Soviets,
their ability to dance, and, at the same time, their capacity of strength and power through
dancing bodies. But French and British have two different traditions and, thus, to different
goals. The école française is the oldest tradition in the world, from the creation of Académie
Royale de Danse in 1661 by Louis XIV. French still wanted, after WWII, to be respected as a
major company in the world, even if the Opéra de Paris suffered from the Collaboration
during the War. It is a will to keep its place of the first company of the world. For the Royal
Ballet, the British school was born in the 1930’s, in the aftermath of the Ballets Russes, and
the idea is more to gain legitimacy in the field and to appear as a major company in the world.

7
 The second reason to tour is to reinforce the relations with its allies. If we map the French
and English tours39, it is clear that a majority of tours are organized in the West itself. These
negotiated tours strengthen the cultural links with allies of the same block and also permitted
to have, each time, an accustomed audience. For the French and English, the aim is not to be
shadowed by the two blocks but to assured or reassured their cultural place on the
international scene. Paradoxically, the Cold War is also the time of decolonization but the ex-
Empire of both French and British are not the geographical targets for ballet touring.
The third reason is an attempt to pacify the international relations. The discourses of the
ballet companies’ administrations often underline the possibility of breaks in the international
Cold War in the cultural field.40 This can be linked to the Soviet rhetoric of culture through
the frontiers, in the ideological perspective of Kominform and fight for peace. A parallel
between non-political ballet companies and Soviets can thus be made, stressing in fact the
cultural exchanges as non-political. In reality, all of them were political but the artistic sides
did not want to consider them as political, because it was degrading and injurious for them,
placing their art in the political field. If they publically admitted their tours were organized by
diplomats, it is clear that the ‘art for art’ sake was questioned.

2.2 Practices and receptions

But how, in reality these tours were seen abroad? An analysis of French and British press
let us note that the “success” was big everywhere these companies toured. 41 In fact, a
successful tour was a self-assurance for both countries to show their own citizens that the
money had been invested well: they were know seen as major companies in the world and the
tours are “profitable exports”.42 The Dancing Times, in September 1961, after the Royal
Ballet Tour is Moscow titled: “A rewarding experience”, showing that the tour was a “glory”
one.43
“The enthusiastic young people from the gallery cried themselves hoarse and exhausted their supply of
flowers, and official speeches were exchanged on the stage. And at a reception given that same night by the

39
This work has been done for my Ph.D. dissertation, thanks to Tatiana Debroux, post-doctorate in Human
Geography at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. See http://igeat.ulb.ac.be/fr/equipe/details/person/tatiana-
debroux/ The final maps will be presented at the conference.
40
See OPERA.ARCH20, Tournées, Discours de M. Hirsch for the Opera de Paris. For Royal Ballet, see Royal
Opera House collections, Minutes of the Ballet sub-committee and Minutes of the Board.
41
See general as well as specialized press such as Libération, Le Monde, Le Figaro, The Times but also Dancers
and Dancers, The Dancing Time etc…
42
Lilian Moore, « Radnom notes on Sadler’s Wells », The Dancing Times, p.220.
43
Natalia Roslavleva, « A rewarding experience, The Royal Ballet in Moscow », The Dancing Times, September
1961, pp.734737.

8
Royal Ballet, Mr. Pakhomov, Director of the Bolshoi Theater, presented special personal badges of honour to
five representatives of the British company (…). So far, only three people from the Bolshoi Theatre had been
thus honoured”.44
La Fille Mal Gardée was considered has the big success of the tour. This is the story of a
young peasant that has to be married with someone but chooses another wit young man,
which is a narrative story that suited to the Soviet standards. The realistic décor and costumes
pleased the Soviet audience, as well as the touch of humor (there is a wearing-fancy dress at e
moment), which was not often seen in Soviet ballets. But the reality is sometimes more
nuanced and the critics can be sometimes rough. In the same tour, Mikhail Gabovich, a
former Bolshoi premier danseur, writing in Soviet Culture and Gayevsky in the Literary
Gazette “classified Rinaldo and Armida and La Péri as decadent impressionist poems”.45
About dancers’ technique themselves, a Vaganova46 teacher said “they have no back and no
arms”, which is definitely very severe to British dancers.
The success is not big just in the USSR, it is also the case in the USA where the Royal
ballet often goes since the end of the 1940’s. The success is often personalized in one dancer,
and this is Margot Fonteyn, welcomed by a “thunderous tribute”47, a recurrent appreciation in
all our research period.48
“Her success here has been wide-spread and general and is by no means confined to the professional
balletomanes and dance students. Several national magazines have already devoted long articles to eulogies and
photographs of the ballerina”.49
The fact that the success is not confined to elites and expert circles reinforce also Britain to
continue to organize tours abroad, showing that ballet is not an elite art. But the modern
ballets of de Valois, Checkmate and Job did not meet the critics’ expectations, considered too
“provocative, too literary and too derivative”.50 The success has, here again, to be nuanced.
The classical images and ballets are often more appreciated, emphasizing the idea of a

44
id., p. 734.
45
id., p.735.
46
Agrippina Vaganova (1879-1951) was a Russian pedagogue and dancer. She teached her own pedagogy,
moving away from the gracious French school and preferring a more muscular strenght and impulse. See
Elisabeth Schwartz and Elisabeth Souritz, « Vaganova Agrippina (1879-1951) », in Philippe Le Moal (dir.),
Dictionnaire de la Danse, Paris, Larousse, 2008, p.434.
47
Lilian Moore, « Radnom notes on Sadler’s Wells », The Dancing Times, January 1950, pp.217-220.
48
See also Lilian Moore, « Royal Ballet in New York », The Dancing Times, October 1960, pp.24-26 or Lilian
Moore, « Royal Ballet, New York Season », The Dancing Times, June 1963, pp.520-521.
49
id., p.219.
50
id., p.217.

9
traditional image projected abroad. This remark is also valid for the French ballet tours, which
encourage us to see ballet tours are a promotion of tradition.51

2.3 Dancers as cultural passers

The tour in general is also a momentum in the dancers’ careers, seen as cultural passers.
For example, in the Royal Ballet tour in 1961, the dancers took classes with Asaf Messerer, a
leading Bolshoi teacher.52 The classes permitted to dancers to gain skills, such as a stronger
back or suppler arms. They came back to Great-Britain with these new skills, showing that the
Cold War was not just a cultural confrontation but also a cultural cooperation when seeing it
from a history from below perspective. Dancers are cultural passers not only on the ballet
perspective but they are the happy few privileged persons to cross over the Iron Curtain. In a
tour to Bucharest in January 1960, Beryl Grey and Bryan Ashbridge were the first British
dancers to perform there. They were witnesses of their time, embedded as journalists,
emphasizing the idea of cooperation:
“The town of Bucharest is very flat and a great deal of the old part appears to been pulled down ; most of the
remaining ancient buildings being very beautiful churches, of which there are a great number. They found the
hotel confortable and the food good. The thing that perhaps struck them forcibly was the absence of cars and the
quietness at night”.53

The position of dancers as privileged observers can also be seen in the reports written by
diplomats in Embassies and autobiographies of dancers, but not only on good terms. Margot
Fonteyn thus explains her bad experience in the USSR in the Royal Ballet tour in 1961, and
the fact that she hated the Soviet ambiance.
« The tour itself was a curious experience. I had expected the Soviet Union to be more advanced, and
therefore better, because the country had been communist for longer than the other "Iron Curtain" states I had
visited. The first and lasting surprise was to find that, without wishing to be impolite about it, everything
concerned with everyday living was worse. »54

« Althought I wouldn't have missed the Russian tour for anything in the world, I did miss certain comfort
(though the people who most disliked life in Russia were on stage crew, the British workers). One day, sitting
over a very inadequate lunch, I was handed a cable. It was from Venice and read: « Drinking your health in
champagne at Harry's Bar stop Wish you were here love Tug and John. ». They could not have guess how very
much more I wished I was there ».55

51
The classical book E.Hobsbawm may be useful in that case: Hobsbawm E., Ranger T., The invention of
tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
52
Noël Goodwin, « The Royal Ballet – Away », Dance and Dancers, August 1961, p.8.
53
Bryan Ashbridge, « First British Dancers in Bucharest », Dance and Dancers, January 1960, pp.21-22.
54
Margot Fonteyn, Autobiography, Londres, Hamish Hamilton, 1975, p.198.
55
id., p. 202.

10
 She did not liked either the Soviet pressure on them, being watched everywhere at
anytime:

« The first morning we were there, two of the younger boys in our company were arrested right in front of
the Kirov Theatre while trying to photograph the poster, printed in Russian, which announced our appearance.
They were soon released, and I felt sure it must have been a routine move to warn us all to behave
circumspectly ».56

This attitude was not exposed publically at the time, as this was not very nice to Russians:
on the BBC, she has a very positive discourse on her experience, making her a perfect cultural
ambassador of British “nationalism” in ballet abroad.
The British are not the only one to be cultural passers. French dancers also were, as proved
by the autobiography of Claude Bessy.57 She also related the bad aspects of being in the
USSR :

« After rang off, I went down to the hotel hall where my charming interpreter told me almost verbatim the
conversation with my mother! We were, of course, wiretapped, it was the Cold War ».58

But she also was pleased, as a fifteen-years-old dancer, to go to the USA, a dream for her,
a kind of “summer holidays” for the young girl just going out from the war she was:

« Freedom was here. After years of privation, I discover the abundance, the shops, the appetizing and hearty
foods, the parads and streets parties, the mythic America. 45 dancers on a spree, all the Stars (…), premiers
danseurs, grands sujets, petits sujets etc… »59

« The solidarity between French and American dancers existed and the mouth to mouth fully worked. On the
advices of our camrades, we took the ballet classes at the American Ballet Theatre, with Balanchine, on
60
Broadway. At this time, we were touring without our professors and we had to quickly find a class ».

Many others examples could be taken, showing also the cooperation and intimacy of
dancers in the cultural cold war, highlighting that dancers were privileged professionals,
witnesses of their time.

56
id., p. 199.
57
Claude Bessy, La danse pour passion, Paris, Jean-Claude Lattès, 2004.
58
id. p.42.
59
id.,p.42.
60
id., p.43.

11
 Conclusion

So, what did we learn from this panorama of French and British ballet tours abroad in
the early Cold War?

First, the « multilayered » effects – political, social and artistic effects - as Ezrahi asserts in
the Soviet point of view61, can be seen from the Western point of view. The first observation
is the general trend of intensification of exchanges and a greater desire from Western
governments to control them, with diverse public actors. From a governmental angle, ballet
crystallized tensions between East and West, for instance, in the cancellation of the Soviet
ballet in May 1954 in Paris, called “Affaires des Ballets Soviétiques” in the French press. For
the British side, because of the Hungarian events in November 1956, the Sadler’s Wells Ballet
canceled its tour to Moscow and Leningrad because of a political rupture between the two
countries. This affair also took place during the Suez crisis62 which added fuel to the fire.
Definitely, theses exchanges were at the core of politics and tributaries of the political events:
if there was a crisis, a tour could be cancelled becoming a victim or an easy scapegoat. It
could be means for pressure or political blackmailing.
The term exchange, in the “cultural exchanges”, can here be seen in the boxing
definition: a series of blows between adversaries. On the contrary, during the Détente (1962-
1975), the discourse of the ballet as an art that softened political exchanges was emphasized,
especially in the usual Soviet rhetoric of friendship between peoples. The balance was fragile.
French and English governments serving as hosts, needed to deploy their own cultural
strategy to face the Soviets. Thus the bilateral cultural agreements were signed. They ensured
reciprocity and ensured that Soviets were not the only beneficials. Apart from art, political
realities seemed as present as ever.
So, ballet can be seen as a cultural diplomatic tool, part of a high-political strategic plan,
because it gathers nationalistic aims through the repertoire, with the idea of spreading its own
culture to the “other”. That dance is not just artists performing on stage but that they are part
of a large strategic plan of presenting itself as agile, elegant and athletic. Ballet is in fact
combining technical lightness, physical strenght and intellectual themes, mirror of a culture
and social context. Definitely more physical than theater, more narrative than circus and
visually more interesting than concerts or choirs, ballet is a mix of technics, which definitely

61
C. Ezrahi, Swans of..., p. 167.
62
The Times, 8th November 1956.

12
is an advantage for showing the world that they – Americans, Soviets or Europeans – are the
best.

13