Fellow Travellers: Dance and British Cold War Politics in the Early 1950s
2001; Edinburgh University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3366/1290977
ISSN1750-0095
Autores Tópico(s)Soviet and Russian History
ResumoAny history of these political and theatrical events would, of necessity, survey the often slow and obscure processes pre-dating them. It is not the purpose of this paper to explore the sociopolitical contexts of 1956 theatre but rather to offer one contribution to such a history by examining the beginnings of the presentation of Soviet ballet and dance in Britain before the landmark year of 1956. This article also contributes to a growing body of research into the place of dance within Cold War cultural diplomacy which has already received the attention of Naima Prevots (1998)1 from the American perspective but has not so far been explored in the British context. In comparison with some other parts of mainland western Europe and the United States, Britain was late in encountering Soviet theatre dance. A few Soviet stars performed abroad in the years pre-World War II2 but did not venture to Britain. When the former Bolshoi ballerina Viktorina Kriger came to London in 1935, it was as director of a group of Soviet folk dancers participating in an international amateur festival. As early as 1944, the Soviet authorities were invited to send the Bolshoi, or another company, as soon as hostilities ceased, to appear at what was even then being planned as the national home of opera and ballet at Covent Garden. Maynard Keynes3 had persuaded the Foreign Secretary that the Covent Garden project needed the sanction of a Russian company for it to succeed, and there was an apparent willingness to fetch them in a British ship.4
Referência(s)