Ballet Nations: The New York City Ballet’s 1962 US State Department–Sponsored Tour of the Soviet Union

In 1962, the New York City Ballet performed in Moscow as part of its eight-week US State Department–sponsored Soviet tour while the world anxiously watched the unfolding of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This article examines the coincidence of these events from the perspectives of dancers who traveled on the tour, demonstrating how arts programs, even when sponsored by the US government, do not export a consolidated, coherent representation of US national identity. Using oral-history interviews with dancers who traveled on the tour and choreographic analysis of George Balanchine’s ballet Serenade (1934), the article explores how the dancers’ experience and ballet’s hybrid origins undermine cold war narratives of the United States and the USSR as polar opposites.