Martha Graham's Cold War

Abstract

Abstract “I am not a propagandist,” declared the matriarch of American modern dance, Martha Graham, while on her State Department–funded tour in 1955. Graham’s claim inspires questions: the United States government exported Graham and her company internationally to more than thirty nations in Asia, Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, representing every seated president from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, and planned under George H. W. Bush. Although in the diplomatic field she was titled the “Picasso of modern dance,” and in later years “Forever Modern,” Graham was known to proclaim, “I am not a modernist.” In addition, she declared, “I am not a liberationist,” yet she intersected with politically powerful women such as Eleanor Roosevelt; Eleanor Dulles, sister of Eisenhower’s Dulles brothers in the State Department and CIA; Jackie Kennedy Onassis; Betty Ford; and political matriarch Barbara Bush. While bringing religious characters inspired by the Bible and the American frontier to the stage in a battle against the atheist communists, Graham insisted, “I am not a missionary.” To her abstract, mythic and biblical works, she added the trope of the American frontier. While her work promoted the United States as modern and culturally sophisticated, her casting promoted a vision of America as racially and culturally integrated. During the Cold War, the reconfigured history of modernism as apolitical in its expression of “the heart and soul of mankind” met political needs abroad with Graham’s tours. With her modernism, Graham demonstrated the power of the individual, republicanism, immigrants, and ultimately freedom from walls and metaphorical fences with the unfettered language of movement and dance as cultural diplomacy.

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