Men on Display: the male dancing body as a political weapon in the Cold War

Extended Essay: Dance

Candidate Number: 001356-008
May 2014
Word Count: 3,983

Candidate Number: 001356-008

Abstract:
As the last bastions of World War Two fell, and Churchills Iron Curtain unfurled across
Europe, curtains in the theatres of Moscow, Paris, London and New York divided equally
dissonant groups. As Cold War competition spread to cultural war, male dancers became
inscribed with a national script. This paper considers the ways that the use of male dancing
bodies in ballet as Cold War political weapons affected male dancers, and how societal pressures
and the enshrinement of certain masculine qualities engendered restrictive gender prescriptions
for male dancers. First, by evaluating secondary analyses and primary personal, critical, and
artistic accounts of life in the Soviet Union and United States, this essay elucidates the cultural
forces that led to ballets revival. In the Soviet Union, propaganda, Stalinist domestic control,
and fear of modernization encouraged government patronage of drambalet and exportation of
Soviet cultural achievements. In the United States, modern tendencies espoused innovation, but
neoclassical ballet aligned more closely with government goals and could compete directly with
Soviet ballet. Second, by ligating social pressures to their effects on dance, it argues that the
emphasis on power and virility that made male dancing compatible with political propaganda
forced male dancers into reductive, narrow gender roles. Third, using foreign exchange tours as
the primary intersection of American and Soviet ideology, it compares the ways in which
cultural expectations for each country differed. Criticism of foreign dancers reveals differing
paradigms for each country and the use of the body as a national text. The essay argues that male
dancers became victims of social norms that feared emasculation and eschewed feminine
display, and that the consecration of traditional masculinity politically and domestically
institutionalized what it meant to be Soviet or American, forcing men into narrow, antiquated
gender roles that valorized speed, technical display and power.
Candidate Number: 001356-008
Table of Contents:
I. Introduction
II. Ideology and Dance in the Soviet Union
III. Drambalet and Male Gender Roles
IV. American Social Norms and the Modernist Experiment ...
V. The American Body
VI. Foreign Exchange Tours Intersections of Nationalism and Artistry
VII. Conclusion...
VIII. Works Cited











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3
4




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I. Introduction
It is 12 April 1961, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, outside Moscow. Crowds of anxious
people line the streets; children bear bouquets of flowers; jacketed soldiers punctuate an aisle
down the middle of the crowd; Nikita Khrushchev reveals his rarely-seen smile. Yuri Gagarin is
hours away from becoming the first human to orbit Earth, consummating the Soviet Unions
four-year race to space. The palpable sweat that has become a permanent fixture on the brows of
Russian leaders will dissipate quickly, as the Soviet Union proves, with the entire earth as its
witness, its technological dominance.
It is 16 May 1961, the Palais Garnier, Paris. The curtain waits to reveal Act II of Sleeping
Beauty; Kirov Ballet officials roam the backstage area; KGB agents secure the exits; Natalia
Makarova is likely warming up her feet. Yuri Soloviev waits in the wings of stage, doing
eleventh-hour warm-ups before his entrance as Prince Dsir. In a few moments, he will display
to the Parisian audience, for the first time on a foreign stage, his gravity-defying leaps. He will
illicit awe-struck gasps, raving press reviews, and a reputation for possessing some of the best
technique in the world.
For his phenomenal jump height and his resemblance to Gagarin, Soloviev was regarded
by his fellow dancers as Cosmonaut Yuri. Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in a ball-shaped
module named the Vostok; Yuri Soloviev needed no spacecraft to soar. Though he donned a
tunic and tights instead of a space-suit, Soloviev was as much a political weapon as Gagarin was.
Both men became embodiments of the nationalistic struggle between the United States and
Soviet Union. Gagarins triumph in space asserted technical superiority, while Soloviev was
embroiled in a less sensationalized, but equally bitter cultural war. As scions of the Soviet Union
spread across the face of Europe, dancers themselves too became satellites, brilliant points of
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light orbiting the cultural gravity of Moscow. These self-propelled meteors were as ephemeral
as the art itself, leaving behind only transient images, comet contrails of their former brilliance
(Barnes, Kirov Ballet C12).
Unfortunately, scholarly investigation of the the intersection of dance and diplomacy is
scarce (Foner 3). However, even the most perfunctory analysis of the use of ballet as a political
weapon exhumes a rich and complex relationship between bodies, governments, and art. The
male dancing body of the Cold War can be read in retrospect; the aspirations to display
strength, youth, and refinement were written into the male dancing body, which became a
national script (Turner 15). This paper examines the ways in which Cold War ideology used
male dancing bodies as political weapons, and what effects this had on male dancers and
restricting their gender expectations.
The cultural war in which Soloviev was a player is often overlooked by historians. Its
battles were far less publicized, and its effects on those involved more pernicious. The stringent
policies which emerged in ballet were a response to the tense ideological atmosphere in the
United States and Soviet Union. Dancers, especially male, became used as embodiments of
vitality and supremacy. In the Soviet Union, a government-led return to drambalet forced men
into rigid and antiquated emplois which valorized bravura feats and dutiful partnering, while still
demanding an emotional maturity. In the United States, a desire to outpace the Soviet Union
through neoclassical experimentation led to the marginalization of men, while the government
preference toward exporting more classical repertoires led to the promulgation of different
gender roles abroad than those ones that prevailed on the home front.


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II. Ideology and Dance in the Soviet Union
Dance in the Soviet Union has historically had a strong link to the government. Ballet
was introduced to the Soviet Union under Peter the Great, and for one-hundred years thereafter
was tied to tsarist patronage. In the Cold War era, Russian ballet was equally dependent on the
government. The tense ideological atmosphere in the Soviet Union led to striking cultural shifts;
the most prominent being the revival of the classical ballet. This resurrection was not simply an
inevitable change; it owed its impetus to the harsh cultural crackdowns put in place by the
Stalinist regime.
In the frenzy induced by Stalins rise, no cultural sphere was hit harder than the world of
tinsel and light, of poetry and imagination, of grease paint and mascara (Salisbury 148). Stalin
had no true investment in the arts other than as a means of control, and the arts became chained
to a rigid ideology, and cultural exchange, the seedbed of renewal, came to an end (Solway 65).
The initial purpose in government intervention in the ballet was purely domestic: once they
understood the usefulness of art as propaganda, Soviet authorities aided the effort to extend and
the services of government through reorganization of the ballet (Lee 302). The arts, which the
Russian people had always esteemed, became a fitting repository for Soviet ideas, and one that
could spread these ideas to large audiences. Indeed, it was first as a domestic means of control
and not an ideological weapon, that ballet was used by the Soviets. Its importance on a foreign
stage would develop later.
Formerly associated with the aristocracy, the erstwhile elitist ballet was re-envisioned by
the Russian-cum-Soviet government as a cultural achievement of the people (Fisher,
Introduction 18). Ballet was used as a rallying-point for an otherwise oppressed populace.
While in the West ballet was largely confined to the metropolitan elite, a huge audience was
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reached in the Soviet Union. From 1919-1920, free tickets to the ballet were given to office and
factory workers, some 85 percent of the audience attending for free (Avdeyenko qtd. in Caute
469). Soviet powers encouraged this practice, as larger audiences furthered the proliferation of
their message.
Beyond emphasizing the countrys artistic sophistication, Soviet cultural forces utilized
the sedative qualities of the ballet: the natural love innate in every Russian for the arts grew
during this time, and people would do anything in exchange for a little dream, a momentary
escape from the nightmare of everyday life (Nureyev 41). This ingenious use of the ballet
fulfilled, at least temporarily, the reveries of the people, while the mass support it created
allowed unprecedented exploration and growth. After Stalins death, there was a slight relaxation
of the strict policies in place; during this time however, the Soviet government supported only
one variety of ballet: classical drambalets.

III. Drambalet and Male Gender Roles
In the post-Stalin years, as cultural exchange reemerged and Soviet works began to be
showcased to a foreign audience, there was continued emphasis on the classics; they at least
were safe and in time, Swan Lake would become a de facto national anthem (Homans 365).
Classical ballets, many of which drew their plotlines from Russian folktales, dazzled the
audiences with familiar stories you could only hope to encounter in the most enchanted fairy
tale (Nureyev 42). By ligating the ballet back to folk traditions, Soviet forces engaged the
populace further in nationalistic pride. The Russian people were far more protective of their
classical tradition than they were concerned to produce ballets about collective farms, and thus
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powdered princes and pastel princesses continued to float their fairy tales across the Bolshoi
and Kirov stages (Caute 10).
Politically, the mastery of classical Petipa ballets helped buttress the depiction of
Americans as unculturedselling low-level entertainment, narcotic trash, and Disneyland
fantasies to a bemused populace (Caute 8). If classical ballets domestically showcased the
refinement of the Russian people, abroad they underscored Americas lack of cultural roots. In
many reviews, Americans were regarded as rigid, clinical, clever machines, with the Soviets
being more physically maturesoulful artists (Brown Clever Machines). If American
dancers could not compete in the sphere of cemented classics, how could political leaders claim
legitimacy of their young, rootless, system of government?
This stylistic atavism brought strict gender prescriptions for male dancers. The romantic
ballets performed by Soviet companies maintained traditional gender roles and gendered
bodies out of touch with shifting societal views (Risner Gender Problems in Western
Theatrical Dance 57). The realm of classical dance is ruled by the ballet prince. With the
emphasis on Petipa-era ballets, the canon shrunk to only a few familiar faces, including
Florimund, Siegfried, and Albrecht. In Soviet ballets, the prince was king. The requirements to
fit this character were thus imposed upon the Soviet male dancers. Classical ballets were danced
with bodies trained in the legacy of Agripinna Vaganova. Her technique overlapped with
ingrained social associations of strong, expansive movements with masculinity, fueling the strict
gender roles for men.
Vaganovas method centered all movement in the back and core and was renowned for
transforming the body into a single instrument in which every part contributes harmoniously
(Nureyev 125). Vaganova did much for male dancers, allowing them a greater amplitude of
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movement, soaring leaps and the ability to control their bodies, even in flight (Solway 66).
She also created acrobatic and demanding lifts. Rudolf Nureyev describes this kind of dancing as
generous, in contrast with the kind of jewelry-box dancing which allows for contemplation of
legs, little hands and pretty fingers (Nureyev 121). The ability to exist in and consume space
remains a hallmark of Russian ballet. Her technique, especially for males, demanded a certain
solidity and groundedness, with big, slow plis with landings (Solway 87).
The language of classical ballet celebrates youth and beauty (Solway 513). However, it
is rigid in that all princes have to be
clearly distinguishable from their
princesses (Fisher, Introduction
12). Both officials and artistic
directors had a puritanical attitude
in regard to the regularization of
gendered performances (Fisher,
Introduction 19). They did not
believe in lyrical passages, Rudolf
Nureyev later noted. They did not
believe that man could execute
womans steps [sic] (Barnes, Nureyev 42). The staples of male virtuosity entrechats six, double
tours en lair, the dramatic mnage from Le Corsaire constituted the entirety of the male dancers
choreographic vocabulary. New York Times dance critic Anna Kisselgoff sees the emphasis on
bravura steps as a shortcoming of the Soviet system, the blame resting on the dilution of the
A still-frame from the Kirov Ballets 1965 The Sleeping
Beauty, in which Cosmonaut Yuri displays his
breathtaking jump height as Prince Dsir.
Photo from Sleeping Beauty: The Classic Motion Picture
with the Kirov Ballet (time 48:08)
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curriculum created by Agrippina Vaganova which itself left out much of ballets lexicon
(Kisselgoff 3).
Though their technical feats were obvious tools to assert dominance over American
dancers, Soviet cultural forces lauded a different aspect of their dancers: their emotional
presence. The Soviets tended to portray American dancers as mechanized and heartless, gum-
chewing, insensitive, materialistic barbarians, too complacent with their diet of consumer trash
to appreciate true artistry (Kammen 801). Thus, it was exigent to emphasize the Soviet
emotional range. Western ballets were regarded as overly Westernised, emotionally controlled
and sterile, in contrast to the emotionally spontaneous Russian dancers (Gard 74). A
confounding standard was set for Soviet men: be overtly masculine, while always tempered by
the art forms mandates of refinement and emotional presence (Fisher, Introduction 12).

IV. American Social Norms and the Modernist Experiment
Shifting social norms in the 1950s and 60s created an increased fear of non-
heteronormative displays of masculinity in the United States. The emergence of an increasingly
corporate lifestyle and the perceived softness of American life led to fears that the once-ax-
wielding male was now becoming emasculated (Adams 78). In the 1950s, the rise of affluent
consumer economy in the United States gradually eroded the opportunities for men to live up
to the traditional American male values (Burt 104). This, coupled with the rise of homophobia
in the postwar years, led to a call for men dancers and non-dancers alike to reclaim their
traditional masculine qualities (Fisher, Introduction 17).
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Drawing from its pioneer past, the United States strove in all cultural spheres to prove its
innovative superiority to the Soviet Union. The unspoken revolution of dance was said to
embody the American spirit of enterprise and individual freedom (Foner 3). While Soviet
dancers could polish the roles of Siegfried and Odette, they could not, in Americas depiction,
move beyond these antiquated ballets and catch up to the rest of the world; they were artistically
primitive, and politically superannuated. This movement away from the foundations of classical
ballet took two distinct forms: first, a stripped-down neoclassical form, and second, a radical new
modern technique. While American modern dance is certainly deserving of analysis in its own
respect, within the context of Cold War politics, it was the Americanized ballet that was
suffused with greater political importance, as it aligned more closely with U.S. government and
philanthropic ideals than modern dance (Brown Cultural Czars Abstract).
As ballet in the Soviet Union tended toward the drambalet, in which dancing served the
plotline, a streamlined, largely plotless neoclassicism began in America (Solway 66). The new
American style cauterized the plotlines that Soviet audiences loved so dearly, and avoided
dramas, heroes, heroines, villains, dnouements, dying swans (Caute 468). With its obvious
connections with the distant past, ballet was an unlikely choice. However, it remained the
dance form with the largest audiences, the widest press coverage and its stars were by far the
most well paid and publicly known (Gard 66). Additionally, American leaders did not want the
Soviets to think their dancers could not compete in well-known classics. Thus, the National
Endowment for the Arts prioritized the sending of goodwill ambassadors in an effort to
promote a rather more elevated image of American culture (Foner 3). It was in ballet, the shared
choreographical language of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, London, New York, and Paris, that
the majority of ideological battles were fought (Caute 4).
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The first dance company sent to the Soviet Union was American Ballet Theatre in 1960,
whose program featured two very American works, Rodeo and Fancy Free, and more traditional
works, such as Les
Sylphides, so Soviet
audiences would not
assume that the important
classics were beyond
[Americas] reach
technically and artistically
(Prevots 75). Balanchines
New York City Ballet soon
followed in 1962. However,
by exporting a tradition not entirely reflective of American predilections, overseas, the State
Department promoted a vision of American culture not universally accepted at home (Foner 3).
In this paradoxical manner, the dance that Soviet audiences saw as the apogee of American cultural
achievement was not valued as such on the home front.






The 1958 Broadway cast of Fancy Free, a neoclassical work with
traditional American themes.
Photo by Gordon Parks/Getty Images
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V. The American Body
The neoclassical re-imagination of the dancing body forced dancers and laymen alike to
question what would an American body look like, and how would it move? (Brown Cultural
Czars Abstract). In a land where men were kings of
the frontier, masters of the gun, the ax, and the plow,
there was no room for alternative masculinities (Siegel
305). The Western tradition has long labeled dance as
a derivate, effete art form, with the American father
declaring hed rather see his son dead than up on stage
cavorting with those fools (Parks 42-3). As one
fraternity brother said to modern choreographer Ted
Shawn, dance was all right for aborigines and
Russiansbut hardly a suitable career for a red-
blooded American male (Shawn 11). Where male roles existed, they had to have a youthful,
athletic quality, and ties to stereotypical male roles.
In criticism, the expectation of masculine display might have been coded, with male
dancers criticized at times as not direct enough or not bold enough (Fisher, Making it
Macho 37). In 1960, British critic Alexander Bland admonished the limp lot of male dancers,
the prancing princes who subsisted on elegant legs and help from fairies. Blands comments
show his yen for danseurs with real blood, who could have been given the sheriffs badge in
another life (Bland qtd. in Adams 63). The need for this brand of masculinity was not entirely
fabricated; for a country in which, currently, women are twice as likely as men to attend ballet
performances, emphasizing a straight aesthetic was necessary for business purposes at the very
ABTs Allyn Ann McLerie as Cowgirl
in Rodeo. The ballet, with music by
Aaron Copland, espouses stereotypical
pioneer roles for men and women.
Photo by Baron/Getty Images
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least (United States of America). There were practical reasons for asserting that all male dancers
were thoroughly normal, thus drawing in heterosexual female audience members (Burt,
Foreword ix). The male body fell prey to the modern consumerism of American culture,
which recast it as an object to be desired, decorated and, in effect, consumed (Gard 35).
Although it increasingly eschewed any remnants of classicism, the neoclassical ballet did
not significantly move away from traditional gender roles. Balanchine, who aggrandized ballets
role in popular culture, is most exemplary of the neoclassical view on men. In his famous
dictum, Balanchine ostentatiously declared Ballet is woman, marginalizing his male dancers
(Croce). Male dancers of the Balanchine tradition have noted that it was often as if they just
werent there (Macaulay). Balanchine was far more interested in developing the women in his
company than the men; in his ballets, the woman would reign as Queen, the man her
unprepossessing attendant (Solway 222). Male dancers in the Soviet Union assumed a respected
position in society, partly because of their opportunity to travel abroad, and partly because of
their status as Prince. In the United States, the ruling Queen only further ostracized male dancers
and reinforced heteronormative practices.

VI. Foreign Exchange Tours Intersections of Nationalism and Artistry
The contrasts and similarities between Soviet and American gender roles is most salient
in the cultural exchanges that took place after Stalins death. Foreign tours, though rare and
strictly regulated, did take place, and the dancing males that had been cultivated domestically
were displayed abroad. Seeing the body as text, there is important meaning assigned to
blisteringly fast turns and soaring leaps. A significant amount of hegemonic action was taken on
foreign tours, where the displays of Soviet male virility not only drew gasps from the awed
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audience, but elicited a more powerful image of the Soviet system in the mind of the average
American. Meanwhile, Americans aimed to dazzle Soviet audiences with their innovative style
yet unseen in the nation. Strong, nationalistically-informed opinions were held on both sides.
The American public, largely oblivious to the political undertones of the dance exchange,
was stunned by the Soviet dancers. They danced with a presence and zeal the likes of which
Americans had never seen, and catalyzed a ballet boom. The Soviet dancers could jump
splendidly, execute a seemingly limitless number of pirouettes, and complete complex lifts, all
areas in which the American tradition was lacking (Caute 474). The exuberant men of the
Bolshoi and Kirov were the subject of especial acclaim. Peter Martins speaks of a Soviet
vocabulary of male pyro-technics that enraptured American audiences (Solway 192). Other
critics, applauded the hammyun-chicmen built like cart-horses of the Bolshois 1959
program (John Martin qtd. in Homans 373). For citizens of a country with such a strong
preconception of the foppish dancing male, if Soviet male dancers could look so virile, how
could their male soldiers, farm workers, political leaders, not be even more so?
When this athletic dancing style was displayed on foreign exchanges, the immediate
cross-cultural effect was a demand for more. In December 1974, the top box office draws in New
York were Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev (Solway 398). The ballet boom in the
United States was largely driven by these visible celebrities. In 1961, the year Nureyev defected,
there were 24 ballet companies in America; by 1974, there were 216, and ballets audience had
grown from less than one million to more than ten million (Solway 390). Nureyev alone created
a media frenzy, a so-called Rudimania, and became a presence on The Ed Sullivan Show, The
Muppets, and countless magazine covers (Solway 398). Defectors though they were,
Baryshnikov and Nureyev show the electrifying effects of the Russian male.
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The Soviet Union was far less approving. Soviet audiences were turned off by American
performances; they were particularly keen to spot faults in the bourgeois decadence of
American music and movement (Caute 10). They were put off too by the lack of a storyline, and
the dearth of sets, props, and glittering hairpieces to which they were accustomed. The Soviet
public was accustomed to larger-than-life, swashbuckling stuff punctuated by applaudable
bursts of bravura, and was disappointed by the less flashy American dancers (John Martin in
Caute 491). Balanchine preferred simple sets, and plain costumes, and NYCB was
controversial in part because of its perceived lack of emotion (Morris 35). Some printed
criticism derided the androgynous lack of polarization between musculated [sic] males and
bosomy females and suggested this was a result of a fatal absence of Soviet health and psyche
(Kirstein 175). The Soviets also attacked the Americans for their racist tendencies. When Allegra
Kent and Arthur Mitchell of NYCB performed the pas de deux from Agon in 1962, a mixture of
the Soviet view of American men as emasculated and this inclination led some Soviet critics to
interpret the erotic duet as a Negro slaves submission to the tyranny of an ardent white
mistress (Kirstein 171).
Intriguingly, as Yuri Solovievs widow Tatiana Legat recounts, as the Soviet dancers
went overseas, they assumed some American mannerisms, lifting up higher on the turns, and
aiming for higher legs (Lobenthal 66). Soviet critics too acknowledged American superiority
in some technical areas, but tempered acknowledgments of strong American technique with
disparaging remarks about social values.


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VII. Conclusion
On 27 March 1968, while performing piloting drills, Yuri Gagarins jet crashed and he
perished in a yet unexplained tragedy (Bizony). In 1977, Yuri Solovievs brief flight too came to
an end, in an apparent suicide at age 37. A man bound by harsh obligation and this sense of
duty, Soloviev was a Kirov star who could not bring himself to defect like many of his
contemporaries (Lobenthal 67). He became a victim of the harsh socio-political matrix in which
he lived. He declined to join the Party, but still felt unrelenting pressure; the deputy minister of
culture once told him you are embodiment of what the Russian Communist is. You must join
the party (Lobenthal 63).
Cases like Solovievs were not uncommon in the cutthroat atmosphere of Soviet ballet.
Soloviev possessed the acute perfectionism endemic only, it seems, to dancers, for whom
increasing age can be an unnatural burden, in a world in which beauty, youth, and strength are
enshrined (Barnes, Kirov Ballet C12). He was a man reaching the end of his viable career,
whose back and legs hurt, who couldnt run, but still ran, because he felt he had to (Lobenthal
67). The staples of masculine virtuosity, which are difficult but accessible for younger men, were
beyond his physical abilities. The pressure on Soloviev to remain youthful and explosive in his
dancing, coupled with the expectation to serve the party, drove him toward his tragic end.
The imbuement of ballet with political motive during the Cold War thrust dancing bodies
into the public eye in an unprecedented way. The contest between the United States and Soviet
Union was manifest in chess matches, in Olympic hockey games, but nowhere as sensationally
as the arts. Ballet, a central art form in the Soviet Union, became an American reaction so as not
to be viewed as uncultured or base. The desire to show strength, youth, and potency was
incumbent upon the male body. These culturally invested-in traits aligned historically with male
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gender roles, but the political connection intensified expectations for the male dancing body and
ossified its role within the ballet.
In the Soviet Union, a return to the drambalet revitalized traditional expectations for the
male body. In the legacy of Agrippina Vaganova, male technique was powerful and expansive,
traits which aligned neatly with political needs. Ballet was enshrined in popular culture through
Stalins strategic reforms, and the relationship he initiated between the Party and the ballet made
censorship a constant presence in the theatre, precluding any deviation from political demands.
Like Soloviev, Soviet male dancers were pressured to stay youthful and maintain their bravura
despite aging. As drambalet was exported on American tours, the American public was exposed
to this style of dance, and came to accept it as an innate role of men in ballet, and not the social
construction that it was.
In America, rapid modernization brought old notions of the red-blooded, American
frontiersman and evolving gender roles to a head. Ballet, traditionally considered a feminine
endeavor, reacted to social pressures to avoid becoming a pariah. The unspoken fear of American
emasculation forced male dancers to heteronormalize themselves onstage so as not to offend the
viewer. With the ballet boom catalyzed by technically stunning and sexually electrifying Soviet
males, American male danseurs were expected to deliver an equivalent display of virility to
satisfy political needs and attract audiences. Their gender roles became rigid, stereotypical and
grounded in reductive views of men as pioneers, workers, and cowboys.
While the Cold War has since had its iron curtain call, the halcyon days of ballet still live
on in contemporary artists and scholars. Young dancers studying the technique of the old Titans
unwittingly imitate and preserve the gender roles of the time. Contemporary danseurs in all
countries internalize the movement of Cold War era dancers, artificially maintaining gender roles
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that no longer dominate the world of ballet. These persisting gender expectations limit dancers
artistic horizons, forcing them into outdated roles that require power, technical virtuosity, and
youth. Soviet-American cultural exchanges brought male dancers unprecedented and yet
unrepeated notoriety, yet the gender prescriptions that allowed this golden age were restrictive,
antiquated, and pernicious to the dancers themselves.















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