In 1955, Martha Graham and her company of diverse dancers landed in Japan to begin their first official State Department–sponsored tour of Asia and the Middle East to countries that President Dwight D. Eisenhower designated as the “domino nations,” or those most likely to fall to communist influence. On the tarmac, Graham was greeted by mass crowds and children bearing bouquets. American modern dance challenged the Soviet ballet, as a tour by Galina Ulanova preceding Graham. Newspapers announced, “U.S. and Soviet Competition in Dancing: Graham and Ulanova.” Graham triumphed with her abstract works alongside tales from the Western canon, fractured narratives, and female protagonists, all to describe the “soul of mankind.” Graham became useful as she attached herself to Eisenhower’s American battle for “hearts and minds,” particularly since she added the frontier and its pioneers to the cast of archetypes presented onstage in “the language that needs no words,” and embodied what she called the “universal.” Graham was heralded as an ambassadress during high-level diplomatic exchanges and embassy parties on the “cocktail circuit of diplomacy.” Graham and her company also functioned as diplomats when they engaged with the public during lecture-demonstrations and shopping for artifacts. While Graham proclaimed that her work was “universal,” and thus not political, one critic remarked that “the patriotic placing of American national interest at the end with Appalachian Spring” served “to underscore the diplomatic nature of this cultural mission.” Graham’s dances were modernist and seemingly apolitical art as creatures of Cold War politics.
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