When Ballet Bows to Geopolitics: The End of a 200-Year Artistic Romance

In July 2017, as America grappled with revelations of Russian election interference, an unlikely peace treaty was signed at Lincoln Center. The Bolshoi Ballet joined the New York City Ballet and Paris Opera Ballet to perform George Balanchine's "Jewels." When the final curtain fell, dancers from three nations took their bows together—united, it seemed, by their shared devotion to the art form.

It was the last time the Bolshoi would grace an American stage.

The New Iron Curtain

Since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Western theaters have systematically canceled Russian ballet performances. London and Madrid pulled the plug on scheduled Bolshoi shows. In 2024, dancers from Russia's top companies were barred from a New York gala. The company—largely bankrolled by Vladimir Putin's regime—may never tour the West again.

This cultural blackout marks the abrupt end of a 200-year conversation between Russian and American ballet, one that survived the Cold War, political tensions, and ideological differences. What we're witnessing isn't just the cancellation of performances—it's the severing of artistic DNA that has shaped both traditions.

When Art Transcended Politics

The irony runs deep. In 1960, as the Cold War raged, Soviet dance critic Yuri Slonimsky argued in The Atlantic that "dance could still flourish behind the Iron Curtain." Writing for a special Soviet-authored issue, Slonimsky—a former collaborator of Balanchine's in 1920s Saint Petersburg—insisted that Soviet ballet was thriving alongside its American counterpart, even under Communist constraints.

While Balanchine revolutionized dance in New York with radical abstraction—works like "Agon" compared to Picasso's "Guernica"—Soviet dancers like Rudolf Nureyev (who would defect in 1961) were finding ways to "interpret even the deepest past in a new way" within their sanitized repertoires.

The DNA of Artistic Exchange

American choreographers openly acknowledged their Russian debt. In 1962, Agnes de Mille—best known for "Oklahoma!"—advised aspiring choreographers in The Atlantic to study Marius Petipa, the architect of Russian ballet's 19th-century golden age. "Observe what Petipa does with just four steps in any of his solo variations," she wrote. His "deceptively simple and rigorously plotted choreography" was "the essence of the business."

This cross-pollination reached its zenith in 1976 with Twyla Tharp's "Push Comes to Shove." The work startled audiences by mixing jazz and tango with classical ballet, but its foundation remained firmly rooted in the "familiar courtly universe of classical ballet." At its heart was Mikhail Baryshnikov, who had defected from the Soviet Union in 1974. His technical prowess and singular flair embodied the negotiation between tradition and modernity, old world and new.

What We've Lost

Today's Russia tells a different story. Only a handful of prominent dancers have left in protest of the Ukraine war. Most remain in a country where creative opportunities have dwindled, notable choreographers refuse to work with Kremlin-funded companies, and artists who question the war face censorship.

The loss is profound on both sides. American repertoires still depend on crown jewels like "Swan Lake" and "The Nutcracker"—works that wouldn't exist without Petipa's original stagings. Meanwhile, Russian ballet had become more technically adventurous and less insular through American influence.

Dale Harris once wrote in The Atlantic about how Tharp's approach created "daring, idiosyncratic" dances with "an instant accessibility that makes the public accept as familiar what is, in fact, remarkably novel." That description could apply to the entire Russian-American ballet exchange: making the revolutionary feel familiar, and the familiar feel fresh.

The Choreography of Soft Power

Ballet's golden age coincided with robust government arts funding and a theater-going culture that's largely vanished. Yet during its heyday, Russian and American dancers borrowed freely from each other to produce the masterpieces we still revere today.

The current cultural iron curtain raises uncomfortable questions about art's relationship with power. Can aesthetic beauty be separated from political reality? When the Bolshoi takes the stage, are audiences watching Putin's Russia perform, or are they witnessing artists transcending their circumstances?