H-Diplo ROUNDTABLE XXIII-6: Victoria Phillips, Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy

An extensive roundtable book review of Martha Graham’s Cold War: The Dance of American Diplomacy. Introduction by Damien Mahiet, Brown University. The “dance of American diplomacy” is the subtitle of Victoria Phillips’s elegantly written history of U.S. dancer and choreographer Martha Graham’s engagement in the Cold War. It is more than a nice turn of phrase: it is an everyday expression made into a significant conceptual claim and ambitious historical agenda. Martha Graham’s Cold War challenges, lightly but steadfastly, preconceptions of diplomacy, dance, and what separates them