DANCE CHRONICLE 2019, VOL. 42, NO. 1, 53–77 https://doi.org/10.1080/01472526.2019.1576461 Dien Bien Phu, Soviet Ballet, and the Cold War: The First Paris Tour, May 1954 Stephanie Goncalves ABSTRACT KEYWORDS In May 1954, the battle of Dien Bien Phu in Indochina led Bolshoi Ballet; Kirov Ballet; French governmental authorities to cancel the first tour to Cold War; cultural Paris by any Soviet ballet troupe since World War II. Drawing diplomacy; East-West relations; Soviet ballet; from press accounts as well as material in diplomatic archives Galina Ulanova and the Paris Opera, this essay explores the negotiations behind the tour, its last-minute cancellation after the Soviet dancers had reached Paris, and French reaction to the aborted tour. In particular, I examine the political considerations of the early Cold War period that prematurely terminated the French-Soviet efforts to conduct dance diplomacy. After months of negotiations, at long last, Soviet dancers drawn from the highest ranks of the Bolshoi and Kirov ballet companies boarded the super- sonic Tupolev aircraft—the pride of Soviet industry—for the flight to Paris.à On May 3, 1954, the forty-seven Soviet ballet dancers met their French counterparts for a champagne reception in the Paris Opera’s gilded surroundings,† an event that symbolized Cold War friendship and cultural exchange. Perhaps they toasted their encounter as a historical first—indeed, it would be the first tour to Paris and even to Western Europe by such a large group of dancers drawn from both the Bolshoi and the Kirov compa- nies.‡ The legendary Galina Ulanova (1909–1998), draped in a simple black dress, was the cynosure of all eyes at the reception. Through an interpreter, she spoke with the French etoiles Lycette Darsonval, Michel Renault, Liane Dayde, and the famous retired Italian ballerina Carlotta Zambelli,§ before à The Bolshoi Ballet is designated by the name “Grand The^atre academique de l’U.R.S.S. a Moscou” and the Kirov by “The^atre academique d’Opera et de Ballet a Leningrad.” See the official program, Nokolaï Volkov, Representations officielles du Ballet Sovietique a Paris (Leningrad: Federov, 1954). † Cf. “The Russian Ballet tour at the Paris Opera in Garnier in 1954, Pictures and Images” Getty Images, accessed January 16, 2018, https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/russian-ballet-at-the-opera-garnier-in-paris-1954?phrase russian%20ballet%20at%20the%20opera%20garnier%20in%20paris%201954&sort best. ‡ In¼ May 1951, Galina Ulanova and Yuri Kondratov danced in Florence’s Music Festival,¼ sent by the U.S.S.R. as individual dancers. See “Galina Oulanova,” Le Monde, May 10, 1951. In 1953, a group of folklore and ballet dancers came to London, invited by the Society for Cultural Relations with the U.S.S.R. and the British-Soviet Friendship. See Larraine Nicholas, “Fellow Travellers: Dance and British Cold War Politics in the early 1950s,” Dance Research 19, no. 2 (2001): 83–105. § Born in Milan, Carlotta Zambelli (1875–1968) spent one year (1901) at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg and was the last foreigner to be designated prima ballerina. She then spent her career in the Paris Opera, where she created many roles and performed for the troops during World War I. She became a ballet teacher. ß 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 54 S. GONCALVES slipping away early to be fresh for the next day’s rehearsals. Many other famous Soviet dancers, including Alla Shelest, Raissa Struchkova, Natalia Dudinskaya, and Constantin Sergueiev, made their appearances at the reception. The French artists found the Soviet dancers to be nothing like the shaggy mujiks and warmongers who were frequently portrayed in Western anti-communist propaganda.1 Defying the stereotypes, the Russian dancers were courteous and friendly, and they conversed freely with their French counterparts. The following day, the Soviet dancers were to begin rehearsals at the famed Paris Opera Garnier, a historic site that, despite its grandeur, afforded them a stage that was smaller than those they were accustomed to using in the U.S.S.R.2 Unfortunately, the convivial champagne reception coincided with a hor- rific battle at Dien Bien Phu in North Vietnam,à a battle that came to be known, according to the historian Bernard Hall, as “Hell in a very small place,” and by Martin Windrow as “the Last Valley.”3 Since 1946, the French army had found itself facing the Viet Minh, an armed Communist independence movement. For France, this was a colonial war that, set against a Cold War background, turned into an anticommunist crusade. Topographically, Dien Bien Phu was a muddy jungle basin that swiftly became a trap for the French who suffered a crushing defeat.† The Viet Minh were supported by China and, indirectly, by the U.S.S.R. As it hap- pens, the French Army, with support from the Americans, launched “Operation D”—with a D for Desperate—too late, leaving French forces in disarray and resulting in a national sense of humiliation. Parisians received news of the defeat in Dien Bien Phu in the late afternoon. During the night of May 7 and into the early morning hours of May 8, 1954, Joseph Laniel, the head of the French government,‡ and a member of a traditional, con- servative party,§ found himself facing an awkward decision: should the Soviet ballet tour be cancelled? As news of the Dien Bien Phu ceasefire See The Oxford Dictionary of Dance, eds. Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000), s.v. “Zambelli, Carlotta.” à The French knew it as “Indochine.” † The latest research suggests the following figures: 11,720 French soldiers taken prisoner, amongst whom 3,920 (including 853 seriously wounded) were allowed to return to France. The figures for Frenchmen missing in action and presumed to have died from exhaustion or illness in the jungle after a 600-kilometer march are extremely high. See Michel Bodin, “Introduction,” Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 3, no. 211 (2003): 3–9. The Vietnamese may have lost 8,000 men; see Jean-Jacques Arzalier, Les Pertes Humaines, 1954–2004: La Bataille de Dien Bien Phu, entre Histoire et Memoire , Paris, Societe franc¸aise d’histoire des outre-mers, 2004); French Ministry of Defense, “Battle of Dien-Bien-Phu” [from Memoire et Citoyennete no. 39], Chemins de Memoire, accessed June 26, 2017, http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/battle-dien-bien-phu. ‡ Formerly titled President of the Council of the Ministers, Laniel was the head of the Fourth French Republic for about one year, from June 1953 to June 1954. His government faced many political and social crises like, for instance, the Indochina conflict, which led to his government’s end. § Joseph Laniel (1889–1975) was a member of the CNIP, Centre National des Independants et Paysans (National Center for Independents and Peasants), a rather traditional and conservative party born in 1949. As a right- wing party, it was hostile to the Communist and Left parties. DANCE CHRONICLE 55 reached Paris in the afternoon of May 7, it became increasingly obvious that Laniel could scarcely allow the Soviet dancers to go ahead with the Paris performances.à Beyond the Cold War military episode that later led to the Vietnam War, Dien Bien Phu can be read as a crucial event in the East-West rela- tions that generated tensions in both the political and cultural spheres. In France, the newspapers paradoxically headlined both the defeat at Dien Bien Phu against Communist groups—counting the wounded, deaths and missing soldiers—while they simultaneously heralded the Soviet dancers’ arrival and their welcoming reception.4 The Soviet tour was a long-antici- pated event and, despite the Asian confrontation, it was seen as a moment that would transcend ideological boundaries and political differences. Marking the excitement of the occasion, black marketeers sold tickets at ten times their initial prices.5 The program cast lists had been made avail- able since March,6 the theater programs had been printed, posters appeared in front of the Paris Opera, and a thousand tickets had been sold to an exceptionally long queue of dance fans outside the Paris Opera.7 However, on the heels of the Dien Bien Phu carnage, a group of Indochina War vet- erans warned the government that they held 150 tickets to the premiere and were planning to unleash uproar inside the Opera House. Indeed, they marched on the Champs-Elysees on May 8, V-Day, in a demonstration of anger and revenge.8 For these veterans and some other French citizens, notably anticommunists, the prospect of allowing Bolshoi and Kirov dancers to appear in Paris was nothing short of an affront. The performan- ces were adjourned for days, only to be finally and conclusively canceled one week after, on May 14.9 Drawing from diplomatic papers, records in the Paris Opera, Bolshoi Ballet archives, and articles from the French press, this essay explores an intense four-week episode of European Cold War history, when dance and political diplomacy collided. Although what Victoria Phillips Geduld called “dancing diplomacy”10 has begun to receive extensive study, the scholarship has mainly covered the American point of view.11 As histori- ans have tended to neglect similar examinations of European dance, little attention has been paid to the 1954 Soviet tour in Paris.12 Reconstructing the chronology of this episode is challenging, and, in order to fill that gap, I focus on a micro-historical event in Paris in which I discuss the Soviet dancers in their roles as cultural ambassadors. More broadly, my discussion attempts to clarify both the real and the assigned roles that dancers played during the Cold War as spokesmen and -women for their respective countries, and their mutual understandings and à The final Franco-Viet Treaty, recognizing the Independence of Vietnam, was signed on June, 4, 1954.