Please join the Harriman Institute at Columbia University for a three-day symposium co-sponsored by the Barnard College Department of Dance.

The Cold War was fought on many fronts, with dance as a powerful weapon in its arsenal. The ballet wars of the 1950s and 1960s, including high-profile defections, captured international headlines, but numerous forms of dance from folk dance and modern dance to rock and roll were drawn into an ideological struggle that pitted capitalist freedom again communist oppression. Dancing the Cold War, a three-day international symposium sponsored by the Harriman Institute and curated by Lynn Garafola, brings together scholars, artists, critics and others to explore the multiple dance encounters that took place during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States as well as the allies, clients and surrogates of those countries in different parts of the world. It will consider the impact of touring and the mass media in challenging ideological certainties and the changes that transformed the Russian dance community in the immediate post-Soviet period.

Please note that opening night will be in 1501 International Affairs Building.