Poetics

I began this project by deciding on a figure that I wanted to employ. The instructions given included that we would be dealing with aspects of the Cold War era. For me, ballet immediately came to mind since it has been a passion of mine since I was little and is popular in both Russia and the United States. While ballet was an obvious figure for me to use, I did struggle a bit with how to incorporate it into my project effectively. I decided to use specific dancers who deflected from the Soviet Union as a way to imitate the infiltration that Americans so feared. At this point I thought about what aspects of the Cold War are often neglected. What do people typically forget or ignore? I realized that while most people were caught up in the Red Scare there were likely individuals who felt no animosity toward citizens of the U.S.S.R. and even those who recognized that the Soviets likely feared America as much, if not more, than America feared the Soviets. Hence my subject for which I would take responsibility. I wanted to bring to the forefront that not everyone, especially children, had hatred for the enemy side. Not everyone saw that sides had to be drawn. I used the idea of a small girl, because I myself am a young American girl. I used my own experiences as far as attending ballets, and admiring older dancers as a way to show the innocence of children. I used my mother as a way of presenting the doxa, the consensus of America during the Cold War era. By writing with the stereotypes, I hoped to present an antidote to the common view of who the Soviets were. I wanted to emphasize that the only real evil that was present was the warped view young children got of a different culture because of fear felt by family, media, etc. I wanted to make it clear that your average citizen of the U.S.S.R was not evil by nature, but interpreted that way by a society that did not understand.

I also related certain aspects of ballet to the Cold War itself as an expressionist way of discussing issues of the Cold War. I used my figure rather than stating it outright to be more subtle with my opinion. This breaks the doxa and presents a dissenting view of the Cold War.

Ultimately I tried to connect my figure to the Cold War not just through anecdotes and images, but also through the very structure of ballet as an art form. This worked surprisingly well, it was easy to relate ballet to the Cold War and I think this was probably the most effective form used.