Rebekah J. Kowal’s Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America is set against the backdrop of New York City as the emergent cultural capital of the world. She examines the performances of international dance artists as occasions for imagining and contesting globalism and its role in the formation of post–World War II US cultural identity. Her rigorous study of several prominent dance artists and the public presentations of their work is grounded in extensive primary research and a unique transparency in her methodology. She creates space for “holding several perspectives” (25) simultaneously in order to tend to gaps and interpret conflicting accounts of the same events. In the introductory chapter, Kowal describes how she accidentally happened upon the subject matter for this book while conducting other research, and how inconsistent or missing information, such as sparse video documentation, challenged and influenced her process. This admission lends both a personal touch to her writing and frames the complex and frequently contradictory cultural politics of what was known in the early 20th century as “ethnologic dance” alongside the emergence of US American concert dance. Kowal presents an expanded account of mid-century globalism through the lens of dance history, always placing her archival research in context with the broader sociopolitical climate of the time.

The text is arranged into four distinct chapters, each focusing on an individual artist or set of performances that can be read as unique studies. Chapter 1, “Staging Integration,” recounts the production of an international dance program at the American Museum of Natural History titled Around the World with Dance and Song, which premiered in 1943 and continued until its last performance in 1952. The series was imagined in response to municipal museum reforms aiming to increase the accessibility of museums to the general public. The chapter explores the role of dancers as “diplomats” whose artistic practices and performances promoted an “expanded global consciousness” (28) through mediated cultural exchange for US audiences. Kowal also highlights the simultaneous process of varied white ethnic identities becoming conflated and established as “Caucasian,” in opposition to the depiction of cultural diversity onstage—a notion at the root of white supremacist and assimilationist ideologies. Chapter 2, “Staging Ethnologic Dance,” centers on the career of La Meri—a US-born performer who studied the dances of Asia, Spain, and Latin America—framed by a relationship with her artistic predecessor, Ruth St. Denis, who occupies a more prominent role in dance history. Kowal’s focus on the relationship of these two women interrogates hierarchies of artistry, authenticity, and authorship. Throughout, she illustrates the significant role that ethnologic dance artists played in the establishment of distinctly American concert dance. While contemporary critiques of both women’s work aptly include discussions of cultural appropriation, La Meri was seen largely as a technician or “re-creative” artist; her work was not as artistically acclaimed as that of St. Denis.

In chapter 3, “Staging Diaspora,” Kowal underlines the artistic and political significance of Sierra Leonean choreographer Asadata Dafora. Dafora is an oft-forgotten figure in US American concert dance history. His legacy is “unsettled among dance scholars” (29), occupying a precarious position framed by African American modern dance artists’ efforts toward self-representation and African self-determination on the African continent. Dafora’s directorial work of the mid-1940s included the staging of three African dance festivals at Carnegie Hall by the African Academy of Arts and Research—a pan-Africanist, anticolonialist, Nigerian-led organization. Kowal argues that his performances of diaspora “gave visibility to black creativity and resistance” (122), paving the way for postcolonial and civil rights solidarity in forming a black American identity “defined in global terms” (122). Chapter 4, “Staging Diversity/Staging Containment,” reveals the conflicting politics and nationalistic aims underpinning the 1948 Golden Jubilee Celebration in New York City. The event purported to highlight US American multiculturalism and cross-cultural understanding through the capacity of “dance as a medium of cultural diplomacy” (167). Kowal identifies significant sociopolitical tensions between globalism, pluralism, and dance universalism. She further argues that the celebration’s formation of US American cultural identity was facilitated by the presence and performances of international guest artists, in contrast to their “embodiment of foreignness” (30).

Kowal’s Dancing the World Smaller is an exemplary treatment of a forgotten chapter in dance history, significantly contributing to fields of performance, political, and cultural studies. Her engaging text is further illuminated by a mass of archival photographs, performance programs, and nearly 40 pages of highly detailed endnotes. Dancing the World Smaller is a particularly strong complement to Clare Croft’s 2015 Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange. Croft explores the aims of cultural diplomacy within several US State Department–sponsored tours of American concert dance companies, beginning in the second half of the 20th century. Kowal’s examination of dance in relation to mid-century globalism offers a historical foundation for Croft’s study, which centers the experiences of individual dance artists during attempts by the US government to export dance as an idealized image of national and cultural identity.

Throughout the book, Kowal’s substantial body of archival research is mobilized by critical theories of culture, race, and ethnicity. Her analysis illuminates a complex array of conflicting artistic and political intentions surrounding the import of international dance practices at mid-century. Kowal’s investigation simultaneously asks how dance might reconcile or reify cultural difference—how globalism is performed, embodied, and defined by the paradoxical challenges of actually “dancing the world smaller.”