American Ballet Theatre: Touring the Globe for 75 Years
Touring

In 1960, American Ballet Theatre became the first major American dance company to perform in Russia under State Department sponsorship. Because of the traditional dominance of the Russians in ballet, American Ballet Theatre encountered a Cold War faceoff. In an era of great diplomatic tension between the United States and the Soviet Union, ABT managed to win over Soviet audiences, garnering enthusiastic responses from Russian dancers and high-ranking government officials, including Premier Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971). ABT returned to Russia in 1965, again, under State Department auspices.

During the Cold War, the United States government made a concerted effort to showcase American culture to the world and initiated support to dance companies for international touring. Throughout the 1950s, ABT performed in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, with some tours sponsored by the State Department and others financed independently.

In 1953, President Eisenhower personally congratulated the company on its important work as a cultural ambassador. In the mid-1960s, ABT had achieved a status as one of the world's top dance companies and had traveled to dozens of nations, as represented by the cover for the 1964 edition of the souvenir program.

In 1962, ABT was invited to Washington, D.C., to perform at the White House for President and Mrs. Kennedy. ABT was one of the first organizations to receive a grant from the newly-founded National Endowment for the Arts in 1966, attesting to the company's important stature in American culture. In 2006, the United States Congress officially recognized ABT as "America's National Ballet Company."

In 1944 during World War II, Jerome Robbins (1918–1998) choreographed Fancy Free, a ballet about three Navy sailors out on shore leave in New York City. Danced by a young cast of junior soloists, Robbins' energetic, “pedestrian” choreography set to an exuberant score by Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990), with sets designed by Oliver Smith wowed audiences used to seeing ballet as an elitist, European genre.