The real value of diplomatic cultural exchanges lies in the dialogue
they foster at grassroots level
Carlos Acosta
'A powerful advocate for Cuba' ... Carlos Acosta performs at The Lowry,
part of the Manchester international festival. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
The fact that the Royal Ballet is to perform in Cuba is no surprise.
Sadler's Wells has hosted the wonderful Cuban National Ballet a clutch
of times over the past few years, and Royal Ballet star Carlos Acosta is
a powerful advocate for Cuba despite, or perhaps because of, his having
left his homeland for a London career. His life-story – dramatised in a
dance work, even – is presented as the textbook fairytale narrative of
the poor lad playing on the street picked out for his sheer talent and
groomed for greatness by an enlightened regime. It is an incredibly
powerful story and does no harm to the Castro regime at all.
Orchestras have been quietly involved in this diplomatic game for some
time, as have indeed artists from other disciplines (and a key job of
the British Council, funded by the Foreign Office, has historically been
to use British artists as a tool of soft diplomacy). Maybe it is because
symphony orchestras are largely regarded as politically harmless, the
guardians of great artworks from the past, that they can get away with
so much, and slip in apparently innocently when officialdom would prove
too starchy or too combative. It is precisely because their artform is
music that they are so useful. There are clues and hints in choices of
repertory – often heavy-handed ones. But in the end, they aren't
actually saying anything. The Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of
Venezuela, though not a Chavezian invention, is cannily used as a
powerful advert for Venezuelan nationalism and, by extension, the Chavez
regime abroad. In February last year, when the New York Philharmonic
played Pyongyang, the orchestra's appearance was widely seen as an
attempt to soften relations between the US and North Korea. It was the
first trip by such a high-profile American cultural organisation to the
isolated state. Now, the same orchestra is for the first time seriously
considering a trip to Cuba this October, in the wake of the US's
lightening of some sanctions against the country. According to the New
York Times, the idea has been run past the office of the vice-president,
Joe Biden. "They said, 'Absolutely, it's a wonderful project and you
should pursue it,'" according to Zubin Mehta, the orchestra's president.
Sometimes the diplomacy can be a touch less than soft. When the Ossetian
conductor, Valery Gergiev, who is close to Vladimir Putin, took an
orchestra to South Ossetia last August and played Shostakovich's Seventh
Symphony, this was a none-too-subtle statement of pro-Moscow (and thus
anti-Georgian) politics. The Seventh Symphony is the Leningrad, the one
performed during the siege of that city by an enfeebled, half-starved
orchestra. It is the most potent statement of Russian nationalism
imaginable. Beside that, the NY Phil's playing of the New World Symphony
and Gershwin's American in Paris in Pyongyang seems quite innocent in
its symbolism.
The orchestra co-founded by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, the
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, also has a powerful political undertow,
since it is formed of both Arab and Israeli young musicians. Not
uncontroversial in the Palestinian territories, it has none the less
done an enormous amount to foster dialogue between Arabs and Israelis on
a grassroots level. And it is at the grassroots level that those
involved in such controversial cultural exchanges – whether British
museums working with Iranian or Russian colleagues, or the Royal Ballet
performing in the National Centre for the Performing Arts near Tiananmen
Square, as they did last summer – say that the real value of these often
politically controversial forays lies.
Arts and diplomacy: who gains when the Royal Ballet goes to Cuba? |
Charlotte Higgins | Culture | guardian.co.uk (13 July 2009)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/jul/13/carlos-acosta-ballet-cuba
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