By focusing on a 2003 dance residency program sponsored by the U.S. State Department, this article locates twenty-first century American cultural diplomacy in a post-9/11 political context. The article focuses specifically on collaboration between San Francisco–based Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and Kolkata, India–based Tansuree Shankar Dance, which grew from the 2003 residency, to consider how artists find ways to facilitate cultural diplomacy that might be a blueprint for future American cultural diplomacy efforts. The article also addresses, however, the limits of that collaboration—limits that highlight the central tension of American cultural diplomacy: a desire to build relationships of so-called “mutual understanding” while also forwarding American national interests.
