Exporting Art, On The Government’s Dime

Washington choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess has spent his summer in Peru, touring with his own company and working with the country’s own national troupe. “What made Burgess’s Peru trip possible was the State Department’s American Cultural Specialists program. The program, which sent 66 artists abroad last year, promotes cross-cultural exchange through the arts… [The] program is one contemporary example of the federally sponsored international tour, a practice that was at its height during the Cold War period and has always functioned with a combination of public and private funding.”