Though one of the tensest times in recent history, the Cold War was also an era of cultural exchange between East and West. Amidst the chaos, American dance companies performed on Russian stages while Russian dance companies toured the United States. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, the State Department began sending dance companies to the Soviet Union on cultural diplomacy missions. That practice continued after the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 1965. As the Cold War subsided, the allocation of government funds to send dance companies abroad for diplomatic purposes ended, effectively ceasing government funded dance tours. However, the idea of employing dance as a means of diplomacy has experienced a recent resurgence. In 2010, the US State Department collaborated with the Brooklyn Academy of Music, creating a program called DanceMotion USA. Similar to the Soviet Union tours, DanceMotion USA sends American dance companies to a variety of countries on many continents with the same mission as the Cold War tours: promoting cultural exchange through dance, with dancers serving as diplomats. My research involves giving a historical background of the Cold War tours and comparing those tours with the DanceMotion USA tours currently underway. Using accounts from dancers and dance companies from the Cold War and interviewing company directors with past or future involvement in DanceMotion USA programs, I will investigate the origins of the new interest in sending dancers to other countries with government funding, as well as the implications of using dancers as diplomats. If an art form is able to convey a society’s core beliefs and values, can that ability be misused or abused? In other words, if cultural diplomacy through dance becomes a part of the regular government agenda, will it change the art of dance, and its purposes?