Retired NBA great Shaquille O’Neal […] will go to Havana in June as part of a sports envoy program focused on Cuban youth [...] Ballerinas in Havana will also welcome a prestigious guest this year. Misty Copeland, the first African-American female principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, will go to Cuba in November to lead dance clinics for minority youth and hold inclusion workshops for coaches.

Ballet Philippines had the recent honor of being invited to the 40th-anniversary celebration of diplomatic relations between the Philippines and China. The invitation was given by the Department of Foreign Affairs International Economic Relations-Cultural Diplomacy Unit with the Federation of Filipino-Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry.

Leading Chinese performing artists who included opera singers, acrobats, dancers and instrumentalists on Sunday entertained a mammoth crowd in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. [...] In his opening remarks, Liu said the music concert was part of a series of activities that have been lined up to promote Sino-Kenya cultural cooperation.

The story of the Hromovytsia Ukrainian Dance Ensemble story began in 1980. [...] It was when Roxana Dykyj, along with her husband, Ivan Pylypczak, and fellow dancers, embarked on a journey to establish a dance company that would showcase Ukrainian culture in the Ukrainian diaspora and the world.

Even during the height of the Cold War with its threat of Nuclear Armageddon, the cultural exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union never ground to a halt. But in the last few years, because of the "boomerang effect of a rancorous legal battle between the Russian government and the Chassidic Jewish group, Chabad" (LA Times 1/17/13), Russia imposed a ban on all art loans to American museums. This legal case is based on Chabad's decades-long effort to recover religious books and manuscripts that the Russians expropriated after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917.

"I had already visited the China Pavilion more than one time in the past days but I can say that today I realized the magnificence of capital Beijing," Italian visitor of the world exposition in Italy's Milan, Mauro Magni, told Xinhua on Saturday. Magni talked to Xinhua after spectating the lion dance, Peking opera, acrobatics and dances, and Chinese ballet drama Marco Polo animating the China Pavilion and other venues at the Expo Milano 2015 site.

Organized by DanceMotion USA, a cultural diplomacy program run by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the "Unsettled" modern dance performance focuses on reconciliation of people. Dancers from Turkish, American and Armenian origins examine the nature of saying "sorry." 

The Asia Centre brings three Japanese dance troupes to communicate, connect and collaborate with Bangkok audiences. "Dance Dance Asia" has selected 10 Japanese street dance troupes to join the project in the first year, Khun Yo says.