NYPL Blogs: Blog Posts by Subject: Dance

Dance Special Libraries and Museums

Miranda J. McDermott, Grand Concourse — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 07:07:00 -0500

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has an extensive dance collection. I love the kinesthetic artistry of physical movement. I was curious about dance libraries and museums, and below are some that I found.

Special Libraries

from the Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers, 40th ed., 2012

Cross-Cultural Dance Resources Library
518 S. Agassiz St.
Flagstaff, AZ 86001-5711 USA
928-774-8108
Dance, performance, folklore, ritual, ethnomusicology, manufactured arts, ethnographies

Dance Collection Library
141 George St.
Toronto, ON, Canada M5A 2M6
416-365-3233 / 800-665-5320

Dance Films Association, Inc. Archives
48 W. 21st St., No. 907
New York, NY 10010 USA
212-727-0764
Dance on film and videotape

Dance Notation Bureau Library and Archive 111 John St., Ste. 704
New York, NY 10038 USA
212-571-7011
Dance notation - Labanotation, Benesh Movement, Eshkol-Wachman Movement; notation theory and reconstruction

Dancer Transition Resource Centre - Main Library
The Lynda Hamilton Centre
250 The Esplanade, Ste. 500
Toronto, ON, Canada M5A 1J2
416-595-5655 / 800-667-0851
Dance - career, financial, legal and personal counseling, resources, grants/awards for re-training

Duke University - American Dance Festival Archives
PO Box 90772
Durham, NC 27708-0772 USA
919-684-6402
Institutional records of the American Dance Festival and manuscript collections on the history of modern dance

English Folk Dance and Song Society - Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
Cecil Sharp House
2 Regents Park Rd.
London NW1 7AY, United Kingdom
Phone: 44 20 74852206
Traditional music, song, dance, and customs; storytelling; social history; folk revivals

India National Academy of Music, Dance, and Drama Library
Rabindra Bhavan
Ferozshah Rd.
New Delhi 110001, Delhi, India
Phone: 91 11 23381833
Music, dance, drama, performing arts

Israeli Dance Institute Inc. - Resource Information Center
JCRC, Ste. 700
225 W. 34th St.
New York, NY 10122 USA
212-983-4806, x143
Israeli folk dance, history of Jewish dance, Israeli and Jewish music, Jewish dance costume

Julliard School - Lila Acheson Wallace Library
60 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023-6588 USA
212-799-5000, x-265
Music, drama, dance

Laban Library and Archives
Laban
Creekside
London SE8 3DZ, United Kingdom
Phone: 44 20 8469 9533
Dance - history, education, choreography, movement, science

Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies Library
520 8th Ave., Ste. 304
New York, NY 10018-6507 USA
212-643-8888
Human movement studies, dance, dance movement therapy, cultural studies, artistic inquiry, anthropology and sociology, management styles and corporate team building, conflict resolution, dance and somatics in education, injury prevention and rehabilitation, dance history and philosophy

Library of Congress - Performing Arts Reading Room
101 Independence Ave., SE
James Madison Memorial Bldg., Rm. LM 113
Washington, DC 20540-4710 USA
202-707-5507
Music and music literature, dance, and theater of the world, emphasizing Western civilization, American music, opera and librettos, and chamber music; music organizations; literature about music in various languages (excepting Hebraic and Asiatic)

Liverpool John Moores University - I.M. Marsh Learning Resource Centre
Barkhill Rd.
Liverpool L17 6BD, United Kingdom
Phone: 44 151 2313179
Education, dance, sports

National Ballet of Canada Archives
470 Queens Quay, W.
Toronto, ON, Canada M5V 3K4
416-345-9686
Founding and development of the National Ballet of Canada, research and scholarly work in dance

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts - Jerome Robbins Dance Division
40 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023-7498 USA
dance@nypl.org
212-870-1657
All forms of dance

Ohio State University - Music and Dance Library
166D Sullivant Hall
1813 N. High St.
Columbus, OH 43210-1307 USA
614-292-2319
Music - history, education, theory and composition, performance; dance

Pacific Northwest Ballet Library
301 Mercer St.
Seattle, WA 98109 USA
206-441-2435

Swarthmore College - Underhill Library for Music and Dance
500 College Ave.
Swarthmore, PA 19081-1399 USA
610-328-8231

The Lloyd Shaw Foundation - Lloyd Shaw Dance Archives
5506 Coal Ave., SE
Albuquerque, NM 87108 USA
505-255-2661
Dancing - square, round, contra, social, folk

University of Copenhagen - Dance Studies Section Library
Bldg. 21, 5th Fl.
Karen Blixens vej 1
DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark
Phone: 45 35328195

University of Kansas - Thomas Gorton Music and Dance Library
Murphy Hall, Rm. 240
1530 Naismith Dr.
Lawrence, KS 66045-3102 USA
785-864-3496

Vancouver Ballet Society Library and Archives
Scotiabank Dance Centre
677 Davie St., 6th Fl.
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6B 2G6
604-681-1525
Dance history of Vancouver British Columbia, Canada, North America and the UK

Western Michigan University - Harper C. Maybee Music & Dance Library
3006 Dalton Ctr.
1903 W. Michigan Ave.
Kalamazoo, MI 49008 USA
269-387-5237
Music, dance, music theatre

Museums

Dance Art Museum of the Americas
National Museum of Dance & Hall of Fame

Discovering Dance Lineages Through Oral Histories

Cassie Mey, Oral History Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 10:14:21 -0400

Next week (on October 24, 26 and 27, 2012) I have the honor of performing at the Museum of Modern Art's Marron Atrium in Voluntaries by choreographer Dean Moss and visual artist, Laylah Ali. These performances are part of MoMA's Some sweet day dance exhibition series. Voluntaries examines the legacy of John Brown, a white abolitionist who attempted an armed slave revolt in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859, resulting in his capture and execution. This piece is my first project working as a dancer/performer with Dean, Laylah, and the company. We have been developing this work in rehearsals for over a year, most recently at Baryshnikov Arts Center on a dance residency.

Although I have been a dancer my entire life, my understanding of the richness and complexity of dance history has greatly expanded during the three years I have spent as the Oral History Archive Assistant at the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. In dance, as opposed to the visual art represented at MoMA for example, fewer records of the past exist, and the final product — the performance itself — is of course ephemeral. Dance is passed along, on the whole, orally, directly from person to person in a process that creates complex personal networks within (and between) many dance communities. The lineage of today's dance artists are interwoven with the generations of dancers and dance supporters that precede them. Yet sometimes these historical connections can be difficult even for the dance performers themselves to uncover.

Oral histories have the potential to reveal the threads that connect, support and inspire new dance work. For example, in the course of my work at the Oral History Archive, listening to Dean Moss' Oral History Project interview allowed me to further understand the background of his life and the development of his artistic philosophy through his own perspective. I was interested to learn that Dean had been a performer with David Gordon/Pickup Company. Coincidentally, this past summer the Oral History Project taped interviews with both David Gordon, and his wife and creative muse, Valda Setterfield. Dean also spoke in his interview about his time as an artist in residence at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX) and his long-time supporter, Marya Warshaw, BAX's Artistic/Executive Director. The Oral History Project also recently taped an interview with Marya, in which she spoke about her pivotal role as a sponsor for dance artists in Brooklyn. Listening to these interviews helped me to contextualize and deepen my understanding of Dean's work, and certainly to enrich my own experience as a dance artist in Voluntaries.

Brief clips from the Moss, Gordon and Setterfield interviews are now available online at the Dance Oral History Channel. The full interviews with Gordon, Setterfield and Warshaw will become available in 2013.

Here is a list of all of the interviews that have been produced by the Oral History Project since it began in 1974. These interviews can be listened to in their entirety on the third floor of the Library for the Performing Arts. Perhaps there are some that might enrich your own experience as an artist, or as an audience member…

Speaking of, come see us at MoMA!

Booktalking "Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff" by Walter Dean Myers

Miranda J. McDermott, Grand Concourse — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 09:35:41 -0400

Booktalking Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff by Walter Dean Myers, 1975

Somehow he became known as "Stuff." Anyhow, one of the funniest things he ever observed was Cool Clyde, aka "Claudette" jiving with Fast Sam, who was "getting into his thing" on the dance floor in a competition. One by one, couples were asked to sit down by the announcer jovially saying, "Hey, hey. Let's give a big hand to..." and then he announced the couple's names. The pace of dancing would rise to a frenetic pace in the few seconds before the announcement, each couple throwing a few more daring moves in fervent hope that it would not be them to drop next. As the dance floor thinned out, Claudette, with her wig, and Fast Sam were giving the music a run for its money until there were only two couples left on the floor. Could Claudette retain her wig long enough to win?

Sam, Clyde, Stuff, Gloria, BB and Angel are not too cool to form a club to help them weather the storm when something bad happens to make them feel little. It's nice to have the "Good People" to count on. Soul kissing and boys and girls discussing sex, partying with people that they barely know, and going on a field trip with Dad to the local precinct? This is the life of Stuff. His father said that some people just want to mess with kids. Clyde's grades in jeopardy and Sam trying for a full scholarship in basketball to attend a university. At least there is something better to aspire to.

Fast Sam, Cool Clyde, and Stuff by Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers is awesome, and this book is a fun, relaxing read. If you love dance and the art of growing up, this book is a winner. Despite the publication date of this book, it is as relevant today as any contemporary teen novel.

TeenLIVE at the NYPL in Retrospect: Young Dancemakers Co. on July 28, 2012

Miranda J. McDermott, Grand Concourse — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 07:05:35 -0400

Original Choreography: We were very lucky to have the Young Dancemakers Company visit the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (LPA) for a TeenLIVE event. I think that it is fantastic that young people are creating their own choreography. In addition, I had not been to LPA for a couple of years, so I was excited to see how it has changed. The Young Dancemakers Company is a free summer program, and it is in its 17th year. NYC teens from 15 public schools each year rehearse their dances for three weeks and then perform for free in different locations across the city. I was excited to see the choreography of the dancers. (I have learned a little bit about dance choreography from watching Dance Moms. I love the artistry of the choreography on that program.)

The Young Dancemakers Company is newly chosen ever year by auditions in March. The auditions are open to all NYC public high school students.

Audition for Young Dancemakers Company! youngdancemakerscompany.org

Dances: The program consisted of the Director of the Young Dancemakers Company, Alice Teirstein, who hosted the program, the music director, William Catanzaro, who played drums, Marlena Wolfe, a member of the former Robert Battle Dance Company, and of course, the teen dancers, who ranged in age from 14 to 18 years of age. There were boy and girl dancers. First, the dancers introduced themselves through movement, then the following dances were presented: Tempo Study, Vortex, P.A.R.T.Y., Talking Eyes Silent Lips, Bully, School's Out, Ella, Trapped, Ode to Isaac Newton, Last Words, Competition, Helpless & Urban Shuffle. At the end of the dance performance, the members of the company grabbed audience members to make a finale with audience members and company members dancing together. Most of their dances appeared to be a mix of modern dance, hip hop and ballet, but there was one step piece. The teens created themes and pieces that were of importance to them.

Chris Shoemaker, Teen Programming Specialist, introduced the Director of the Young Dancemakers Company. He invited the audience to partake in a program of dance and performance and magic. He quoted Voltaire as saying, " Let us read and let us dance. Those are two things that would never harm us." He mentioned that there are 500,000 dance materials at the Library for the Performing Arts, including film reels and materials from the costume collection.

The costumes were fantastic thanks to designer Jennifer Lee. They reflected the mood of the dances and the colors and styles were very aesthetically interesting.

Tempo: The director of Young Dancemakers Company talked about dance as consisting of rapid movements punctuated by periods of stillness and slow movements. There were many jumps punctuated by periods of stillness. There were six dancers in this piece: two had red body suits, two had purple body suits, and two had orange body suits.

Vortex: The central idea for this dance is that objects spiral into a center. The dancers had blue and grey costumes for this dance, and they walked, then ran around in a circle around a central dancer. Of course, there were jumps and other cool dance moves.

P.A.R.T.Y.: This was a song about a fun-filled celebration. The dancers were wearing casual clothes with very bright colors. There were turns and jumps in unison and splits. At the end of the dance, the dancers sat on the edge of the stage with the letters YDC 2012 displayed for an intimate moment with the audience. The dance and music were very light and airy.

Talking Eyes Silent Lips: This was a dance about self-mutilation and eating disorders in girls with low self-esteem. There were three dancers in black costumes with red ribbons on their arms and legs to signify wounds. The choreographer read her poetry about deep-seated pain while the instrumental music played and the dancers moved to express their anguish.

Bully: This dance was about bullying that can occur and friendships that can insulate people from that. The dancers wore white shirts and jean shorts. There were many turns and jumps. This was one of the best choreographed pieces because it was clear what the dance was about. One girl was being targeted by one of the boys, and then her friends started shunning the boy who was bothering her.

School's Out: The dance was about the chaos and excitement of the last day of school. The dancers wore black and colored shirts. It occurred to me that the dancers need many costumes for dance performances. The kids were jumping (literally) for joy. It started off with the kids looking bored and sitting on the stage tapping their pencils on the stage. Then, finally, and joyfully, the bell rang. One of the teens said, "Oh my God, guys. School's out!" They were doing cartwheels on the stage, shouting with joy, slapping each others hands, and dancing with partners. Animal sounds (such as moo) were interspersed with the music. One teen was running frenetically on the stage, and one of the teen guys came and carried her off of the stage. This dance was a crowd favorite, and it was very creative and funny.

Ella was a dance about Ella Fitzgerald, and Marlena Wolfe, a member of the former Robert Battle Dance Company, joined the teen dancers. The dance was a guest repertory project, choreographed by the renowned Robert Battle. The music was Ella Fitzgerald's and the professional dancer was so fluid, so relaxed and in control of her timing, and her movements were impeccable, as if she were playing with the music. The dance was full of attitude and bold, strong movements.

Trapped was a dance about being trapped in a box and in ones own thoughts and ideas. The dancers wore vertical black and white striped costumes, as if they were prisoners.

Ode to Isaac Newton: The dance was based on the abstract theories of motion that this scientist propagated. The dancers wore grey costumes and you could see that an object in motion stays in motion and an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by another force.

Last Words was a dance about losing a grandparent to cancer. Three dancers dressed in white mourned their loss.

Competition was a step piece. The dancers wore jeans and T-shirts and were clapping and stomping on the ground. I have seen other high schoolers do this sort of very rapid rhythmic dance before, and it is somewhat mesmerizing. This dance was particularly refreshing because the movements were so different than the rest of the dances, which were mainly a mix of ballet, hip hop and modern dance.

Helpless was one of the best choreographed pieces because it was immediately and saliently apparent what the dance was communicating. The dancers were in black and white costumes. One dancer was limp and had no energy while another dancer was trying to lift her up and she kept resisting and wanted to lay on the floor. The helper was supporting the other dancer's weight when she started to fall.

Urban Shuffle was the Young Dancemakers Company's finale. This was also a guest repertory piece, choreographed by the renowned Sean Curran. The kids were in street clothes and dresses. The colors were red, white, blue jeans, black and brown. One dancer had newsprint on her shorts. They danced toward one another and jumped in two lines in unison. This dance was somewhat entrancing. Then the Dance Company came into the audience to pick members for the last dance.

Dance With Us! was the finale in which the Director of the Young Dancemakers Company held a mini dance class. First, dancers lunged in unison with her. Then she asked them to reach high, spin and they copied some other movements of hers. She asked dancers to fill 8 counts (seconds) with as many movements as they could. Then she asked them to move as slowly as possible.

Audience Questions: After the dance, the director opened up the floor for questions from the audience. One audience member expressed amazement that 17 dancers did not crash into one another on the stage. The director said that her heart was in her mouth so much, but that the dancers did a great job adapting to the stage. Some performance stages are different than others.

Another person asked if any of the dancers had taken gymnastics. Some had; some of the dancers had also taken hip hop, jazz, and ballroom dance. Someone asked how the dancers learned the step piece. The choreographer of that piece said that it takes a lot of hard work and practice, but that it is relatively easy to learn. Someone asked if the dancers attend special high schools (performing arts). The dancers responded that some of them do and some of them do not. They come from 15 NYC public high schools.

The audience thought that the Young Dancemakers Company was terrific. The dancers sat on the edge of the stage while they answered questions for an intimate moment with the audience. It struck me then how, despite their kinaesthetic talent, when you sit down and talk to them, they are just regular kids, but awesome and dedicated teens as well.

Thanks to Chris Shoemaker, Teen Programming Specialist, for bringing the Young Dancemakers Company to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

I have not seen dance choreography in a long time, probably 12 years or so ago. I danced in a Irish step dancing dance and a modern Men in Black routine with a college club when I was an undergraduate, but mostly, I have not watched dance much, except for the TV show, Dance Moms, which usually does not show entire dance pieces. It was an enlightening experience, the teens are so creative, and it was great to see LPA after I had not been there for a while. TeenLIVE events are awesome!

Future TeenLIVE Event: TeenLIVE present Johnny Iuzzini!

Thursday, September 20, 2012
5:30pm - 6:30pm
Jefferson Market Library
425 Avenue of the Americas (@ 10th St.)
New York, NY 10011

From cold storage in Brooklyn to Ladurée in Paris and Restaurant Jean Georges and Nougatine in NYC, get the sweet scoop on culinary careers and experiences from a James Beard Foundation “Outstanding Pastry Chef of the Year” award winner Johnny Iuzzini.

The Speaking of Dancing Project

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 18:01:34 -0400

In the interview excerpt above, New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay discusses the challenges of writing about dance, using examples of moments in the ballets Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty that made profound impressions on him.

The theme of interpretation—in essence, how movement creates meaning—goes to the heart of dance as an art form. Interpretation comes center stage in Speaking of Dancing, a new series of interviews recorded by the Oral History Project of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The Speaking of Dancing project was made possible through a generous gift from Anne H. Bass.

Since March 2011, I have had the exciting opportunity to assist in the creation of seven new oral history interviews for this project, five of which were recorded on video. The interview subjects are dancers, choreographers and critics who have had significant and dynamic careers in the New York dance world.

Looking for a way to give the project a unifying theme, I worked with Susan Kraft, Coordinator of the Oral History Project, to develop the focus on interpretation in these interviews. At once a creative and critical process, interpretation is the bridge that carries ideas from choreographers to dancers and from dancers to audiences. Over time it shapes the evolving relationships between mentors and students, artistic collaborators, critics and performers, and between dancers and the works they perform.

In the Speaking of Dancing interviews, conducted by distinguished dance critics and historians (Deborah Jowitt, Nancy Reynolds, Brian Seibert, and Rose Anne Thom), the interviewees speak about their creative processes and artistic growth; the influence of teachers, mentors and colleagues; career trajectories and transitions. The interviewees address questions like:

How do dancers develop their interpretations of dramatic roles vs. roles in non-narrative ballets?
How does the art of dramatic expression relate to the rigors of technique that today’s dancers master?
What methods do choreographers use to communicate their ideas to dancers?
What are the challenges for dance critics interpreting a non-verbal form in words?
How do audiences interpret the dance movement they see on stage?

Students and scholars of dance have few chances to hear dancers and choreographers speak at length and in depth about their art. Over the past 38 years, the Dance Division’s Oral History Project has created an unparalleled trove of oral documentation of dance. The interviews created for Speaking of Dancing demonstrate once again how articulate, engaging and insightful dance artists are in discussing their craft, as well as the extraordinary knowledge and passion that dance critics and historians bring to the field.

The other Speaking of Dancing interviews are with Karin von Aroldingen, Lupe Serrano, Holly Hynes, Wendy Whelan, Julie Kent, Kevin McKenzie, Karole Armitage, Carolyn Brown, and Ethan Stiefel. All are or will soon be available for viewing or listening on-site at the Library for the Performing Arts, and excerpts from five are available on the new Dance Oral History Channel.

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division gratefully acknowledges Anne H. Bass for inspiring, advising on, and underwriting the Speaking of Dancing project.

Finale, Part I: Curtain Calls

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 08:59:32 -0400

The Great American Revue is coming to the end of its run at the Vincent Astor Gallery, LPA. Don't worry — all of the artifacts will be returned to the Billy Rose Theatre Division, Jerome Robbins Dance Division, or Music Division, and the blog channel will continue. But, since the show itself is closing, I am dedicating this week's blogs to finales.

Think about curtain calls — what usually happens? Performers come onstage in reverse order of importance (to great applause, of course). The audience claps wildly, they bow and exit. In contemporary drama and post-modern opera, sometimes, the cast applauds the audience as well. I think that it started with Brecht; my earliest memory of applauding casts was Marat-Sade.

In revues, curtain calls were much more elaborate. Historians have known that they often involved dialogue and new verses, but very few are extant. But you never know what you will find at the Library for the Performing Arts...

Dancer/choreographer Ruth Page was an enormously important figure in American dance — as founder of the Page-Stone ballet and as choreographer for the Chicago Lyric Opera and Opera Ballet. In the early 1920s, she was a concert dancer with bills to pay. Like so many future giants of American dance, she spent seasons as a specialty dancer in a revue. Partnered by Hubert Stowitts, also a major figure in American ballet and concert dance in development, she performed as a nightingale in the Music Box Revue of 1924's national tour. The Music Box Revues were created by Irving Berlin for his new Music Box Theater and Irving Berlin left nothing theatrical or musical to chance, so he scripted the curtain calls in his signature flawless rhymes.

In the Ruth Page Collection, 1928-1976 (*MZGMD 16), we found a copy of the Act II finale curtain calls for that tour, set to his "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil." They were sung by two performers — Charlotte Greenwood and Grace LaRue — in mock rivalry.

"...Before the final curtain rings down and we are through
We'll introduce to you, The cast of this revue...
You must admit we travel in nice company
We're very proud and why shouldn't we be?...
"There's Miss Rich who sang about the bird that left its lacquer cage"
"And clever Mr. Stowitts – also wonderful Miss Page."

After introducing the full cast, the male and female choruses, and creating a patriotic chorus about the good immigrant names of the stage hands, Berlin added one last verse:

"Now – we will let you go
Now – you may leave the show
If you don't know just where to go –
You can pack up your sins and go to the Devil in Hades..."

The audience walked out humming.

That Bacchanale Rag

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 06:14:47 -0400

"That Bacchanal Rag"

Layers on layers of references that could not fit into a caption:

The Passing Show of 1912 established the topical nature of Broadway revues. The authors, George Bronson-Howard and Harold Atteridge, combined references to contemporary politics, New York's cultural life, and both Broadway personalities and their fictional characters (in this case, producer/playwright David Belasco and Peter Grimm, a character that he wrote for David Warfield. Ned Wayburn, who served as both director and Dance Director codified his experiments with interpolation: staging cohesive sequences that allowed performers to present their specialties.

The show's Act I Finale, set in the Harem of Sewer-Man, parodied the play Kismet, with added text and visual references to Scheherazade and Sumurun.

I won't try to explain the plot, but at the end of the scene Ferusah, the Queen of the Harem, says: "Bring out all the choicest wines. Let in all the young men with vine leaves in their hair. Let us be worshippers of Bacchus, joyous and unrestrained," leading into the finale, "The Bacchanale Rag" (by Atteridge and Louis Hirsh). This is a great example of the sub-genre "Ragging the Classics" for which, in Atteridge's phrase, "Other writers will give brother writers inspiration, Handy opera will be dandy just for syncopation." The song, which puts words to the autumn section of Glazunov's The Four Seasons, led to a specialty in which a couple in Grecian tunics dance under a veil. The theater audience recognized it as a parody of Autumn Bacchanale, choreographed by Mikhail Mordkin for himself and Anna Pavlova, and a popular part of her touring repertory. Broadway satirist often picked on Mordkin, whose name inspired more puns than Volinine or Pavlova's other partners. The really knowledgeable would know that the ballet was, in turn, inspired by The Storm, an 1880 painting by Cot, which was commissioned by Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, current on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Gallery 800, the last gasp of Romantic realism before the Impressionist galleries).

So You Think You Can Find Dance: A Guide to Research

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 11:31:43 -0400

Dance is a subject on many people’s minds these days, with television series such as Dancing with the Stars, So You Think You Can Dance, and America’s Best Dance Crew becoming fixtures on network and cable channels. Now there’s also Breaking Pointe, Bunheads, and All the Right Moves, the latter two premiering soon.

But while music has Beethoven and theater has Shakespeare, how many people know much about the history of dance and the makers of dance? Or where or how to look to learn about these subjects?

General Resources

One good place to start is with the International Encyclopedia of Dance, which is available online at any of the Library’s research libraries. Using the Encyclopedia will allow you to look up specific people, dance styles, historical periods, topics, or even dance names (such as the Nutcracker) and get a short description, as well as recommendations for other resources to consult. The Oxford Dictionary of Dance provides even more concise descriptions. You may also want to check out other general dance research materials, which are compiled on our Bibliocommons list, Dance Beginning Research Resources. These resources include stories of the great ballets, ballet and modern dance vocabularies, and even histories of tap and social dance.

The Catalog

If you already know some names or terms you would like to search for, you should start with the Library’s online Classic Catalog, through which you can find everything in the Dance Division. In fact, many articles from dance magazines and even chapters in books were indexed in the catalog, up until 2004. Go ahead and do a simple keyword, author, title, or subject search, or use the Advanced Search function on the left hand side of the screen to search simultaneously by title, author, subject, and more.

Using Advanced Search, you can also limit the results to show just moving image (film and video) and audio materials by holding down the "Ctl" key (COMMAND on Mac) and under “Material Type” selecting DVD, Film/Slides/More, VHS, and/or Spoken Word. To look for photos and other graphic materials, limit the results to the Material Type “Picture.” And to limit your search to items in the Library for the Performing Arts, choose “Performing Arts Library” in the Advanced Search dropdown box for “Collection.”

In the case of manuscript collections – the papers of individual artists or the records of dance companies – the Archival Materials search page allows you to do keyword searches within the Library's digitized finding aids. All of the Dance Division’s finding aids are available online through this tool, and they provide detailed information on the subject of individual collections, the types of materials in the collections, and a list of what’s in which box and folder. The Archival Materials search will also link to the catalog record, which you will need in order to find out whether a box is stored on site or offsite. There may be a couple of clicks involved to get to both the finding aid and the catalog record, but you need them both, so persevere!

A few of things to note about our catalog records:

Circulating vs. Research Materials. All call numbers in the Dance Division research collection start with the *MGxxx. Items with call numbers B [Name] or 793.xx are circulating materials, available on the first and second floors of the Library for the Performing Arts.
Call Numbers. The Dance Division’s call numbers are format-based, so that Dance clippings, for example, all start with the call number *MGZR ([title of work, name of artist/company]). Simiarly, Dance photographs all start with the call number *MGZE ([title of work, name of artist/company]).
Tracing Back Subjects and Other Terms. All the subjects, titles, and names in our catalog records are "traced," which means you can click on links to see like items. For example, a search for films of Swan Lake brings up Maria Tallchief coaching excerpts from Apollo and Swan Lake, which has an “added title” of “Swan lake (Choreographic work : Balanchine after Ivanov)”. Clicking on the "added title" brings you to a list of similar choreographic works, and clicking again on the added title in that list will show you 27 films and videos of the work which you can view. Clicking on the "subject" “Swan lake (Choreographic work : Balanchine after Ivanov)” yields even more materials which are about, and not just of, the work. You can use these and other subject headings to explore dance topics, and not just names of people, dances, and companies.
Indexed Magazine Articles, Book Chapters, and Individual Documents. Should you see the notation "In" in a catalog record, this indicates that the record is for an article in a magazine, a chapter in a book, or an individual document in a larger manuscript collection. The title supplied after “In” is the actual title of the work you would request. See for example this record, which you would request with the call number, *MGZA, and information about the containing work: "Dance Magazine. New York. July, 1983."
Indexed Loose Photographs. You may notice titles with numbers on catalog records, such as this one. These are for single loose photographs in a larger photograph file, and if you want to see them you should ask for the entire file: “*MGZE (Swan Lake),” or even more specifically, “*MGZE (Swan lake (Choreographic work : Balanchine after Ivanov)).”

For magazine articles published after 2004, search various databases available through the Library’s website. Some of the more useful databases for dance research are:

International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance with Full Text – available only on site at a NYPL Research Library
International Index for the Performing Arts Full Text (IIPA) – available only on site at a NYPL Research Library
JSTOR – available on site at any NYPL branch
Academic One File – available from home with a NYPL library card and PIN
Academic Search Premier – available from home with a NYPL library card and PIN
Biography in Context – available from home with a NYPL library card and PIN
Oxford Reference Online – Performing Arts – available from home with a NYPL library card and PIN

Materials Stored Off-Site

As you search through the online catalog, note that certain items must be requested in advance, as they are stored off-site. This will be noted in the catalog record, under "Location" where it will say "OFFSITE – Request in advance for use at Performing Arts" or "OFFSITE Rose – Request in advance for use at Performing Arts." Please see our web page for information on requesting these materials.

Materials Requiring Permission to View

An appointment is not required to view or listen to most dance items, including video and audio. Note, however, that if the catalog record says "Permission Required" or "Permit Needed," that indicates that you will need to get prior permission in order to view the material. The Reference Librarian at the 2nd Floor Theatre/Dance reference desk at the Library for the Performing Arts can give you contact information related to the specific restricted title. Even better, if you find something which is Permission Required/Permit Needed before you visit the Library, email the Dance Division at dance@nypl.org and we will provide the contact information for you to request (and hopefully receive) permission to view it before you get here.

Onsite Help at the Library

We suggest that everyone visiting the Library begin on the 2nd Floor, where you will find a Reference Librarian who can help you fill out the forms you will need to request Dance Division materials. You’ll then be directed to the 3rd floor, where you can turn in your requests and view the materials.

We hope to see you soon, and to open up the world of Dance for you!

Surprises in the Jerome Robbins Audio Collection

Wed, 30 May 2012 10:35:58 -0400

Archival collections can harbor surprises — which makes the job of processing them fun! The personal archives of artists not only document their careers and personal lives, but often contain material reflecting their interests and their times.

Jerome Robbins, a choreographer of prolific and complex genius whose work spanned ballet and musical theater, was a long-time supporter of the New York Public Library’s Dance Division. On his death in 1998, Robbins willed his archive to the Dance Division, which was re-named in his honor. The Jerome Robbins Collection includes correspondence and other papers, artwork, film, video, and audio recordings.

In March, 2011, I began work on preserving and cataloging more than 200 of these sound recordings with the help of Oral History Archive assistant Cassie Mey, and generous financial support from the Jerome Robbins Foundation. This audio collection includes working tapes relating to Robbins’s theater works, audio notebooks, and music and other recordings from his personal collection. The surprise was a number of items relating to current events of the 1950s and ‘60s, which demonstrate how Jerome Robbins was stimulated and influenced by the social and cultural ferment of these years.

In particular, Robbins was keenly interested in the civil rights movement. One treasure discovered in the audio collection is “Project 65: Mississippi Summer,” a two-hour radio documentary produced in 1965 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, exploring the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. This detailed, probing documentary allows activists and locals, blacks and whites, mayors and tenant farmers and schoolchildren to speak for themselves, creating a visceral yet thoughtful, multi-faceted portrait of the cultural and moral clash surrounding the struggle for African-American civil rights. Fannie Lou Hamer describes being beaten in a Winona, Mississippi jail; a young volunteer from Wisconsin canvases for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; the president of the pro-segregation White Citizens’ Councils defends their purpose; farmer Hartman Turnbow describes his attempt to register to vote and the subsequent firebombing of his home. Produced less than a year after the events of the Freedom Summer, the documentary provides a rare contemporaneous look at the civil rights movement, long before its victory was assured.

Also in the Jerome Robbins Audio Collection is an archival recording of a 1964 gathering of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Greenwood, Mississippi, at which Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier (who are heard on the tape delivering speeches) appeared to present funds raised for SNCC; and radio news reporting about race riots in Detroit, Milwaukee, and other cities in July, 1967.

Another gem to emerge from the collection is a complete audio recording of the television program Night Beat, on which John Wingate interviews Jack Kerouac and Earle Hyman. Hyman discusses his struggles and triumphs as an African-American actor and his love of theater. Kerouac, on the occasion of the publication of The Subterraneans, defines Beat vocabulary for his host and discusses the controversy surrounding the “Beat Generation,” his writing process, his cats, his painting, and his study of Buddhism.

These extremely rare sound recordings are now available for research use on-site at the Library for the Performing Arts, along with a two-hour lecture-performance by Stephen Sondheim at the 92nd Street Y in 1971, a radio interview with Lee Harvey Oswald, a recording of Arthur Miller’s biblical musical Up From Paradise, archival recordings of traditional Japanese music, and other audio materials reflecting Jerome Robbins’s wide-ranging, ever-searching intellect.

King of Jazz? Paul Whiteman and Hollywood's Rave Revues

Mon, 14 May 2012 06:42:06 -0400

Join us on Tuesday afternoon for a screening of King of Jazz (Universal, 1930) at LPA. Hollywood's Rave Revues is a film series programmed by John Calhoun in conjunction with the exhibition The Great American Revue, across the lobby in the Vincent Astor Gallery.

The film stars and is named for Paul Whiteman, an early radio star and innovator of symphonic jazz, now remembered primarily for commissioning Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. It is an early Technicolor, early sound film revue with links to George White's Scandals, through Whiteman, and the Greenwich Village Follies, through director John Murray Anderson.

The film presents many insights into early Technicolor and sound technology. Universal's Mono system lost the high range of voices, including most of the women singers, but favored male tenors and baritones, such as Bing Crosby. It also featured wonderful examples of eccentric dance specialties, including a truly spectacular and anatomically impossible rag doll dance.

The production number for which the film is remembered is the finale, in which costumed choruses representing immigrant groups dance their ways into a huge prop cauldron. Emerging from the melting pot is American jazz — at least the kind of symphonic radio big band jazz popular in 1930. It is an iconic sequence which shows up frequently in documentaries about American culture. It is, however, not original. Scene 5 of the Passing Show (the Shuberts' revue series) of 1919 was "The Melting Pot of America's Popular Tunes." Eddie Miller and the Winter Garden High Steppers (precision dancers) performed "America's Popular Song," by Shubert regulars composers Sigmund Romberg and Jean Schwartz and lyricist Harold Atteridge.

A New Dance Oral History Project Interview

Susan Kraft, Oral History Project Coordinator, Jerome Robbins Dance Division — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 08:25:15 -0400

The first of our Spring Oral History Project interviews was just recorded and it was a true breath of fresh air. On March 19 and 26, 2012, Eva Yaa Asantewaa sat down to interview Marya Warshaw.

Warshaw has been the Executive/Artistic Director of BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange (formerly The Gowanus Arts Exchange) since its founding in 1991. In 1998, BAX received a "Bessie" Award for its innovative work creating a house and a true home for the arts in Brooklyn. You can read about Yaa Asantewaa’s take on her experience at this writer’s fascinating blog.

The staff of the Oral History Project has been producing in-depth dance related oral history interviews since 1974, seeking to record and preserve stories that might otherwise go untold. Our mission is to add to the existing primary source documentation available in an art form which, by its very ephemeral nature, is challenging to preserve and study. We record oral histories with dancers, choreographers, scholars, administrators and designers. You can check out our links to descriptions of over 400 oral histories.

We loved the opportunity to document Warshaw’s work because BAX has been such a unique and vital force in the life of so many dance artists throughout New York City. As the Coordinator of the Oral History Project, I welcome your suggestions of people in the dance community who you would like to see as participants in our Project—it might be your favorite dancer, or a choreographer that you would love to know more about. We are also particularly interested in senior members of the dance community or those whose stories might be at risk in some way.

Perhaps you are aware of an unsung dance hero?

I look forward to hearing from you!

150 Years of Loïe Fuller, Modern Dance Pioneer

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 04:21:13 -0400

150 years after her birth in Fullersburg, Illinois on January 15, 1862, Marie Louise "Loïe" Fuller is less well known than her peers. Yet her work, flowing and abstract and free from the constraints of classical ballet, predated and paved the way for more familiar modern dance pioneers like Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis.

On April 12, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will celebrate the 150th anniversary of Loïe Fuller's birth with a program by Jody Sperling, the Founder and Artistic Director of Time Lapse Dance, as well as a scholar and interpreter of Loïe Fuller's style. In conjunction with the program, we have put together a small exhibit of materials on Fuller from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division. The exhibit is on the Library's third floor and will be available to view through June 2.

During her early career, Loïe Fuller worked in vaudeville, notably in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. She was more musical theatre actress than dancer, and made a gender-bending appearance as Aladdin in The Arabian Nights at the Standard Theatre in New York City in 1887. By the end of 1892, however, Fuller had become renowned as the inventor and performer of the Serpentine Dance. Short, rather plump, and lacking in formal dance training, she developed her own natural movement and performance aesthetic, manipulating a billowing robe of white silk fabric into swirling and undulating forms under colored lights on a darkened stage.

Fuller would go on to great acclaim in performances in Paris at theatres such as the Folies-Bergère, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, the Théâtre des Arts and, at long last, the prestigious Paris Opera in 1920. At the Exposition Universelle, the 1900 world fair in Paris, she even had her own eponymous theatre, designed by the Art Nouveau architect Henri Sauvage.

Fuller associated with and inspired many of the leading artists and thinkers of the era. She was friends with the sculptor Auguste Rodin, and inspired posters and paintings by the Post Impressionist artists Jules Chéret and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The Symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé called her dancing the "theatrical form of poetry par excellence" and hailed Fuller as "an artist of intoxication and industrial achievement." Rodin and the Nobel Prize winning writer Anatole France lauded her "instinctive" and "natural gifts," predicting that "her effects, lights, and 'mise-en-scène' are all things which will be studied."

For Fuller was not just a choreographer and dancer. She developed and patented set designs, costume designs, and stage lighting techniques, such as this mechanism for stage underlighting:

Fuller's experimentation with light extended beyond live performance to film. She produced a full length film, Le Lys de la Vie (The Lily of Life), based on a story by her friend Queen Marie of Romania. The film employed innovative special effects for the time, such as negative images and slow motion, to evoke the fairy tale nature of the narrative.

In her insatiable curiosity (as well as her quest to stay ahead of her many imitators), Fuller consulted with Thomas Edison and Marie and Pierre Curie on developments in electric lighting, phosphorescent salts, and the possible use of radium on stage:

"I explained to Mr. Edison the idea of permeating a dress with these salts — and I left a large scarf with him to experiment upon. I never knew the results, because some years later — during another visit to N.Y., I found he had given up his laboratory. The results were so harmful to the men who worked with the acids and the x-ray. I had not done anything myself in the phosphorescence but I was still intensely interested.

"I am always deluged with light, and I wanted to dance without any at all. That it was science never occurred to me."

Greetings from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division Oral History Archive!

Cassie Mey, Oral History Archive, Jerome Robbins Dance Division — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:50:50 -0500

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division Oral History Archive is home to unique and rare dance-related audio recordings that capture the voices of dancers, choreographers, composers, lighting designers, costume designers, and dance scholars from the mid-20th Century through today. These recordings encompass a wide range of original and donated content, including Dance Division-produced oral history interviews, radio show broadcasts, speeches, lecture/demonstrations, panel discussions, dance classes/workshops, and personal recordings.

As the Oral History Archive assistant at the Library, one exciting aspect of my job is to help transform the collection's fragile audio recordings into the stable formats that you can listen to and use for your dance history research.

Some of my favorite, recently preserved gems include:

A 1964 radio broadcast of Ruth St. Denis speaking about the influence of Indian culture and Hindu temple dances on her life and work;
Martha Graham in her mid-career, ca. 1951, lecturing on her philosophies of dance artistry to a live audience;
Katherine Dunham interviews from 1999 & 2000, part of the Popular Balanchine project, regarding her collaboration with George Balanchine on the 1940-1941 Broadway show Cabin in the Sky.

You can listen to these recordings, and many others from the collection, at the Library for the Performing Arts listening stations on the third floor.

Stay tuned for future updates on newly available audio recordings that make dance history come to life!

Celebrating the Life of Janet Collins, an African-American Pioneer in Dance

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:33:07 -0500

The headlines about her death called her the first African American ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera, but Janet Collins was much more than that. A new biography, Night’s Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins, highlights the career of this pioneering artist, drawing partly on materials donated by Collins and others in the Library's Jerome Robbins Dance Division. Author Yaël Tamar Lewin will be speaking about her book on Thursday, February 16 at 6 p.m. in the Bruno Walter Auditorium, and we have put together a small exhibit of materials on Collins on the third floor of the Library for the Performing Arts in celebration of her life and work. The exhibit will only run through March 2012, so we hope you can visit us soon!

Born in New Orleans and raised in Los Angeles, Collins nurtured her talents in both dance and art, studying ballet, modern, and ethnic dances in addition to drawing and painting. She was accomplished enough in ballet to be offered a place in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo at the age of 15 — a position she refused when it came with the requirement that she paint herself white — and versatile enough to excel as a modern dancer in Katherine Dunham’s and Lester Horton’s companies.

She had a distinctive creative voice, too, choreographing, designing costumes, and commissioning music for her own concert dances. Her New York debut garnered glowing reviews from leading dance critics like John Martin and Walter Terry, as well as Dance Magazine’s “Debutante of the Year” award in 1949.

She could choreograph, design, and dance to Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, and in the same concert enchant audiences with the folkloric Juba and fascinate them with liturgical dances set to African American spirituals.

Having established herself as a concert dancer of note, Collins was selected by Agnes de Mille for the role of Night in Cole Porter’s Broadway show, Out of This World. The show was a flop, but Collins won the Billboard Donaldson award for the best dancing on Broadway that year.

She also came to the attention of Zachary Solov, the ballet master at the Metropolitan Opera, who persuaded then director Rudolf Bing to hire her under contract as prima ballerina in a first for the company:

“I simply went to Mr. Bing and said, ‘I want Janet Collins who happens to be a very, very versatile modern and ballet dancer....But, you see, not just because she was black....[W]hat governed my choice of picking Janet Collins was simply because I knew that I was motivated by her color because the color was necessary and I thought here was a marvelous dancer.”
— Zachary Solov, interview with Peter Conway

Still, her independence, growing spirituality, and the stresses of touring with the Met and her own company during the segregation era led her to turn more and more to teaching. She worked in academia and at a school for the deaf, using dance as a form of rehabilitation. In later years she did choreograph again, for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the San Francisco Opera, but she focused mostly on her painting.

Profile of Janet Collins in Jubilee, March 1959

Sneaking a Peek at Baryshnikov

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:09:18 -0500

A few weeks ago, NYPL's Jerome Robbins Dance Division made headlines when it received a major gift of materials from Mikhail Baryshnikov,* the celebrated dancer, actor, and founder of the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

We’ve only scratched the surface in terms of the processing needed to make the archive accessible to the public, but in the meantime, we’ve put together a sneak preview showcasing what we’ve found so far!

Mikhail Baryshnikov: An Archival Preview is on view in the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts until December 20, 2011. Take a rare glimpse into the collection before it is catalogued, a process expected to take three years. More information about the exhibition >>

Many people these days may be more aware of Baryshnikov from his television work on Sex and the City, but those of us over a certain age remember the excitement when this Kirov (Mariinsky) Ballet star burst onto the New York stage, dancing with Natalia Makarova* in Giselle with the American Ballet Theatre on July 27, 1974. (You can see silent excerpts of that very first performance in New York or a later full performance by the pair right here in the Library.)

It wasn’t just his amazing technical gifts, but the charisma he exuded that wowed audiences and critics alike. He hobnobbed with Hollywood royalty, and was so well known that titles of magazine articles about him would just refer to him by his nickname, “Misha.” And he helped make dance exciting to a broader audience, especially through his crossover work in films and television. In 1977, it seemed every teenage girl (and not a few women) wanted to be Leslie Browne in The Turning Point, just to be in the same room with Baryshnikov. How many people today can even name a male ballet dancer?

As we begin to go through his collection, however, what strikes me as truly extraordinary is Baryshnikov’s constant quest for new challenges. He left the Soviet Union to seek more artistic freedom; he left guaranteed stardom at the American Ballet Theatre to work with George Balanchine at New York City Ballet. And then — not content with merely being a dancer — less than 10 years after he arrived in New York, he took on the directorship of the American Ballet Theatre, and followed that by founding the White Oak Dance Project with Mark Morris in 1990 to focus on modern dance.

Beyond his acting work, Baryshnikov has written a children’s book and published and exhibited his photography around the world. Most recently, he has expressed his support for expanding creative boundaries by establishing the Baryshnikov Arts Center, which “serves as a creative laboratory, meeting place, and performance space for a vibrant community of artists from around the world.” Just this past week, Baryshnikov was presented with a 2011 Mayor’s Award for Arts & Culture for his “outstanding contributions to New York City’s cultural life.”

You’ll see evidence of the incredible breadth of artistic endeavors that Baryshnikov has undertaken — as well as the indomitable courage behind them — in our small exhibition. So come and visit the Library soon and see what we’ve discovered!

*Links with asterisks require a New York Library card and PIN, or they may be accessed on site at the Library.

We Don't Just Read Books...

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 09:56:11 -0400

... sometimes we write them too!

NYPL is proud to announce a new book written by a Library staff member on the subject of film noir, just in time for the latest exhibition at the Library for the Performing Arts, Out of the shadows: The Fashion of Film Noir.

Imogen Sara Smith, a cataloger and coordinator for the Speaking of Dancing Oral History Project in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, recently published her second book, In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City. Published by McFarland & Co. in August 2011, the book explores the noir genre from a new angle by focusing on films with non-urban settings, examining how film noir reflected changes in the physical and social landscapes of postwar America. The book isn't yet in the Library's Catalog, but it's on order and we look forward to getting our copies soon! Find it now with WorldCat.

While researching and writing the book, Smith did extensive research at the Library for the Performing Arts and was assisted with finding rare film prints and photographs by the Film Noir Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring and screening films and promoting the study and appreciation of film noir.

When she's not busy with her work at the Library, Smith is a freelance writer and film scholar. She published her first book, Buster Keaton: the Persistence of Comedy, in 2008 while working as a video cataloger for the Dance Division. She is proud to have her books in the collection of The New York Public Library, and NYPL is proud to have her on its staff!

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

Doug Reside, Digital Curator of Performing Arts, Library for the Performing Arts — Mon, 02 May 2011 10:19:18 -0400

In William Butler Yeats' poem "Among School Children" the poet famously asks "How can we know the dancer from the dance"? Many interpret this line as an observation that some creative acts are so intimately connected to the artist who created them that separating the two is almost impossible. However interesting or beautiful this idea might be, its reality makes the work of dance preservation a difficult one. Literary or musical art can be transcribed to paper using a widely understood encoding system (e.g. the alphabet) and passed on to future generations. Documenting and preserving dance is not so easy.

Some choreographers have developed written notational systems like those used to transcribe music. The most common of these systems are those descended from the work of the early twentieth-century Hungarian dancer Rudolph von Laban. Although these system are learned and understood by many dance artists and scholars, literacy is far from universal and only a relatively small subset of dances have been completely transcribed in any system.

The oldest method of dance preservation is, as with most art forms, oral tradition. Masters of the craft teach their students who carry it into the future. Most surving pre-19th century dance exists today only because of this practice. In recent history, companies like The American Dance Machine have attempted to preserve early twentieth century theatrical dance by learning and performing the works of the previous generation.

Since the mid-twentieth century, many dances have been documented with video recording. Unlike written words or musical notes which encode sound by abstraction and are understood only by shared conventions, video transcribes the sensory experience itself and requires no special education to interpret. NYPL has one of the largest collections of dance video in the world at the Library for the Performing Arts. Although video has a few obvious advantages over oral tradition or abstract notional systems, it is in other ways more limited. The technology forces the videographer to select focus and perspective and so flattens the experience of a dance from three to two diminensions and narrows the expansive view of a stage to the small confines of a video screen. Some choreographers and scientists (such as William Forsthye and Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design [ACCAD]) have developed tools to allow an audience to switch between multiple synchronized camera views, but recording and presenting dance in this way is time consuming and expensive and only captures a limited number of perspectives on the dance.

Today, librarians, dancers, and scientists are working to develop new ways to more fully document this fundamentally ephemeral art form. Some have experimented with motion capture technology (such as that used by Peter Jackson's special effects team to create the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings) to fully document the movement of dance (again ACAAD's work is among the most interesting). Others are using electroencephalography [EEG] technology (normally used for medical diagnosis) to document the electrical activity in the brain during the performance of a dance. None of these technologies replace the older forms (dances are still regularly preserved by teachers training their students), but new technologies may help to preserve those portions of a dance that are missed by other techniques.

If this topic is of interest to you, you may want to take a bus or train down to Washington D.C. on May 16. From 7-10 pm I and a group of dancers, technologists, and curators are holding a free, public workshop at the Kennedy Center to discuss these issues (the culmination of a series of workshops sponsored by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park; Ohio State University; and George Washington University). It should be a great event, and our hope is to begin a discussion that will further improve our culture's approach to the very difficult task of dance documentation. Hope to see you there!

Notes From a Life-Long Learner: Social Dance

Jyna Scheeren, Grand Central — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:43:03 -0400

Social Dancing, which consists of various forms of dance, such as square dancing, is a communal tradition brought to the American continent by its earliest immigrants. Big in centuries past, social dancing is still practiced today, even in New York City. I know because I attended my first dance very recently: a barn dance.

For the beginner, social dancing, which in my case included free-wheeling square dances and contra dances, can seem like aerobics, physics, and geometry all rolled up into one.

Like aerobics, the dances rely on repetitive motions that work your muscles, burn fat, and make you sweat. Like physics, direction and speed are factors. Like Geometry, the dances involve lines, squares, and circles. And, you're golden if you can quickly tell your left hand from your right.

Is it fun? Sure. But, unless you do these dances regularly, you have to learn the steps. And the way you learn is by listening to someone call the directions over the loud strains of guitar, bango, bass, and fiddle. Not easy at first. I can’t tell you how many keystone kop moments I observed in the various dancing squares that moved across the expansive hardwood floor, or the number in which I was personally involved.

But, the human tangles made everyone experiencing them laugh, and the repetition of dances and moves dramatically lowered the learning curve as the night wore on.

And then there’s the other physical aspect of all this: actually touching other people.

Even if you show up to one of these dances with a partner, the dances require that you bow to, hold hands and swing arm-in-arm with several people you’ve never met. Awkward? Yes. At least at first. But, after the endorphins kick in from the continual swinging, doh-see-doh-ing, and promenading, it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.

If we lived in the 1800s and the local paper published a blurb about any social dance event, the last line might read: “Acquaintances were made and a good time was had by all.”

And that’s the point of the social dance. In an age where communicating with others was extremely difficult, social dancing provided a means of finding friends and companions while offering an evening of exhilarating fun.

Folks took the dances seriously, especially the more formal ones—not only the steps but the subtle ways in which participants could communicate with one another to indicate interest beyond the dance.

In this modern age, at this particular barn dance, I saw some of this subtlety, mainly in the form of folks making quiet connections at the periphery of the floor. Seeing a long-skirted woman coquettishly smile and nod to a tall, well-groomed gent made me feel as though I had travelled back in time.

But then I’d see someone sitting alone with the light of her cell phone shining up on her face as she electronically touched someone, somewhere. Who needs a social dance when you have unlimited texting?

Nevertheless, it might be interesting to explore the history of Social Dancing in America. Read all about it.

Dancing Fools for April Fool's

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:16:44 -0400

In honor of April Fool's Day, I bring you an image of a jester and a ballerina which I found the other day in the Dance Division's photo collection. We don't know much about this photo, except that it's an example of the kinds of variety dancing performed in the early part of the 20th century.

It turns out there are lots of fools in the Dance Division (not among the staff, of course)!

We have videorecordings of New York City Ballet dancing Peter Martins's* A Fool for You, including one of the work's world premiere on May 14, 1988, as well as clippings and a program documenting performances of the piece. (You will need an NYPL card to access links marked with asterisks.) Other fool-ish works include Gillian Lynne's Fool on the Hill, two different pieces called Fool's Tale – one by Yuriko* and one by Ray Powell – John Cranko's* The Lady and the Fool, Christopher Wheeldon's* Fools' Paradise, and a 1920 piece by Swedish dancer/choreographer Jean Börlin* of the Ballet Suedois, Les Vierges Folles (The Foolish Virgins):

Our collection even includes mime works like Bob Berky's Foolsfire and Fool Moon, starring Bill Irwin and David Shiner.

Fools abound beyond the 20th century as well. A print from the 19th century depicts a jester carrying a scepter with a replica of his own head.

Even earlier images exist of fools, such as this section from a 12 panel 18th century engraving. This fool is a fine example of the tradition of Morris dancing, a kind of folk dancing which continues to be studied today, and which is documented by numerous books in our collection.

In fact, our records of Morris dancing include several editions of Cecil Sharp James's* The Morris Book, which provides some instructions on the fool's jig. James states that "the purpose of this dance to enable the Fool, who is usually a very clever dancer, to demonstrate his prowess":

And I would be remiss if I didn't include instructions for April Fools Day, a dance brought to Australia by Cornish settlers:

Happy April Fool's Day!

April 2011 Programs at New Dorp - Free!

Adriana Blancarte-Hayward, New Dorp Library — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:18:14 -0400

We are very excited to have many great programs for you this April 2011. From puppet shows, to bilingual celebrations; from Irish dancing to Zumba! Meet a NYTimes Best Seller Author, and come to celebrate Staten Island's 350th Anniversary! Sounds intriguing? Keep reading!

Please note there are downloadable calendars with all the events at the end of this post, so you can make a copy for yourself and pass it along to friends!

Here are some highlights from this month:
For Children:

On Thursday April 7th we will have a puppet show, "The Silkie," a mythic story of a wondrous creature from the sea who is bestowed with the mystic power of walking the earth as human.
We have two great programs celebrating Earth Day: Thursday April 21st @ 4 PM and Friday April 22nd at 2 PM.
We have our 3rd annual celebration “Día de los niños / Día de los Libros” – “Children’s Day / Books Day” on April 28th @ 2:30 PM. Here is a video from our celebration last year.

For Teens:

We conclude our Knitting Workshop on April 6th! And we continue to have our Teen Café and Teen Art and Anime Club programs.

For Adults:

Irish Music and Dance - Community Ceili. Dance to the music of Ireland. Instruction will be provided. Listeners also welcome!
As part of Staten Island’s 350th Anniversary Celebration we are hosting a “Memories” program for the New Dorp, Grant City, Midland Beach, Oakwood and surrounding communities. Come and share memories of life in your neighborhood. Meet friends old and new. Saturday April 16th @ 2 PM.
Would you like to meet a NY Times Bestseller author? Come on Saturday April 23rd @ 2:30 PM and meet TJ English. His most recent book is The Savage City, put it on hold, read it, and come chat with him!
Last, but not least - we are starting a Zumba class! Thursdays April 14th & 21st at 12:30 PM. Come and join the fun!

… and there are many more in our full calendar! Feel free to bookmark this post, print out a copy, and pass it around!

Please click on any of the links below for a copy of a complete list of our programs.

We hope to see you here at your Library!