The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Releases Research Projects from First Class of Jerome Robbins Dance Division Fellows

Research from Malaika Adero, Yoshiko Chuma, Silas Farley, Joseph Houseal, Gus Solomons, and Victoria Tennant as Inaugural Class of Dance Fellows


May 9, 2016 - The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the Committee for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division are unveiling the completed works by its inaugural class of Dance Committee Fellows, created to further explore the Dance Division's exceptional collections. The inaugural class of six Fellows was chosen by the Committee for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division and granted an honorarium to support their research and writing during a year of immersion in the collections of the Division. The resulting works—texts illustrated with materials from the collection—are now available on the Library's website, and demonstrate the breadth of the Division's holdings while celebrating the unique perspective of each Fellow. Such scholarship helps serve the Library’s community by providing new, informed perspectives on its unmatched holdings while showcasing the relevance of these collections to a broad audience.

The six Fellows and their research projects are are:

"I am proud and delighted to see the first class of Dance Fellows at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts," said NYPL President Tony Marx. "This fellowship program - with the support of the Library's staff and the creative environment at our Performing Arts Library - will surely inspire new conversations and scholarship in dance."

Beginning in the fall of 2014, the Dance Fellows have worked closely with former Curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, Jan Schmidt, and enjoyed full access to the incomparable research collections and online resources at the Library, as well as the invaluable assistance of the Library’s curatorial and reference staff. 

"This is a very exciting moment for The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, and for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division," said Jacqueline Z. Davis, Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. "This first class of Dance Fellows includes an amazing group of people who each approached our dance collections in a new and exciting way. As we continue to develop the Dance Committee Fellows program, I look forward to seeing the exciting new work these fellows produce, and how they inspire more creative ways for students, artists, researchers, and everyone to explore and use our collections."   

"It is a great privilege to see the work of such a diverse and inspired group of scholars who readily immersed themselves into one of the most important collections on dance anywhere," said Elizabeth S. O'Brien, Committee Chair. "Our sincere thanks to Jan Schmidt and the staff of the LPA who helped make the launch of this program possible."

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library is the largest and most comprehensive archive in the world devoted to the documentation of dance. Chronicling the art of dance in all its manifestations—ballet, ethnic, modern, social, and folk—the division is much more than a library in the usual sense of the word. It preserves the history of dance by gathering diverse written, visual, and aural resources, and it works to ensure the art form's continuity through an active documentation program. Founded in 1944 as a separate division of The New York Public Library, the Dance Division is used regularly by choreographers, dancers, critics, historians, journalists, publicists, filmmakers, graphic artists, students, and the general public. While the division contains more than 42,000 reference books about dance, these account for only 3 percent of its vast holdings. Other resources available for study free of charge include: films and videotapes in the Jerome Robbins Archive of the Recorded Moving Image; audio recordings that bring to life the personalities and forces that shape the course of dance history; clipping and program files; iconography, including prints, original designs, posters, and photographs; manuscripts and memorabilia,ranging from choreographic notes and diaries to contracts and financial records of major companies. 

About the first class of Jerome Robbins Dance Divisions Fellows at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts:

Malaika Adero

Malaika Adero is a veteran editor in book publishing and author of Up South: Stories, Studies and Letters of This Century's African American Migrations (The New Press 1992-93) and coauthor of Speak, So You Can Speak Again: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston with Dr. Lucy Hurston. Publisher and founder of Home Slice magazine (www.homeslicemag.com), she is a former vice-president and senior editor at Simon & Schuster. She has worked with several dance companies, including Almamy Dance Ensemble and Babatunde Olatunji's Drums of Passion.

Yoshiko Chuma

Yoshiko Chuma (artistic director and choreographer of the School of Hard Knocks, USA, and of Daghdha Dance Company, Ireland) was born in Osaka, Japan ,and has lived in the United States since 1978. Chuma has created more than forty-five full-length company works, commissions, and site-specific events for venues across the world, constantly challenging the notion of performing for both audience and participant. Her work has been presented in New York in venues ranging from the Joyce Theater to the legendary annual Halloween Parade, and abroad in such locations as the former National Theater of Sarajevo, the perimeter of the Hong Kong harbor and at an ancient ruin in Macedonia. Yoshiko Chuma is the recipient of several fellowships and awards, including those from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, Japan Foundation, Meet the Composer Choreographer/Composer Commission and Philip Morris New Works. She received a New York Dance & Performance Award ("Bessie") in 1984 and has led workshops and master classes throughout Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, Russia and the United 

Silas Farley

Silas Farley is a member of the New York City Ballet. He started dance training with Sal and Barbara Messina at the King David Christian Conservatory in Charlotte, North Carolina, at age seven. At the age of nine, he was accepted into the North Carolina Dance Theatre School of Dance (now Charlotte Ballet), where his teachers were NYCB alumna Patricia McBride, Kathryn Moriarty, and Mark Diamond. At the age of fourteen, Farley attended the summer course at the School of American Ballet (SAB), the official school of NYCB, and was then invited to enroll as a full-time student. Farley has also choreographed for SAB Choreography Workshops, the SAB Winter Ball, and the New York Choreographic Institute. In 2012 he was one of two advanced SAB students selected by Peter Martins for a student teaching pilot program at SAB. In August 2012, Farley became an apprentice with NYCB and joined the company as a member of the corps de ballet in August 2013.

Joseph Houseal

Joseph Houseal is the director of Core of Culture, a nonprofit organization working in cultural preservation, specializing in dance. His expeditionary work in the Himalayas has informed museum exhibitions across the globe and contributed to the NYPL Digital Collections as well. An internationally respected writer on dance, Houseal's association with Ballet Review, NYC, has lasted thirty years. Former artistic director of Parnassus Dancetheatre in Kyoto, Houseal also worked as artistic director for soul singer Chaka Khan and choreographer for the United States Naval Academy. In 2014, Houseal directed a project for Ballet Society, producing an app for mobile devices, engaging young dancers with the humanities and allied arts. In 2007 Houseal's work was awarded the Conde Nast Global Vision Award for Cultural Preservation.  

Gus Solomons, Jr.

After getting a bachelor of Architecture at MIT, dancing with Martha Graham, Donald McKayle, Pearl Lang, and Merce Cunningham, and founding and directing two companies, Solomons Company/Dance (1969-94) and PARADIGM (1996-2011), Gus Solomons Jr. continues to perform as a guest dancer in various projects, including Black Mountain Songs at BAM Harvey and Isaac Mizrahi's Peter and the Wolf at Guggenheim Works & Process. He also reviews dance, mentors choreographers, and acts.

Victoria Tennant

Victoria Tennant trained at the Central School for Speech and Drama in London before playing the title role in her first film, The Ragman's Daughter at the age of twenty-one. She has since acted extensively in film, television and theatre, receiving Golden Globe and Emmy nominations. Her book Irina Baronova and the Ballets Russes is a memoir of her mother with over 300 vintage photographs that chronicle her life and the birth of ballet in America, set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution and World War II.

The Fellows and their projects will be celebrated on May 12 in a special private reception hosted by Barbara G. and Lawrence A. Fleischman Executive Director, Jacqueline Davis. It will feature a panel discussion with four of the six fellows on their experience researching within the collections of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division and the outcome of their work there.

About The New York Public Library For The Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts houses one of the world’s most extensive combinations of circulating, reference, and rare archival collections in its field. These materials are available free of charge, along with a wide range of special programs, including exhibitions, seminars, and performances. An essential resource for everyone with an interest in the arts — whether professional or amateur — the Library is known particularly for its prodigious collections of non-book materials such as historic recordings, videotapes, autograph manuscripts, correspondence, sheet music, stage designs, press clippings, programs, posters and photographs. The Library is part of The New York Public Library system, which has 90 locations in the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island, and is a lead provider of free education for all.