Resources for Archiving & Researching

Compiled by Wendy Perron and Norton Owen in preparation for a Steps Beyond Talking Dance on Preserving the Legacy in 2022, which you can see here.
NOTE: If you would like to add a resource or make a correction, please comment in the space below.

Creating Your Own Archive
Dance/USA’s Archiving & Preservation Affinity Group
ChromaDiverse – Judy Tyrus’s organization for archival management for the
performing arts
 
Jacob’s Pillow Archives and info
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Interactive (including Playlists and Themes|Essays)
Jacob’s Pillow Archives
PillowVoices podcast

Library Archives
New York Public Library  Jerome Robbins Dance Division
Jerome Robbins Dance Division’s Oral History Project
San Francisco Museum of Performance + Design holds collections of Bay Area artists like Anna Halprin
Dance Treasures A-Z, Dance Heritage Coalition at Library of Congress Web Archives
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Getty Research Institute has collections of Yvonne Rainer and Simone Fortil
Many libraries have finding aids for specific collections, for example, NYU has this site for the Wendy Perron Papers of the SoHo Weekly News 1975-78

Other Institutional Archives
BAM Hamm archive
ADF Archive
Bennington College Digital Repository Home includes photos of
the Bennington School of the Dance
Juilliard Digital Resources (Key in dance)
American Tap Dance Foundation

Examples of Company Archives
Martha Graham at the Library of Congress
Urban Bush Women Legacy Timeline
Merce Cunningham chronology of choreography
Merce Cunningham Archives and Selected Readings
Alvin Ailey timeline
Katherine Dunham Timeline
Eiko & Koma timeline
Nikolais/Louis Archives
Trisha Brown repertory
Archives of José Limón (must request access)
New York City Ballet Repertory

Historical Archives
Michel Fokine—Fokine Estate Archive
George Blanchine Catalogue

Culturally Specific Archives
MoBBallet – Theresa Ruth Howard’s website, Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet
History Makers, long interviews with Black artists
Jewish Women Archives has entries on Anna Sokolow, Pearl Lang, Sophie Maslow etc.
University of Michigan’s Chinese Dance Collection
Final Bow for Yellow Face

Innovative approaches to archiving
David Gordon’s Archiveography
David Zambrano, master improvisor and co-founder of Tictac Art Centre

For the avant-garde of all genres: UbuWeb

Publications no longer publishing in print
BalletReview
Contact Quarterly
SoHo Weekly News, SoHo Memory Project

Databases
Alexander Street, a ProQuest database, has more than 1200 videos and all of Dance Magazine digitized. You can access through a college or university affiliation but you can get a free trial here.

The Dance Education Literature and Research descriptive index (DELRdi) is an index listing more than 9,000 literary works including theses, dissertations, journal articles, conference proceedings. The listings, which are drawn from hundreds of publications, university dance programs, government agencies, and other organizations and individuals. They include information on the methodology, techniques, and characteristics of the literature documented in the index. Full text of a document is included when permission is granted by the copyright holder.  Access options can be found here.

Photographers’ Websites in Dance
Stephanie Berger
Christopher Duggan
Rose Eichenbaum
Lois Greenfield
Matthew Karas
Kyle Froman Photography
Chris Nash, UK choreographer

For any past article in The New York Times, just key in name or headline on the NY Times site.

Unsung Heroes of Dance History on this site

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