Dance 

An American Ballroom Companion presents a collection of over two hundred social dance manuals at the Library of Congress. The list begins with a rare late fifteenth-century source, Les basses danses de Marguerite d'Autriche (c.1490) and ends with Ella Gardner's 1929 Public dance halls, their regulation and place in the recreation of adolescents. Along with dance instruction manuals, this online presentation also includes a significant number of antidance manuals, histories, treatises on etiquette, and items from other conceptual categories. Many of the manuals also provide historical information on theatrical dance. All illuminate the manner in which people have joyfully expressed themselves as they dance for and with one another.

The Highland fling and how to teach it, by Prof. Grant.  Library of Congress Music Division

Ballet Russe Drop Collection

The Butler Ballet in Indianapolis, IN, owns a very valuable collection of scenery and costumes coming from the famed Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. This collection was accumulated over the span of several years during the mid-sixties through the diligence of the late George Verdak, himself a former dancer with the Ballet Russe, who for many years was a most influential member of the dance faculty at Butler University. "Mr. V"., as he was fondly called by those who knew him, later left Butler to found the Indianapolis Ballet Theatre.

This site provides access to many photographs of the scenery collection, with brief historical references about each piece. This pictorial exhibit of famous ballet drops is provided courtesy of Stephan Laurent, Professor, Butler University Department of Dance.

Alexander Benois' Petrushka.  The Ballet Russe Collection.  © 2001 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

The Katherine Dunham Collection at the Library of Congress consists of moving image materials that document the extraordinary journey of a woman who changed the face of American modern dance. Selected materials, including videos of dance technique and fieldwork, are available via this Web presentation.

Katherine Dunham.  Library of Congress Music Division

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. The Digital Gallery contains some 4,814 items from the collection including programs from the American tour of the Ballets Russes, Joffrey Ballet slides, and prints depicting dance.

Merce Cunningham at Black Mountain College, 1948.  New York Public Libary Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

The Paget-Fredericks Dance Collection contains roughly 2,000 original drawings, paintings, photographs and pieces of memorabilia that date from ca. 1913 to ca. 1945. The collection is arranged by subject and format into sixteen groups, numbered 1964.009 to 1964.024. Various media and sizes are represented. The categories by subject include: Isadora Duncan; Loie Fuller; Vaslav Nijinsky; Anna Pavlova; Ruth St. Denis; other dancers; decor and costume designs for ballets; other figure and costume studies; illustrations and graphic design; miscellaneous drawings and paintings; juvenilia; historic dance costumes; printed pictures and clippings; photographic prints; portraits; and works by other artists in various media. The material in the collection was either created or collected by Joseph Paget-Fredericks.

L'Apres Midi d'un Faune.  The Bancroft Library. The University of California, Berkeley. 

Performing Arts in America 1875 -1923, a web site of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, captures a glimpse of this world. With visual and audio images drawn from the extensive archival collections at The Library, the site features an authentic look at this past, from the Broadway theater and Tin Pan Alley to the art of dancer Loie Fuller and composer Charles Griffes, all brought to you in original documents. Captured in the then new techniques of photography, recorded sound, and film, the performing arts of the early twentieth century come alive as never before, preserved by The New York Public Library and brought to you a century later via the Internet.

Castle maxixe : Brazilian maxixe / James Reese Europe and Ford T. Dabney. Europe, James Reese, 1881-1919.

SALIDAA’s digital archive is a free online resource featuring collections of South Asian literature, art, theatre, dance and music by British based artists and organisations.

Ram Gopal in peacock posture.  George Hurrell.   

The Siobhan Davies Archive project began in January 2007, with the aim of bringing together all of the materials and documentation associated with Davies' choreographies into a single collection. It is the first online dance archive in the UK and contains thousands of fully searchable digital records including moving image, still image, audio and text.

Siobhan Davies.  Siobhan Davies Archive