Black Dance at the Schomburg: A Visual History
As part of her Black Dance at the Schomburg series, Communications Intern Kiani Ned takes a look inside the Schomburg Center's Digital Collections to uncover some of our most fascinating gems.
Dance has been used by black people as a means to communicate celebration, mourning, anger, resistance, pain, and healing. In the same way that a person may communicate their ideas with words, it is possible to communicate those same ideas with movement and action. Like any verbal language, dance continues to evolve, expand, and transform as the people who use it do. Located in the Digital Collections of the New York Public Library, one can find over a hundred digitized archival materials alluding to the language of dance as told by black people.
Interested in exploring more black dance at the Schomburg? Check out Black Dance at the Schomburg: The Black Iris Project
Find newspaper clippings about black dance in the U.S. and abroad in the Jean Blackwell Huston Research and Reference Division:
- Ballet Dancing : Clippings
- Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: clippings
- Dance companies: clippings.
- Choreographers : clippings.
And books about black dance and dancers in the Jean Blackwell Huston Research and Reference Division:
- The Eclectic Approach of Black Dance by Peter Anthony Fields, Jr.
- Black Dance by Edward Thorpe
- Black Dance in America: A History Through Its People by James Haskins
- Black Dance: An Annotated Bibliography by Alice J. Adamczyk
Read E-Books with SimplyE
With your library card, it's easier than ever to choose from more than 300,000 e-books on SimplyE, The New York Public Library's free e-reader app. Gain access to digital resources for all ages, including e-books, audiobooks, databases, and more.
If you don’t have an NYPL library card, New York State residents can apply for a digital card online or through SimplyE (available on the App Store or Google Play).
Need more help? Read our guide to using SimplyE.