This is a joint post by Dance Division staff members Jennifer Eberhardt, Kathleen Leary, Cassie Mey, Daisy Pommer, Erik Stolarski, and Arlene Yu.

While the Library has been closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division has been working to support the broader dance community to encourage increased learning and scholarship on dance and to gather and support the preservation of dance documentation in all its forms.

We’ve released a Libguide on researching dance remotely, created digital coloring books and online jigsaw puzzles featuring our digitized collections to provide activities for those sheltering at home, continued to provide reference virtually, and are developing still more forthcoming initiatives to engage and assist our community.

The Black Lives Matter protests and dance community conversations about systemic racism have generated many community-developed resources on the issues affecting all of us. Dance scholars, practitioners, activists, and leaders have all contributed material that can be used to educate ourselves and others and to take action. Our staff, led by reference librarian Erik Stolarski, have now gathered those resources in a new Libguide on Systemic Racism, Protests, and Dance to document that work and help our community look at its past, assess and preserve the present, and plan for the future:

In the Libguide, you’ll found resources grouped into six categories:

• White Privilege, BIPOC Experiences, and Anti-Racism
• Dance and Systemic Racism
• Dance, Academia, and Pedagogy
• Archiving
• Dancers Protesting
• Model Statements

There is also a Media section, which includes Book and Media Lists, Interviews and Discussions, and Performances.

In addition, within the Dance Division, our staff are taking active approaches to better balance representation of BIPOC artists through collection expansion (both research and circulating collections), the recording of original documentations, the Dance Oral History Project, and Dance Division fellowship programming. Moving forward, we’ve identified specific areas where we can use our resources to enact this Divisional perspective, including public programming, exhibitions, outreach, social media, and educational initiatives.  We are committed to centering the contributions of Black, Indigenous, and POC artists to dance history within our collections.

----> Go to the LibGuide