Blog Posts by Subject: Dance

The Dance Oral History Project consists of over 475 in-depth interviews that have been initiated and recorded by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division since 1974.

Learn a new skill or get a basic refresher course that will get your body active and moving.

Since 1974, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has been conducting a Dance Oral History Project with renowned dance professionals.  As the Oral History Archivist, I oversee this remarkable collection of over 450 voices and continue to add to it annually.  These unedited and in-depth audio interviews  capture the personalities, creative process, and relationships in the dance field that 

49 years later, Robert Greskovic remembers the premiere of the ballet Dances at a Gathering—and the intricate details of its construction which lend to its timelessness.

Editor-in-Chief of the Jerome Robbins Foundation newsletter Gregory Victor has spent many years writing in specific detail about under-reported areas of Robbins' life and career.  In this guest blog, he writes about Robbins' relationship with television.  Robbins studied the medium technically, not passively in his role as audience, and gave much thought to its capacity and its limitations as producer.

Director/choreographer Jerome Robbins resisted working in television. Robbins had three main objections: the challenge in collapsing three-dimensional 

A Jerome Robbins Dance Research Fellow reflects on Robbins' life and archives, from a January 2018 symposium.

Begin celebrating The Year of the Dog with a selection of books, recordings, and Library events to suit all ages.

Alastair Macaulay, chief dance critic for The New York Times, investigates connections between Vaslav Nijinsky’s "L'Après-midi d'un Faune" and Jerome Robbins’s "Afternoon of a Faun."

Intern Lexa Armstrong shares what she learned while working in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

Intern Juliana DeVaan shares what she learned while working in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

Guest post by New York Public Library Short-Term Fellow Chantal Frankenbach, California State University, Sacramento

The American modern dancer Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) was one of the most acclaimed and influential artists of her time. Notorious for her romantic involvements with the likes of British theater critic Gordon Craig, German biologist Ernst Haeckel, and millionaire Paris Singer, Duncan also attracted artists and intellectuals as collaborators in her work as a dancer. These collaborations have a great deal to tell us of her wide-ranging ideas about the 

For much of its history, bugaku remained an exclusive and privileged experience, performed only at the Japanese imperial court and, very rarely, as part of religious rituals at temples or shrines.

In honor of National Poetry Month, and what would have been her 89th birthday, we celebrate the life and work of, Dr. Maya Angelou, with this Research Guide. Here, you will find an overview of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s holdings related to the work and life of this notable poet, writer, journalist, actress, and dancer.

New! This series of Schomburg Center Research Guides will provide you with resources related to various topics and subjects related to the Global Black Experience. This research guide will provide you with an overview of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s holdings related to Black dance pioneer, Katherine Dunham.

Walking by the dedicated computer station in the The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, I am reminded daily of the Bhutan Dance Project, Core of Culture, that I co-cataloged and created in 2013.

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division is pleased to belatedly announce that the final seven interviews documented with the Mertz Gilmore Foundation grant to record African dancers and choreographers working and teaching in New York are now online

Live from the Reading Room: Correspondence is a podcast series that aims to share interesting and engaging letters written by or to key historical figures from the African Diaspora.

A new case exhibit on the third floor of the Library for the Performing Arts presents a small historical survey of the characteristic imagery and common features of visual representations of the dance of death.

In celebration of its anniversary, a current case exhibit on the third floor of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts highlights materials related to 9 Evenings.