Blog Posts by Subject: Dance

The Dance Division wishes to express our great joy for the Oscar nomination in the category of Foreign Film for The Missing Picture, directed by Rithy Panh. "This haunting, at times shocking movie—part memoir, part indictment—fills the void suggested by its title. With extraordinary grace, Rithy Panhs tells his story and that of his ravaged country," wrote Mahnola Dargis in The New York Times, September 26, 2013.

A Philadelphia Collaboration: The Pinto Brothers’ Designs for Catherine Littlefield’s Philadelphia Ballet Company, a newly installed exhibit in Jerome Robbins Dance Division, features a variety of drawings, costume sketches and set designs by Salvatore (1905-66) and Angelo (1908-94) Pinto commissioned by Catherine Littlefield (1905-51) for the Philadelphia Ballet Company’s productions of Barn Dance and Terminal.

My studio is an interchange where I coax content from the past, sometimes, the content itself is looking back to a more distant past, creating a cloverleaf-like feedback loop. The Early Years, *MGZIC 9-950, is one of the current projects that has come to mind in the cloverleaf.

Vampirina Ballerina loves dancing, and she does so adorned with a black leotard and black ballet shoes. She also has a black cat and a bat as pets, which are not welcome at ballet class. Plié, relevé... all of the steps that she must learn are daunting, and Vampirina attempts to not trip over her own feet in the process. However, practicing with mummies, vampires and monsters in the Haunted Mansion will definitely improve her skills.

A memorial is being held for Jean Léon Destiné, master Haitian dancer, choreographer and drummer, who passed on January 22, 2013. This will be at the 92nd Street Y on January 24, 2014, during their program Fridays at Noon: The Legacy of Jean-Léon Destiné.

One of the stunning new collections from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division now available in the Library’s Digital Collections is the Khmer Dance Project (KDP). Funded by a grant from the Anne Hendricks Bass Foundation, the KDP began in 2008 when the Center for Khmer Studies partnered with the Jerome Robbins Dance Division to interview and film the three generations of artists - including dancers, musicians and singers, as well as embroiderers and dressers - who kept dance alive during and in the wake of the Khmer Rouge regime. The New York Public Library offers streaming video of all 

“Hey up there”

Broadway precision chorus lines were a staple of musical comedies and revues. A straight line of precision tappers, kickers or steppers could excite the audience in the orchestra, looking slightly up, or balcony, from which they were looking slightly down. But Broadway-trained Hollywood dance directors were giving audiences a multitude of angled points-of-view thanks to cameras and booms.

In the 1930s, the Vandamms went all out to give 

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division just completed a two year project to catalog our backlog of dance related artwork. We are thrilled to announce that a total of 4,349 objects were cataloged and are now available to the public for research. Retired staff member Susan Au was hired for this project and she researched, cataloged, and rehoused these materials. This blog post is taken from her final report on the project. This project was made possible through funds generously donated from the Friends of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, which is co-chaired by Anne Bass and Caroline Cronson.

Today's guest blog is by Suzanne Lipkin, who processed the Marion Lichtman Setlowe papers for the Billy Rose Theatre Division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Marion Lichtman, 1920'sFriday April 9, 1926 I left Atlantic City to go on the road. I was in Second Year High School. I was 16 years of age on March 25, 1926. I joined the Dancing Debs. at Levoy Theatre, Milville, 

(English version) Mi infancia se dio en medio de una generación que en sus tiernos comienzos se la conoció como el movimiento ye-ye o la nueva ola. Sí, me refiero a esa época que al escuchar sus canciones nos embarga la nostalgia con nombres como Leonardo Favio,

Ballet Class Group PhotoIt's plain to see that the Library is expanding into areas not usually thought of as a literary bastion's domain. Many branches have chess, yoga, robotics, and opera, and on some days seem to transform into community centers. That's definitely true here at the 67th Street Library, and one of our most booming and unusual programs is Ballet for 

Lamine Thiam teaching dance classThis past spring in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, we were very pleased to produce an inspiring Oral History Project interview with Lamine Thiam. A world-renowned dancer, choreographer, drummer and actor, Mr. Thiam specializes in West African Dance from his native Sénégal and neighboring countries. We digitally filmed Carolyn Webb's interview with Mr. Thiam, so that it is now among the first dance videos to be made available 

I have an inordinate love of 8 mm film. Not just because of its familiar 4:3 TV aspect ratio that so many of us were raised on, but because it was the first medium many of us used for time travel. The persistent click of the pull down claw is a rhythm from memory that can lull us into the past. Occasionally, I feel that I have been the subject of an archival Ludovico Technique and have watched so many pas des deux that when ordinary non-dance material offers me 

Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury Indian folk dance is a very broad term used to describe South Indian dance styles. There are many websites that give information about Indian folk dances and their interpretations.

Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury was one person who achieved a high level of success as an Indian folk dancer. Chowdhury was also an actor, choreographer, author and painter.

Chowdhury was born on February 11, 1930, in Madras, India (now Chennai, India) into a family of Indian royalty. He was the son of Devi Prasad Roy 

Motion pictures are really a form of compressing time. A shutter opens and closes capturing still images. We are complicit in this magical deceit extrapolating what happened in the interval between. This brief hand colored black and white Edison film in which Annabelle Whitford Moore dances a la trilby or barefoot is my favorite moving image in the library's collection; it is both mechanical and handmade. In this simple embellishment of a magical invention the changing colors hover amorphously over their intended areas 

Relentless physical agony for a few minutes of perfection; is this dance? A whirlwind romance with Jonathan, but will it last? Soledad is an 18-year-old woman who just finished high school. She is contemplating teaching dance during the summer or portraying Carmen in a competitive drum and bugle corps. She is not the prototype stick-thin ballet dancer; would Latin Dance work for her? It's about being free, finding your way in the world, and true love.

Effusive declarations of undying love from a boy who has pined for her for four years. Intoxicating teenage 

Portable video, the development of machines smaller than a kitchen range and affordable on an institutional if not a personal scale, ignited a revolution in consumer and institutional video. Before the ubiquitous half inch EIAJ open reel VTR, ca.1970, early adopters employed non standard VTRs such as the Sony CV skip field recorder, circa 1965. André Eglevsky had a CV outfit that 

With opening titles in French, closing credits in Russian, and post-production commentary in Japanese, cataloging Mikhail Baryshnikov's audiovisual collection presents an exciting linguistic challenge. Decoding the names—and, sometimes, nuanced conversations—associated with a production is a particularly engaging puzzle. Who, for example, is that enthusiastic commentator in a Tokyo television broadcast? Could his identity and critique of a performance be useful information for our researchers? What about the cryptic videotape label, handwritten in Cyrillic script? Is this a 

A photograph found loose in a binder of Indian classical dance terms and definitions; although the photograph is unmarked, the dancer is believed to be Gina Blau.One needs to only glance at the papers of Gina Blau (also known as the performer Srimathi Gina) to see that her study of Indian classical dance was truly her life's passion. From the highly detailed (and copious) writings in her many notebooks, to the intricate drawings of various hand positions—or 'mudras'—of Indian classical dance, there is a thoroughness and sense of