Dance manual, New York, Tousey & Small, 1878
Dance—an intrinsic component of the nation's cultural identity—has always had a place in the collections of the Library of Congress. The Library's long-term commitment to the study and preservation of dance materials has resulted in the acquisition of a broad range of collections portraying every aspect of the dance in America, from Colonial times to the present.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, America was isolated by region and largely rural. As a result, American dancing of this period was, to a great degree, centered in the home and community, not the theater or music hall. Hence, the Library's collections deal in large measure with the teaching of social dances of the period or with philosophers and spiritual leaders expounding the virtues, or evils, of participation in dance. The 19th century scholarly study of dancing was limited, and the Library's collections are reflective of this fact.
The Library's dance book collection is the equal of any in the United States and probably the world. The Library also has a superb collection of 18th and 19th century dance manuals (see "The American Ballroom Companion" presentation on the Library's Web site at //memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/dihome.html).
With the arrival of the 20th century and the development of such fields as anthropology and folklore, scholars in these newly created disciplines began to study the dance and other expressive elements of cultures represented both in America and throughout the world. This new scholarship, together with histories written during the same period, is a rich source of dance-related materials. Until the mid-20th century dance scholarship was found almost exclusively in published books and monographs.
Due to its ephemeral nature, theatrical dance in America has been poorly documented, and until recently the art was not treated seriously as a potential area of scholarly inquiry. This state of affairs has left libraries and archives with documents that have been preserved by virtue of their relationship to another field, such as music, theater or cultural history (such as dancing and dancers depicted on sheet music covers).
As scholars began to explore dance as a component of culture and ethnic identity, the Library acquired the results of such scholarship. Numerous and important examples of anthropological data are in the Margaret Mead Collection (in particular the Pacific Ethnographic Archives), located in the Manuscript Division.
In addition to acquiring scholarly books and monographs, the Library plays an active part in the development of new scholarship in the field of folklore through its Archive of Folk Culture and the American Folklife Center. Field research, which began in 1928 and continues to the present day, has yielded abundant primary documentation and description of American vernacular dance.
The Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev was perhaps the most important theatrical dance phenomenon of the first quarter of the 20th century. Much documentation of this group has been preserved, and the Music Division owns the musical library of Diaghilev and the personal "notebook" from his last years. These extraordinary items are complemented by visual materials (a poster and costume design) in the Prints and Photographs Division.
The invention of film had a profound effect on dance documentation. The result of this technological breakthrough is a vast motion picture collection in which dance is prominent. The development of low-cost videotape as a means to record dance has likewise produced major changes in the field of dance research. The Library's acquisition of such videotape material was enhanced by the revision of the copyright law in 1976 that provided for the copyright registration of choreographic works. Consequently, the Library received thousands of dance tapes through the copyright deposit system. These includes tapes documenting the works of the legendary choreographers George Balanchine and Agnes de Mille.
The year 1996 marked the completion of the Access Project, a dance preservation effort undertaken by the Dance Heritage Coalition, an alliance of the nation's major dance collections. With an initial grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and with additional funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and private foundations, the two-year project exceeded its goals of cataloging, preserving and making available 18,000 items (1,500 linear feet of manuscripts and archives). The project allowed the Library's Music Division; Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division; and the American Folklife Center to process and catalog some of its major dance holdings—and make the resulting finding aids accessible on Internet.
During the last half of the 20th century, choreographers and dancers have created and maintained personal collections of extraordinary value. Among the most significant at the Library are the Bob Fosse/Gwen Verdon Collection; the Martha Graham Collection and the Katherine Dunham Collection. While each of these collections demonstrates a very different approach to the art of dance, all share a dependence on the moving image as the prime document of the creative artist.
During the past decade, the Library has acquired a number of major dance collections such as those of Martha Graham and Katherine Dunham, as well as Erick Hawkins, Lester Horn, Serge Gregoriev, Alexandra Danilova, Adolph Bohm and most recently, Alvin Ailey.
For more information about the Library's dance collections, visit the Performing Arts Reading Room online at www.loc.gov/rr/perform/.
