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DATE: June 11, 2026
REVISED:
NAME: Recording Choreographic Medium of Performance in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats
SOURCE: Music Library Association (MLA)
SUMMARY: This paper discusses defining a new field 364 in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats for recording the medium of performance of choreographic content, works, and expressions.
KEYWORDS: Field 364 (AD, BD); Choreographic medium of performance (AD, BD); Field 382 (AD, BD); Medium of performance (AD, BD); Musical medium of performance (AD, BD)
RELATED: 2022-04; 2021-DP12; 2015-06; 2012-01; 2010-04
STATUS/COMMENTS:
06/11/26 – Made available to the MARC community for discussion.
The term "medium of performance" has long been used in cataloging to refer to the performing forces required for musical performance, but non-musical aspects of performance, such as movement, also have a medium.
During the 3R Project in April 2019, the elements medium of performance of choreographic content and medium of performance of choreographic content of representative expression were added to the Official RDA Toolkit at the request of the dance community, and the element originally labeled medium of performance was relabeled medium of performance of musical content.
When Field 382 (Medium of Performance) was originally added to the MARC Authority and Bibliographic Formats (MARC Proposal No. 2010-04), it was implicitly for musical materials, and the field has been developed over time to include many subfields specific to musical performance, including subfields for soloists and doubling instruments (MARC Proposal No. 2012-01) and ensembles (MARC Proposal No. 2015-06). There is not, however, a comparable field for recording medium of performance of choreographic content.
This lack was noted by the MARC Advisory Committee in 2021-22 when characteristics of representative expressions were considered in MARC Discussion Paper 2021-DP12; it was deemed premature, however, to provide for encoding of medium of performance of choreographic content of representative expression before medium of performance of choreographic content, and the corresponding proposal, MARC Proposal 2022-04, did not pursue the issue of either element.
In RDA, the element medium of performance of choreographic content is defined as "A type of performer or group of performers participating, or intended to participate, in a performance of choreographic or non-musical dramatic content." This definition is broader than dance. Indeed a choreographic work is defined as a "work that is realized as notated movement, performed movement, or tactile notated movement," while a dramatic work is a "work that is a textual work that is intended for performance on the stage." We can therefore conclude that the element medium of performance of choreographic content can potentially encompass planned and recorded movement as varied as figure skating routines, marching drills, plays, and more. These examples fall outside of our domain expertise, but we hope to lay a broad foundation now, so that the new field will allow for further development as appropriate communities develop best practices for recording the medium of other types of movement and non-musical dramatic performance.
The current complexity of MARC field 382 was developed over many years and several discussion papers as the field was adopted by the music cataloging community (see the extensive change log beneath the field's documentation). Preliminary conversations for this discussion paper considered the possibility of adjusting field 382 to allow for recording medium of performance of musical and choreographic content. This option was rejected for several reasons: separate RDA elements should ideally be recorded in separate MARC fields; extending the current 382 field to accommodate dance risks making an already complicated field even more complicated; and the intricacies of the music-focused field 382 may place undue burden on the dance cataloging community.
Considering these various difficulties, we believe it will be of greatest advantage to define a new, separate field with a restrained number of subfields, allowing clear encoding of choreographic medium of performance and acknowledging that cataloging practice may in time require and justify additional complexity.
Therefore, the core subfields of field 382 have been adapted for the new field defined in this paper, with the following subfields omitted: $b (Soloist), $d (Doubling instrument), $e (Number of ensembles of the same type), $p (Alternative medium of performance), $r (Total numbers of individuals performing alongside ensembles), and $t (Total number of ensembles).
Additional characteristics of choreographic medium of performance that came up during the drafting of this paper include minimum/maximum number of performers and props/assistive devices. These attributes have been included as free text notes in subfield $v in the examples below. Separate indicator values and subfields for this data may be proposed in the future if the dance community determines they are needed.
MARC field 382 (Medium of Performance) frequently uses the Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT) as the source vocabulary for terms in the field, with the code lcmpt in subfield $2. Despite its name, the thesaurus was designed with extensibility into dance in mind and includes some basic terms such as dancer, though as currently defined they are limited in scope to dance within musical works. However, the needs of the dance community for choreographic medium of performance terms go beyond what LCMPT currently offers. As a result, the proposed field defined in this paper should be compatible with whichever vocabulary the community prefers to use and code in subfield $2. To illustrate this flexibility, the examples in section 4 include terms from a variety of vocabularies, including the Library of Congress Demographic/Group Terms (LCDGT), LCSH, Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus(R) Online (AAT), and Wikidata. Examples including musical medium of performance for accompaniment also appear in examples in the MARC field 382, similar to how authorized access points for musical works and choreographic works appear in separate fields.
Define new field 364 in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format (in the 3XX Physical Description, etc., block) as follows:
Field Definition and Scope:
For manifestations: the type of performer, group of performers, and/or other medium of performance embodied in the manifestation.
For works and expressions: the type of performer, group of performers, and/or other medium of performance for which a choreographic work was originally conceived or for which a choreographic expression is written or performed. May be used to differentiate a choreographic work or expression from another with the same title.
Multiple mediums from the same source vocabulary may be recorded in the same field in separate occurrences of subfields $a (Medium of performance). Multiple mediums from the same source vocabulary may also be recorded in separate occurrences of the field if each medium is controlled by an Authority record control number or standard number in subfield $0. Terms from different source vocabularies are recorded in separate occurrences of the field.
Define new field 364 (Choreographic Medium of Performance) in the MARC 21 Authority Format (in the 1XX, 3XX Heading Information block) the same as above, with the omission of the first paragraph of the field definition and scope, and the second indicator not defined.
Rename field 382 (Medium of Performance) in the Bibliographic and Authority Formats to differentiate it from the field proposed above (addition in bold brackets):
382 - [Musical] Medium of Performance (R)
364 01 $a women (female humans) $n 1 $a men (male humans) $n 1 $s 2 $2 aat
364 01 $3 An ecchoe $a Women $n 3 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 By Mr. Holt $a Women $n 4 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 By Mr. Caverley $a Women $n 5 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 By Mr. Shirley $a Women $n 6 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 By Mr. Prince $a Women $n 8 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 By Mr. Couch $a Women $n 9 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 By Mr. Hickford $a Women $n 10 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 By Mr. Preist $a Women $n 12 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 A chacone $a Women $n 1 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 A passacaille $a Women $n 1 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $3 A jigg $a Women $n 1 $2 lcdgt
364 01 $a Women $n 7 $a Men $n 4 $s 11 $2 lcsh
364 01 $a mime $n 2 $v two female dancers, one performing as a male
364 01 $a première danseuse $n 1
364 01 $a secondes premières $n 4
364 01 $a secondes danseuses $n 6
364 01 $a danseuses $n 8 $v performing as Tritons
364 01 $a danseuses $n 16 $v performing as Nereids
364 01 $s 37
[Description recording terms as found on the manifestation. Data broken into separate instances of field 364 with non-repeating subfields for better BIBFRAME interoperability (see Section 5.2.).]
364 11 $a principal female dancer $n 8 $a principal male dancer $n 10
[Only the principal dancers/roles are known; the number of dancers who performed in the group scenes are unknown.]
364 3# $a Ballerinas $n 4 $a Male dancers $n 6 $2 lcsh
[Only the principal dancers/roles are known; the number of dancers who performed in the group scenes are unknown.]
364 01 $a Women $n 4 $a Men $n 4 $s 8 $2 lcsh
382 01 $a piano $n 1 $s 1 $2 lcmpt
364 01 $a Boys $n 5 $a Girls $n 10 $s 15 $v chiefly performing in unison $v each child holds a dumbbell in each hand $2 lcsh
364 01 $a Contortionists $n 1 $v performer uses a contortion ring $2 lcdgt
364 01 $a performer $n 16 $s 16 $v performing group may be single-gender or split evenly between genders $v performers may be children or adults $v each performer holds a staff, five feet long, covered with silver paper or painted white, on top of which is a silver pasteboard star $2 wikidata
382 01 $a piano $n 1 $s 1 $2 lcmpt
364 2# $a women (female humans) $n 24 $a men (male humans) $n 12 $s 36 $2 aat
364 2# $a principle women $n 8 $a principle men $n 6 $a corps de ballet $s 30
[Using vocabulary from the Dance Notation Bureau catalog (“principle” instead of “principal”) in subfield $a.]
364 2# $a principal dancer $n 14 $a corps de ballet $s 30 $2 wikidata
364 2# $a Women dancers $v naked $n 1 $a Kittens $n 1 $s 2 $2 lcsh
364 01 $a Ponies $n 6 $a Horse trainers $2 lcsh
382 01 $a piano $n 1 $s 1 $2 lcmpt
364 01 $a Ballerinas $n 1 $a Male dancers $n 1 $s 2 $2 lcsh
[The cataloger does not know Labanotion. The medium of performance is inferred from the title “Don Quichotte Pas de deux”]
364 2# $a Women $v choreographed for 16 to 20 women
The December 2025 release of BIBFRAME 3.0 integrated into the main BIBFRAME ontology the classes and properties of the Performed Music Ontology, which had been developed separately, as a BIBFRAME extension, to provide linked data modeling of music resources, including the aspect of medium of performance. The mediumOfPerformance property is defined to relate a work to a musical medium of performance, replicating MARC's omission of non-musical mediums of performance.
There is not currently any ability to represent medium of performance of choreographic content in BIBFRAME, but the MediumOfPerformance, MediumComponent, and MediumComponentQualifer classes could be adapted or mirrored to encode this information.
The extensibility of LCMPT to non-musical values on the one hand, and the establishment of separate RDA elements for medium of performance of musical and choreographic content on the other, paint a mixed portrait of the path forward for recording non-musical medium of performance.
Field 382 (Medium of performance), the structure of which the field defined in this paper is based on, is not inherently linked data compatible, specifically when following Music Library Association Best Practices, which relies on the order of repeating subfields to designate relationships.
For the new field defined in this paper, the subfields are still defined as repeatable, in order to adhere to the precedent set in field 382, but there is no obligation to follow the field 382 practices. Example 4.4. shows how the data can be broken into separate instances of field 364 with non-repeatable subfields, which allow for better interoperability with BIBFRAME. In instances where there are multiple works, subfield $3 (Materials specified) or linking subfield $8 could be used to group together separate medium components for the same work.
6.1. Has the need for a separate field to record choreographic medium of performance sufficiently been established?
6.2. Is MARC tag 364 a good choice for this data? Is there a different tag which would be preferable?
6.3. Do all of the subfields defined for the field make sense to include? Should the field include any other subfields, including the ones we noted that we omitted in Section 2.2.?
6.4. Is it acceptable to define this field without best practices or a single specific source vocabulary for terms in mind? If this field is approved, what group would be expected to create vocabularies and best practices for this data?
6.5. Does the optional ability to record separate instances of field 364 with non-repeating subfields, as described in Section 5.2. and demonstrated in Example 4.4., sufficiently provide BIBFRAME compatibility, or should the subfields be defined as non-repeatable?
6.6. Are there any additional issues which this discussion paper does not address?
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