Undergraduate Research in Dance: A Guide for Students
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Browsing for Dance Materials
The Library of Congress Call Number system arranges most dance materials together. You will find most dance materials in the GV call number range. See also the M range (music), QM (human anatomy) and RC (sports medicine - dance).
Searchable database containing streaming video files of dance productions, interviews, coaching sessions, and documentaries by influential performers and companies from around the world. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. Videos can be browsed by people, role, ensemble, genre, and venue. Material types include documentaries, editorials, instructional, interviews, and performances. Database users may create their own custom playlists and video clips.
Offers access to classic and contemporary ethnographic documentaries in streaming video. The collections contain over 1,300 hours of streaming video, including ethnographic films, documentaries, select feature films, and previously unpublished fieldwork.
Online exhibit of brief video performance excerpts spanning from 1930s dance pioneers to today's most exciting artists recorded at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Massachusetts. Browse videos by artists, genres, or era. This website is a public project of the Virtual Pillow initiative which aims to build audiences and appreciation for dance and Jacob's Pillow.
"Kweli means 'Truth' in Swahili. kweliTV celebrates global Black stories and amplifies Black storytellers from North America, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and Australia. Our mission is to curate and create content that is a true reflection of the global Black experience that’s oftentimes missing in traditional media."
A performing arts video collection with operas, ballets, documentaries, live concerts, and musical tours of historic places. Users may create their own playlists and custom video clips.
Provides access to films of full-length performances by artists working in dance, theater, music and other forms that defy categorization.
Important online repository for avant-garde arts, including music, film and video, poetry, writing. It has working relationships with Anthology Archives, WFMU, Roulette.org, and other NYC-area experimental music and art organizations. UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts.
It's not always obvious what format a recording is in. The collection contains some LPs, LaserDisc, DVDs and VHS. LPs will include in their description the phrase "analog, 33 1/3 rpm" while CDs will be listed as being 4 3/4 in. The call numbers for recordings will also normally include their format. See screenshots below for examples.
Sound recordings can come in four formats in CLIO:
Barnard Library has portable CD/DVD drives that can be checked out at the circulation desk for four hours at a time. The drives work on both Macs and Windows, and connect via an attached USB cable. No software is required to use them! They can be used with a personal computer or a library lab computer.
The Barnard Library has four media viewing stations on the south side of the Milstein Center second floor (see floorplan) - these are able to play both VHS and DVDs.
Viewing stations are located in Butler 401 (the Periodicals & Microform Reading Room) and support the playback of multiple visual and audio formats. Equipment includes multi-standard VCRs, multi-standard and multi-code DVD players, audiocassette players, and a laserdisc/DVD/CD player. Two viewing stations are equipped with Blu-ray players.
Priority is given to patrons viewing course-related films.
Interviewing someone associated with a theatre or organization can be very useful for primary source research, but it's important to prepare. The Purdue Online Writing Lab has a helpful page on how to prep for and conduct an interview. Research already existing interviews with this person, so you don't repeat questions that are easily found - you want to be cognizant of their time.
Use this to search within a website. You can limit to a particular website or domain in the "site or domain" field. For example, try the word "grant" along with the name of the organization to see if they received money from a grant.
From the Internet Archive, the Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the internet, consisting of browsable snapshots of over 240 billion URLs. This is an ideal way to find historical production information about a company or group. Use the "Save Page Now" feature to capture a website as it appears now for use as a trusted citation in the future.
These are some of the most useful sources with the most relevant data pertaining to the performing arts. For help in interpreting, analyzing, visualizing, or presenting data, visit Barnard's Empirical Reasoning Center (ERC) located in on the first floor of the Milstein Center.
Candid 990 Finder provides an access point to look up publicly stored tax records of non-profits, especially useful for seeing more detailed information on the finances of a dance company or dance organization. You can normally see the past three years of an organization's taxes. Keep in mind the most recent tax information will probably be at least a year old.
You won't need all of the information on a 990, you'll mostly be looking at revenue, expenses, employees, gifts and grants, programs, board members, and so on. These two pages have useful information on decoding the 990 forms.
Barnard Library Archives & Special Collections contain college dance department records, programs, and moving images from 1925-2011 (all recent videos of productions are in the dance department), as well as personal archives such as the Ntozake Shange papers. Collections and finding aids are searchable in CLIO.
Columbia Rare Book & Manuscript Library contains archives, oral histories, and materials from dancers and choreographers such as Arthur Mitchell.
Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM)'s Hamm Archives contains information on BAM as well as dance and the arts in the surrounding Brooklyn community. Their collection includes programs, scrapbooks, photographs, posters, and ephemera. Videos of BAM productions are available at the NYPL Library for the Performing Arts.
Dance research resources can come in a variety of types, so you may find yourself citing something that's a bit unusual. Here are some helpful examples, links, and tips. The following examples all refer to the MLA style, as that is commonly used for Humanities and Arts citation. If you're ever unsure, ask a librarian.
To cite an interview you conducted, give the name of the interviewee, the kind of interview (e.g. personal, telephone, email, etc), and the date.
Brown, Camille A. Personal interview. 22 July 2016.
To cite a published interview, use the name of the interviewee, title of interview (if part of a publication or recording, use quotes; if independent, italicize the title; if untitled, use the label Interview but not italicized or in quotes), and finish with the appropriate bibliographic information and medium.
Tallchief, Maria. "Tallchief Interview." Maria Tallchief coaching principal roles from Allegro Brillante. Dir. Nancy Reynolds. George Balanchine Foundation, 1999. DVD
or
Gordimer, Nadine. Interview. New York Times 10 Oct. 1991, late ed.: C25. Print
For a live performance, use this format - Title of Performance. By Firstname Lastname. Dir. Firstname Lastname. Perf. Firstname Lastname/s. Theatre/venue, Place. Date of Performance. Performance.
Lizzie Borden. By Agnes de Mille. Dir. Arthur Mitchell. City Center, New York. 17 Jan. 1983. Performance.
If you're citing the contribution of a particular individual within a performance, begin with that name.
Farrish, Kayla, perf. state. By Andrea Miller. Music by Arvo Pärt. Gallim Dance. The Joyce Theater, New York. 03 May 2018. Performance.
CiteSource from Trinity College has examples on citing in-person interviews, live performances, tweets, websites, and more.
The Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL) has more traditional and extensive citation information.
Visual sources can be difficult to cite, so be sure to 1) include as much information as you can, 2) format the elements consistently, and 3) adapt the general formats as described in published citation style guides as needed.
Citing images from an image database (such as ARTstor), should include most, if not all, of this information (or as much of it as can be easily determined from the source).
Other helpful image citation links:
AboutThe NYPL Library for the Performing Arts houses one of the most extensive research collections in theatre, film, dance, music, and recorded sound.
The Library is open for browsing of its circulating collections. To request access to special collections material, users will need to create a special collections account. It is encouraged that patrons to make an appointment with the relevant division.
The Library for the Performing Arts is located at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza (entrance at 111 Amsterdam between 64th and 65th) - between the Metropolitan Opera and the Lincoln Center Theater.
Billy Rose Theatre Division: offers walk-in access to their general research collections. Researchers may access special collections by emailing theatre@nypl.org or by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts.
Jerome Robbins Dance Division: At this time they are not offering walk-in access to their research collections, but researchers can still access them by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts. For further inquiries you can contact dance@nypl.org.
Music Division: At this time, the Music Division is not offering walk-in access to our research collections, but researchers can still access them by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts. For more information you can email music@nypl.org.
Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound: At this time, they are not offering walk-in access to their research collections, but researchers can access them by booking a virtual consultation with one of our librarians, who will make an appointment for you to visit the Library for the Performing Arts. For more information you can email recordedsound@nypl.org.
Theatre on Film and Tape Archive (TOFT): offers walk-in access to their research collections, but for faster access we encourage researchers to make an appointment. For an appointment, please call (212) 870-1642 or email toft@nypl.org.
You can find the general regulations for researchers here.