LibGuides: Dance: Primary & Historical Sources

Library Collections & Archives

Reed’s Special Collections and Archives provides access to rare books, manuscripts, college archives, and other primary source materials with enduring historical value, including a variety of materials related to the performing arts. Some related resources to check out:

Reed Digital Collections
An ever-growing database of over 200,000 works of art, photographs, maps, theses, videos, and other primary source and archival documents. Content is generated from the Reed College Special Collections & Archives, the Visual Resource Center, and from academic departments across campus

ArchiveGrid
Includes over 5 million records from over 1000 institutions describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more.

Worldcat First Search
Search OCLC WorldCat FirstSearch holdings plus selected databases and ejournal collections.

Online Archives

Dance Studies Collection
Dance Online: Dance Studies Collection is a curated collection of primary and secondary full-text materials to support informed performance, pedagogy, and scholarship of 20th and 21st century dance.

Library of Congress Performing Arts Digital Collections
Digitized, publicly accessible resources in the performing arts. Collections of particular note for dance: An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals, ca. 1490 to 1920; Selections from the Katherine Dunham Collection; Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev; Bronislava Nijinska Collection; Martha Graham at the Library of Congress
America's Dance Treasures
From the Dance Heritage Coalition. Online exhibits and bibliographies for significant American choreographers, dance companies, performers, and dance genres.
NYPL Digital Collections
All the NYPL's digital collections related to dance. Note: only some of these materials are publicly accessible offsite.
Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive
View performance excerpts from the Jacob's Pillow archives, dating from the 1930s to today.
Merce Cunningham Dance Capsules
Eighty-six Cunningham dances are digitally preserved; each Dance Capsule provides an array of assets essential to the study and reconstruction of the choreographic work. Some public access.
Paget-Fredericks Dance Collection
Contains roughly 2,000 original drawings, paintings, photographs and pieces of memorabilia that date from ca. 1913 to ca. 1945, some of which is publicly accessible online. Includes such notable artists as Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavlova, and Vaslav Nijinsky.
Isadora Duncan Archive
Digital archive of Isadora Duncan’s work in modern dance and subsequent generations of Duncan practitioners.
Russian theatre designs from the Harvard Library collection
The entire collection of original Russian art work in the Harvard Theatre Collection, which comprises approximately 650 theatrical designs and portraits has been cataloged and digitized. Most of these are associated with productions of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.
Dance Heritage Video Archive
Collection of recordings at the University of Southern California that document global and U.S. dance traditions, creative work by outstanding choreographers and performers, and performances that helped to advance the art form. Select resources available online.
Indigenous Music and Dance Research Guide
This comprehensive guide from the Xwi7xwa Library at the University of British Columbia includes strategies and information for researchers searching for Indigenous artists, dance and music performances.
Plateau Peoples’ Web Portal
A gateway to Plateau peoples’ cultural materials at a variety of institutions, curated by representatives from several sovereign tribal nations. Dance and music traditions are represented.
Pioneers of Chinese Dance
Digital image archive exploring the history of twentieth-century Chinese dance.
BAM Hamm Archives
Materials and documents, including images, text, video, and audio recordings, that chronicle the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s ongoing history, programs, and people.
Dance Video Archive
Videos of dances from the member organizations of the Country Dance and Song Society (CDSS)
Digital Public Library of America
Searches across from libraries, archives, and museums in the US for publicly accessible digital materials.

Primary Sources in the Library

Try adding any of the following terms to a keyword search in the library catalog:

personal narratives
diaries
letters
correspondence
memoirs
maps
pictorial works

Even adding the term "sources" to your search can help limit your results to primary sources.