Posted on October 20, 2022
Dancing Occasions, the world’s oldest month-to-month journal dedicated to all types of dance, is to promote its in depth assortment of images. The journal, based in 1910 by Philip J S Richardson, ceased publication in September 2022 following an unbroken 112-year historical past, and it now seeks to discover a new dwelling for the excellent assortment it amassed through the years.
In accordance with Sarah J Woodcock, former curator of images at London’s Theatre Museum, “It affords the widest protection of Twentieth-century dance of any assortment outdoors the Jerome Robbins Dance Division in New York or the Victoria and Albert Museum Performing Arts Assortment in London.”
The gathering consists of roughly 35,000 photographs, the bulk relationship from the early years of the Twentieth century by way of to the early years of the twenty first century, when digital pictures overtook movie and print pictures. A small proportion of the images are autographed, some with dedications to successive editors of Dancing Occasions. As well as, there’s a small amount of nineteenth and Twentieth century prints and drawings, together with a pen-and-ink drawing by Mikhail Larionov of the ballet Chout, which the artist designed for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and a discrete assortment of images that when belonged to the balletomane Peter Revitt, a detailed buddy of former journal editor Mary Clarke.
Many of the images had been sought or submitted for potential use within the journal, however not all had been printed. “They signify all the topics coated by the journal, and subsequently all elements of dance: social and ballroom dancing, nationwide dances from all over the world, academics and instructing of all kinds of dance, dance on movie and tv, and efficiency dance of all types,” says Francesca Franchi, former head of collections on the Royal Opera Home. “The images embrace corporations, colleges and people, performers, choreographers, composers, academics and college students, in addition to newsworthy occasions within the dance world.”
The gathering has images by nearly all of essentially the most distinguished photographers of dance, similar to Serge Lido, Houston Rogers, Zoë Dominic, Martha Swope, Roy Spherical and Anthony Crickmay. Topics embrace Carlos Acosta, Alvin Ailey, Antonio, Frederick Ashton, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Irina Baronova, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Erik Bruhn, Darcey Bussell, Yvette Chauviré, John Cranko, Merce Cunningham, John Curry, Alexandra Danilova, Anthony Dowell, Suzanne Farrell, Margot Fonteyn, Ram Gopal, Martha Graham, Tamara Karsavina, Gene Kelly, Alicia Markova, Arthur Mitchell, Rudolf Nureyev, Anna Pavlova, Pearl Primus, Lynn Seymour, Antoinette Sibley, Galina Ulanova and Ninette de Valois.
“The variety is among the assortment’s strengths, charting the rise of first the nationwide dance corporations, and the rise of latest, Black and Asian dance,” provides Woodcock. “Dancing Occasions was famous for its worldwide protection and that is mirrored within the photographs of the flourishing dance scene in Europe, the US, the Soviet Union and additional afield.”
“As our assortment needs to be bought, we’re anxious to search out the fitting dwelling for it,” says Jonathan Grey, editor of Dancing Occasions. “We hope, subsequently, to listen to from museums, analysis centres or college collections with robust hyperlinks to the historical past of dance, or from potential consumers who would then want to donate the archive to an appropriate assortment.”
The gathering, comprising seven four-drawer submitting cupboards, is in glorious situation and is housed in acid-free conservation-grade envelopes. It additionally contains full sure volumes of Dancing Occasions from 1910 to 2022, and the Ballroom Dancing Occasions/Dance At the moment from 1956 to 2015. The gathering has been valued within the area of £40K to £47K.
Additional data, together with detailed valuations from each Francesca Franchi and Sarah J Woodcock, will be obtained on request. Additionally out there are a list of the contents of Assortment Drawer COM to DAT, which acts as a pattern for the gathering as an entire; an inventory of contents from certainly one of six unsorted packing containers of images; and an inventory of framed images that had been beforehand displayed within the Dancing Occasions workplace.
events ought to contact Jonathan Grey by e-mail at [email protected].
Viewings of the gathering may also be organized.
Jonathan Grey
Jonathan Grey is editor of Dancing Occasions. He studied at The Royal Ballet Faculty, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon Faculty of Artwork the place he graduated with a BA Hons in Theatre Design. For 16 years he was a member of the curatorial division of the Theatre Museum, London, aiding on quite a few dance-related exhibitions, and serving to with the recreation of authentic designs for quite a few The Royal Ballet’s productions together with Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Magnificence. He has additionally contributed to the Monetary Occasions, written programme articles for The Royal Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet, and is co-author of the guide Unleashing Britain: Theatre will get actual 1955-64, printed in 2005.
