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| Harkness Ballet archives | |
|---|---|
| Name | Harkness Ballet archives |
| Type | Performing arts archive |
| Country | United States |
| Established | 1964 |
| Location | New York City |
| Holdings | choreography, correspondence, photographs, costumes, programs |
| Director | (varied; see institutional records) |
Harkness Ballet archives
The Harkness Ballet archives document the repertory, administration, tours, and artistic collaborations of the Harkness House and Harkness Ballet company. The collection reflects connections to major 20th-century dance figures and institutions and illuminates relationships among patrons, choreographers, companies, and venues.
The archive originates from materials accumulated by Rebekah Harkness, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, and Harkness Ballet administrators during the 1960s and 1970s. It includes donations and transfers from individuals associated with the company and from affiliated organizations such as the Harkness House, the New York City Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre, the School of American Ballet, and the Martha Graham Dance Company. Provenance traces involve prominent donors and collaborators including Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Alvin Ailey, Robert Joffrey, and Edward Villella, with legal transfers mediated by trustees, estate executors, and institutional exchanges involving the Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Library of Congress.
The holdings encompass choreographic notation, original scores, sheet music, stage designs, set and costume sketches, photographic prints, contact sheets, motion picture film, videotape, sound recordings, business correspondence, legal contracts, financial ledgers, touring schedules, programs, posters, press clippings, scrapbooks, personal diaries, letters, oral histories, and artifact objects such as costumes, props, and set elements. The collection documents works by choreographers including Jerome Robbins, George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Antony Tudor, Frederick Ashton, Martha Graham, Antony Tudor, José Limón, Kurt Jooss, Kenneth MacMillan, Agnes de Mille, Lucinda Childs, Antony Tudor, and Hanya Holm. Musical collaborators represented include Leonard Bernstein, Igor Stravinsky, Aaron Copland, Gustav Mahler, Dmitri Shostakovich, Sergei Prokofiev, Johann Sebastian Bach, John Cage, Philip Glass, and Michael Torke. Institutional correspondents include the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Columbia University, Barnard College, Juilliard School, Yale School of Drama, Princeton University, Harvard University, Smith College, and the Smithsonian Institution.
Highlights feature original choreography notations by Jerome Robbins, annotated scores by Leonard Bernstein, costume sketches by Irene Sharaff, set designs by Oliver Smith, publicity photographs by Martha Swope, performance negatives of principal dancers such as Rudolf Nureyev, Natalia Makarova, Patricia McBride, Edward Villella, Jonelle Procope, John Butler, and Deborah Jowitt. The archive contains production files for major works staged at venues including the Metropolitan Opera House, New York State Theater, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Sadler's Wells, Paris Opéra, Teatro alla Scala, Bolshoi Theatre, and the Royal Opera House. Administrative records document tours to festivals such as the Edinburgh Festival, the Spoleto Festival, the Holland Festival, the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, the Salzburg Festival, and exchanges with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Materials are housed in institutional repositories in New York City and partner archives in the United States and Europe, with portions accessioned by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Library of Congress, and university special collections. The archive is catalogued using archival finding aids, collection-level descriptions, MARC records, and encoded metadata for digital surrogates. Access policies follow donor restrictions, copyright law, and institutional regulations; researchers consult archivists and special collections staff at institutions such as the New York Public Library, Columbia University Libraries, Juilliard Manuscripts & Archives, and the Rockefeller Archive Center to request access to originals, microfilm, or digitized materials. Inter-institutional loans, digitization-on-demand, and catalog entries appear in union catalogs connected to WorldCat, ArchiveGrid, and the Digital Public Library of America.
Preservation initiatives include rehousing in acid-free folders and boxes, temperature- and humidity-controlled storage, mold remediation, photochemical preservation of film elements, digitization of videotape formats, and conservation treatments for textiles and costumes by conservators affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Conservation Institute. Funders and partners for conservation projects have included the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Getty Foundation, and private donors linked to the Harkness legacy. Disaster preparedness plans and integrated pest management strategies are implemented in repositories such as the New York Public Library and university special collections.
Scholars, choreographers, historians, and curators use the archive for research on choreography, performance practice, patronage, and dance historiography. Outputs include dissertations at institutions like Columbia University and New York University, articles in journals such as Dance Research Journal, Ballet Review, Theater Journal, and book-length studies published by Oxford University Press, Routledge, and Cambridge University Press. Curated exhibitions have drawn on the holdings for displays at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of Dance, and traveling exhibitions organized with the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Centre Pompidou. Teaching collaborations and public programs engage organizations such as the American Dance Guild, Dance/USA, the Dance Heritage Coalition, the International Federation of Libraries and Archives for the Performing Arts, and cultural festivals including Jacob's Pillow and the Edinburgh Festival.
Category:Archives in New York City Category:Performing arts archives Category:Dance collections