Is this the greatest dance video collection in the world?

[Bruce Wall]

Ref:  NYT:  http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/arts/dance/that-40s-pas-de-deux-you-can-still-catch-it.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=nytimesarts&

 

In my book it is.  

 

The world has much to thank Jerome Robbins for ... 

 

And to think ... this is (a) open to all and ( free ... no matter what your economic, national, academic, (etc.) status ... 

 

I can think of several very well funded arts organisations (let alone national libraries) that could profit from this example. 

Edited August 29, 2013 by Meunier

[taxi4ballet]

I hope someone from the BBC is looking at this!

[Sim]

Gosh how wonderful. Worth making a trip to NYC just to spend a few days on the third floor! Would love to see the Gable/Seymour R&J excerpt...

[Bruce Wall]

I have long advised a Jerome Robbins holiday to friends devoted to the art form.  If you go during June you can overlap both NYC Ballet and ABT and spend the rest of the time on the third floor of the Lincoln Center Library.  (You'll be amazed who you may see at a karol close to you   This resource helped seed so much of my own knowledge of dance.  I do not have the words to thank all those involved for this amazing outpouring of joy.  When I was living in NY - some time ago now it is true - I so used to look forward to their opening hours.  It is a truly invaluable public service (in the truest sense of the term) and, hey, you can't beat the price. 

 

Surely many of the long standing balletcouk members have already availed themselves of this unique facility.  I would be sincerely shocked if that hadn't been the case.  Seeing is, after all - at least in dance - believing.  For me that is the only way to truly open horizons and inform .... and this allows a unique window into the past .... and aids in allowing one to actively and creatively project and evaluate the future.   (Many of the special cinema showings here  ... at the BFI, etc. ... and at considerable cost it must be said ... have sourced their materials (including many, many instances of British dance history) from this collection.  Bless our friends in NYC for preserving it so openly and well as they do.)  

 

Would that there were a similar library facility that could be set up here with a direct link to the ever expanding Robbins Collection catalog.  I only fear that access in such a case would find its way to being made - in one way or another - exclusive (knowing the ways of certain UK institutions) and that would ultimately defeat the overall educational purpose for which the collection was quite rightly established.  If it could be sustained according to its original guidelines that would be grand.  If not, a deafening NO.  Certainly a link to such an educational entity as this (perhaps as part of our so called 'special relationship') would be well worth the public subsidy in my book .. but then, .... who am I???     

Edited August 29, 2013 by Meunier

[victoriapage]

I've often suggested the library, and the Robbins collection in particular, to someone as a holiday destination, even years ago when looking at a film meant really looking at a film, in reels, on big old machines, and when every format had its own machine(s) to watch it on. The treasures there are innumerable.  Even looking at the on-line catalog is fun because they provide a goodly amount of detail on the listings.  Since they redid the premises ten or so years ago, there are many more stations for video watching, and they've removed the actual films/dvds/etc. to some nether region where only an employee can actually handle them.  I must say I don't see them making the collection available on line to anyone, even though more and more of it is digitized for preservation purposes.  Many of the films have watching restrictions too (permission only, etc.)

 

This one, I guess, is the program Macaulay is referring to?

 

October 28, 1964
Includes commercials
 

Contents:Juno's aria from Semele / music, Handel ; sung by Marilyn Horne
Intermezzo, Op. 116, no. 5 / music, Brahms ; played by Sviatoslav Richter
Images of love: "He loves her but he cannot see her..." / choreography, Kenneth MacMillan ; music, Peter Tranchell ; costumes, Kenneth Rowell ; danced by Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable
Aria from Semiramide / music, Rossini ; sung by Marilyn Horne
Spanish Christmas carols / music, Joaquin Nin ; sung by Marilyn Horne, accompanied by John Newmark
Romeo and Juliet: balcony scene / choreography by Kenneth MacMillan, specially commissioned by Festival ; music, Prokofiev ; costumes, Kenneth Rowell ; danced by Lynn Seymour and Christopher Gable
Jeux d'eau [and] Alborada del gracioso / music, Maurice Ravel ; played by Sviatoslav Richter

 

You could just set me in there, toss me a ham sandwich now and then, and I could be lost to civilization for a *long* time. 

 

And as far as seeing a stellar presence there, my favorite day spent in the library has to be the day I saw Antony Tudor watching films a few stations away. 

Edited August 29, 2013 by victoriapage

[toursenlair]

I'm a big fan of the Robbins collection too.

There are also other library/archives for dance in NYC. More info here:

http://toursenlair.blogspot.ca/2012/08/three-new-york-city-dance-archives.html