Posted on October 20, 2022
Dancing Times, the world’s oldest month-to-month journal dedicated to all types of dance, is to promote its intensive assortment of pictures. 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 over time.
According to Sarah J Woodcock, former curator of pictures at London’s Theatre Museum, “It affords the widest coverage of 20th-century dance of any collection outside the Jerome Robbins Dance Division in New York or the Victoria and Albert Museum Performing Arts Collection in London.”
The assortment consists of roughly 35,000 photos, the bulk courting from the early years of the twentieth century via to the early years of the twenty first century, when digital images overtook movie and print images. A small proportion of the pictures are autographed, some with dedications to successive editors of Dancing Times. In addition, 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 pictures that after belonged to the balletomane Peter Revitt, a detailed buddy of former journal editor Mary Clarke.
Most of the pictures had been sought or submitted for potential use within the journal, however not all had been printed. “They represent all the subjects covered by the magazine, and therefore all aspects of dance: social and ballroom dancing, national dances from around the world, teachers and teaching of all types of dance, dance on film and television, and performance dance of all styles,” says Francesca Franchi, former head of collections on the Royal Opera House. “The photographs include companies, schools and individuals, performers, choreographers, composers, teachers and students, as well as newsworthy events in the dance world.”
The assortment has pictures by the vast majority of probably the most distinguished photographers of dance, comparable to Serge Lido, Houston Rogers, Zoë Dominic, Martha Swope, Roy Round and Anthony Crickmay. Subjects embody 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 diversity is one of the collection’s strengths, charting the rise of first the national dance companies, and the rise of contemporary, Black and Asian dance,” provides Woodcock. “Dancing Times was noted for its international coverage and this is reflected in the images of the flourishing dance scene in Europe, the US, the Soviet Union and further afield.”
“As our collection has to be sold, we are anxious to find the right home for it,” says Jonathan Gray, editor of Dancing Times. “We are hoping, therefore, to hear from museums, research centres or university collections with strong links to the history of dance, or from potential buyers who would then wish to donate the archive to a suitable collection.”
The assortment, comprising seven four-drawer submitting cupboards, is in wonderful situation and is housed in acid-free conservation-grade envelopes. It additionally consists of full sure volumes of Dancing Times from 1910 to 2022, and the Ballroom Dancing Times/Dance Today from 1956 to 2015. The assortment has been valued within the area of £40K to £47K.
Further info, together with detailed valuations from each Francesca Franchi and Sarah J Woodcock, might be obtained on request. Also accessible are a list of the contents of Collection Drawer COM to DAT, which acts as a pattern for the gathering as a complete; a listing of contents from certainly one of six unsorted packing containers of pictures; and a listing of framed pictures that had been beforehand displayed within the Dancing Times workplace.
Interested events ought to contact Jonathan Gray by electronic mail at jon@dancing-times.co.uk.
Viewings of the gathering will also be organized.
Jonathan Gray
Jonathan Gray is editor of Dancing Times. He studied at The Royal Ballet School, Leicester Polytechnic, and Wimbledon School of Art 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, helping on numerous dance-related exhibitions, and serving to with the recreation of authentic designs for numerous The Royal Ballet’s productions together with Danses concertantes, Daphnis and Chloë, and The Sleeping Beauty. He has additionally contributed to the Financial Times, 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.