Annotated Bibliography

The resources are listed in alphabetical order by type.

Bibliographies

• Bopp, Mary S. Research in Dance: A Guide to Resources. New York: G.K. Hall, 1994.

  This guide provides information about professional dance associations and organizations, special national and international collections and archives, dance publishers, dealers and bookstores, reference resources and a list of serials about dance. Helpful additions are the indexes and abstracts. While the guide omits photographs, Bopp directs readers to coverage in other sources. The guide also lists sources for book and performance reviews.

• Forbes, Fred R., Jr. Dance: An Annotated Bibliography, 1965-1982. New York: Garland, 1986.

  This relatively small book offers a classified annotated bibliography using a multidisciplinary approach with entries that cover the aesthetics, anthropology, education, history, literature, physiology, psychology and sociology. The information sources are articles, books, chapters, dissertations and theses. Also included are author and subject indexes.

Dictionaries

• Cohen-Stratyner, Barbara Naomi. Biographical Dictionary of Dance. New York: Schirmer Books, 1982.

  This source has brief and comprehensive biographical sketches comprising over 2,900 dance professionals over the last four centuries of dance history in Europe and America. Information on performers, choreographers, composers, designers, and teachers in various dance forms such as ballet, modern, jazz, pop, burlesque, vaudeville, musical theater and film can be found here. Included with many of the sketches is a list of works performed or choreographed and a brief bibliography.

• Craine, Debra. The Oxford Dictionary of Dance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

  This source includes information on all aspects of dance, including people, styles of dance, places and genres. Although very broad in scope, the work focuses on covering the history and practice of dance on the international stage. An extensive bibliography is included which makes it an excellent source for research.

• Raffe, W.G. Dictionary of the Dance. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1965.

  Defines close to 3,000 terms relating to dances and dancing in various countries and time periods covering the history of dance through 1950. While no entries exist for individual dancers or choreographers, this source describes in some detail specific dances of world cultures. Raffe gives us geographical and topical indexes as well as a bibliography.

Encyclopedia

• International Encyclopedia of Dance: a project of Dance Perspectives Foundation, Inc. / founding editor, Selma Jeanne Cohen ; area editors, George Dorris ... [et al.]

  This encyclopedia is truly international with nearly 2,000 articles written by scholars from fifty countries covering a broad range of dance with inclusion of traditional, folk, ethnic, ritual, theatrical, dance-drama, and social dance. The entries are arranged alphabetically and give information on dance forms, performances, music and costumes, and biographies of dancers and choreographers. Included are over 2,000 black-and-white photographs which accompany the text from various collections and a detailed index.

Filmography

• Towers, Deirdre. Dance Film and Video Guide. Princeton, NJ: Dance Horizons/Princeton Book Co., 1991.

  This is a thorough alphabetical listing with six volumes of entries of films on dance by name (choreographer/composer/dance company/dancer/director). The work has extensive subject indexes. It covers only released films and video recordings.

History

• Giordano, Ralph G. Social Dancing in America: A History and Reference: v.1: Fair Terpsichore to the Ghost Dance, 1607-1900; v.2: Lindy Hop to Hip Hop, 1901-2000, 2007.

  This resource is an exception to what we have seen so far. The focus of this book is solely on social dance in American society within a historical perspective. The chapters are divided into various chronological eras. Each entry has an overview of the time period, the social, political and culture events which influenced each time period's dance and participants. It also includes a bibliography and index.

Periodical

• Dance Research Journal. Committee on Research in Dance.

  This is the official journal of the Congress on Research in Dance and is published twice a year. It contains book reviews, scholarly articles, reports of scholarly conferences, information about archives and other projects of interest in dance. While it is not narrowly focused on ballroom dancing, one can find articles of interest in the subject.

Research Guide

• Adshead, Janet and June Layson, eds. Dance History: A Methodology for Study. London: Dance Books, 1983.

  Dance History is a research guide which is an aid for researchers. It has several articles which discuss the rationale and methodology of dance research, as well as approaches to the historical study of different kinds of dance sources and forms of dance. The last part contains a guideline for teaching and learning dance history. This can be helpful to any researcher looking to undertake a particular dance history.

Use of Sources

As has been stated in the Dance Archives Manual, "Dance is, with little argument, the most difficult of arts to document" (Introduction, 1995). There are often so many facets to dance, such as music, costume, dance notation, the dancer, the choreographer, the venue and historical or social contexts. In discussing a narrow field such as the history of ballroom dancing, it is necessary for us to take a step up to the resources found at the general level of dance. As I compiled the bibliography of resources, I searched in each resource for information that would be relevant to ballroom dance such as particular notable dancers (e.g., Irene and Vernon Castle, Hermes Pan), types of ballroom dance (e.g., fox trot, tango, waltz) and dance history such as those found on the Library of Congress site.

One of my favorite print sources is the International Encyclopedia of Dance. I like this because it is available in print and online. I found coverage on Ballroom Dance Competition with sections on the history, style and technique, organization of competition, dances and bibliography. With regards to dancers, there is a complete listing on Irene and Vernon Castle, with information on their backgrounds, films and archives and bibliography. I then chose to search a form of dance: tango. This also had extensive information such as the origins and development, specific information about the dance form, music arts and literature as well as a bibliography. I included a filmography because I felt that there was a wealth of information that could be found about dance in films, especially social dance. This would be beneficial to a researcher who would like to explore the history of dance in film.

The periodical, Dance Research Journal, contains some articles on ballroom dance. This can also be searched online. I found two relevant articles which discuss the history of social dance around the world with ethnographies and gender studies.

The last of the resources I included which I found to be extremely advantageous to a researcher is the book entitled Dance History: A Methodology for Study. This is a pioneering book in the study of dance history but it is still useful today. It gives the what, how and why to writing history and various approaches to the methodology. It contains bibliographic essays on dance texts, newspapers and periodicals.