Online Resources

The resources are listed in alphabetical order.

Websites and Special Collections

  • An American Ballroom Companion
    http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/dihtml/dihome.html

    This site is part of the Library of Congress' American Memory project, and offers over 200 social dance manuals from the years 1490 to 1920. All content is a primary source with essays written by authorities in dance history. It is currently the most comprehensive collection of ballroom instruction manuals. The site is easy to navigate and searchable by subject, author, and title. Also included are 75 video clips that illustrate portions of the dance from the instruction manuals.

  • Ballroom Dancers.com
    http://www.ballroomdancers.com

    This site offers contemporary information for ballroom dancers such as video for learning dances, dance positions, directories for professional dance studios and teachers, as well as, other dance websites. This guide offers present-day information but what may be of help to historical researchers is the glossary of abbreviations and the dictionary of dance ballroom dancing terms.

  • New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
    Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center
    Jerome Robbins Dance Division
    http://www.nypl.org/locations/lpa/jerome-robbins-dance-division

    This is the largest archive in the world dedicated to the documentation of dance. Many major collections of letters and artifacts from dance legends are housed in the Dance Heritage collection. It is a separate division of the Research Libraries of New York Public Library. A researcher would be remiss to not use this comprehensive archive as it contains books, films and videotapes, audiotapes, clipping and program files, iconography and manuscripts and memorabilia.

  • Society of Dance History Scholars
    http://www.sdhs.org/

    As noted on its website, "Society of Dance History Scholars advances the field of dance studies through research, publication, performance, and outreach to audiences across the arts, humanities, and social sciences" (SDHS, 2008). This source would be helpful to anyone conducting research in the history of dance.

Further Recommendations

The following list comprises updates to this site of websites offering information about ballroom dancing:

Use of Sources

The web resources listed above in the bibliography assist the researcher in going further into ballroom dance specifically. The two that would most likely be of the best aid in research would be the Library of Congress' site on Ballroom Dancing Instruction Manuals and NYPL's Jerome Robbins Division of Dance. These are the largest holdings of information on ballroom dance. The websites contain a wealth of information. They allow for current, searchable material.

The Library of Congress developed this site to bring together the material that exists in a special subject collection in various parts of the library. It was the intellectual coming together of physically divided material. The LOC makes the disclaimer that no collection could ever be totally complete or perfect but the collection is comprehensive. While the site is not aesthetically pleasing (to me) and very basic in its approach, it has a powerful search mechanism which does it justice.

NYPL has a full division dedicated to dance and various collections which makes it more than just a library but a museum as well. The collection is robust in dance history, biographies of leading dance figures and dance instruction. Periodicals, commercial videos and DVDS, newspaper articles and magazine articles that are arranged by person, subject, title are easy to use and within grasp of the researcher. Photographs, posters and print can be found and enhance one's research. For instance, the papers of two important figures in ballroom, Maud Madison and Agnes De Mille can be found there. Another collection of interest might be a television program which conducted interviews in various forms of dance called "Eye on Dance."

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