So concludes,  Ben Ratliff of The New York Times in closing his piece on the recent release of selections from archival recordings of the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival via the Wolfgang’s Vault site.

I think I’ve held off blogging about that company previously because I genuinely do not know how I feel about it.  Since I’m too lazy and harried at the moment to do any justice to the subject, I’ll just leave it to you, the reader, to respond for now.

Yesterday just seems to have been a banner news day, also bringing us a report from Ephemeral Archives’ favorite theatre critic, the Guardian’s Chris Wilkinson.  In his latest Noises Off column, Wilkinson points us all in the direction of a new online resource, Theatricalia, which he describes as being “a kind of IMDB for theatre.”  Possibly it may have been more accurate to describe this new venture as an attempt to become the IBDB or Lortel Archives of UK theatre productions, but we are grateful to be made aware of this site all the same and promise to explore it further.

A savvy respondent to Mr. Wilkinson’s piece also directs readers to the London Theatre Database as a useful source of information for recent productions.

I’m certain I’ve remarked before on the mingled sensations of regret/relief I feel from being forced (due to time constraints) to subscribe to the Archives & Archivists listserv in digest form, rather than in direct mode.   It’s definitely a trade-off.

You may imagine my surprise this morning when I eyeballed the digest listings and discovered a brief thread started yesterday by an inquiry from a photo archivist who could not identify the subject of an autographed photograph, a scan of which he posted, as being  Zizi Jeanmaire.  While I was saddened (and even more saddened that the question originated from Indiana University, where Jeanmaire’s former colleague, Violette Verdy, is a distinguished member of the faculty) that anyone was unfamiliar with the work of Mlle. Jeanmaire, it was an honest question.   More dismaying were the dubious sources that were cited in response.

Might I humbly put in a plug for the SAA Performing Arts Roundtable’s own listserv as your one-stop source for thoughtful responses (and excellent referrals) to questions relating to performing arts and archives?

Be that as it may, it was pleasant to be reminded of Jeanmaire in the midst of all the professional musings and announcements.  To New Yorkers of a certain age, Zizi undoubtedly is best known for her role as the flighty ballerina in the film, Hans Christian Andersen (1952).  That film, which was frequently shown (over two nights!) during the holidays (although which holiday I would be hard pressed to remember), was relentlessly promoted by WPIX through repeated showings of its trailer.  But her long and varied career, of course, encompassed the worlds of ballet, cabaret, and the Broadway stage, as well as film.

The above partly-identified publicity photograph from the NYPL Digital Gallery site, may well be for her 1954 Broadway clunker, The Girl in Pink Tights (choreographed, incidentally, by Agnes de Mille).  I don’t think I will go back and listen to the cast album, but I was inspired to check out one of our library’s copies of Black Tights.  Une tempête dans un verre d’eau.

Image credit: NYPL Digital ID TH-23695

Rehearsal photographs with Agnes de Mille and unidentified dancers

Sincere apologies yet again for the lack of posts recently.  You may imagine that we were very, very busy with Archives Month.  Here’s hoping that we will be a little more on the ball once more now that November has rolled around.

Short notice, but for all you fortunate New Yorkers, this Sunday offers a very special program at the 92nd Street Y in which the estimable and plucky New York Theatre Ballet will present “reconstructed works by Agnes de Mille from her Broadway and concert repertoire, followed by a panel discussion with Diana Byer, Gemze de Lappe and Elena Zahlmann discussing de Mille’s contributions to theater dance and her lexicon of dance gesture.”

We’d sure be there if we could!

While we’re at it, could anyone take a stab at identifying the individuals from the images?  It looks most likely to be a publicity/rehearsal photograph from one of de Mille’s Broadway shows from the 1950s, but it is hard to make out anyone but de Mille with any certainty in the tiny format.  Maybe you have sharper eyes.

Image credit: NYPL Digital Gallery ID TH 07969

Installation view of "Lucinda Childs: Dance" exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art. Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins. From the Whitney Museum of American Art Web site.

On a recent trip back to New York, I was surprised to come upon the installation, Lucinda Childs: Dance, in the galleries of the Whitney Museum of American Art.  This small exhibition brought together (what are now) archival materials created by choreographer, Lucinda Childs, composer, Philip Glass, and artist, Sol LeWitt, in the process of collaborating on the 1979 piece,  Dance, originally commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  It was easily the most mesmerizing display in the museum at the time.

The restored work itself has been touring recently with a new company of eleven dancers under Childs’s direction and it will receive one more set of performances, from 15-17 October, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.  If you are not able to make it to one of these shows, you can read a thoughtful review of the company’s appearance at New York’s Joyce Theater by Evan Namerow on the blog, Dancing Perfectly Free.  If you happen to be in New York, you can view the installation at the Whitney through the 8th November.

Album cover image for the Jefferson Starship's "Blows Against the Empire"

The Museum of Performance and Design opens a major exhibition today tracing the vibrant Bay Area rock and roll scene, circa 1969-1973.

From the MSD Web site:

Co-curators Melissa Leventon and Alec Palao evoke this rich era using a wealth of rarely seen footage, posters, images, and costume from private and other public collections and the artists themselves.  Completing the picture is rarely heard audio, some of it drawn from the archive of vintage KSAN recordings recently added to MPD’s permanent collection.

The exhibition runs from September 25, 2009-August 2010, so there should be  ample opportunity for a trip to San Francisco.  Have you seen the stars tonight?

Brochure for the current exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

While the exhibit devoted to Serge Diaghilev continues at the first floor Oenslager Gallery at New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, downstairs in its Astor Gallery is a lovely selection of materials from its recently acquired and processed Katherine Hepburn Papers. 

The Hepburn heirs divided the papers into two collections based on her stage and movie careers, the former going to the New York Public Library and the latter going to the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in Los Angeles.  Nevertheless, the division between her two vocations is not nearly so neat and her papers at NYPL contain many materials devoted to her motion picture activities.  When combined with the Library’s own film holdings, the picture that emerges is a rounded one. 

In chronological order the exhibit goes through the major segments of her career, highlighting her little-known early stage appearances.  In addition to many photographs (both publicity and candid), there are many magazines (as the exhibit notes state) which, at the outset of her film career, tried to reconcile Hepburn’s unusual looks with then-current ideas of beauty, sometimes resulting in images in which one strains to see a resemblance to the actress.

Here is presented a very different side of Hepburn.  On stage and in costume, she holds herself both regally and sensually depending on the dramatic situation.  It is a pity that with rare and late exceptions (such as the excerpt from the musical Coco, broadcast as part of the Tony Awards of 1970) there are no filmed records of Hepburn on stage.  Such is the ephemeral nature of the performer’s art.  Yet with ample documentation of scripts, letters, photographs and programs, one can get a sense of how Hepburn commanded a stage.  As Bob Taylor, the former curator of the Billy Rose Theatre Division stated in a video, these materials show part of Hepburn’s career that is often overlooked.

It is a fascinating trove:  there are a loads of letters, annotated scripts and documents.  One gets the sense that Hepburn strived to save materials relevant to her activities.  Apparently not content to simply collect, she frequently made notes on these materials.  So many items, even ephemeral ones, have her annotations, comments, thoughts, or communications, providing a deeper context for each item.  She apparently saved fan letters along with the most trivial of items.  That’s what makes not only the exhibit but her archive so rich:  she kept so many things that, while seemingly ephemeral, played some significant part in her life. 

It’s a lesson to us all on what makes a worthwhile archive: not the mere collection of lots of ephemera, but all of it having an organic connection to its creator/collector.  The result is a vivid picture of not just a performing artist but someone fully engaged with life and the world around her.

Sheet music cover for "It's All Your Fault," popularized by Sophie Tucker

Interesting piece in yesterday’s New York Times on the release of a new CD (remember those?), Sophie Tucker: Origins of the Red Hot Mama, 1910-1922, which includes fresh digital transfers of some of the singer’s earliest recordings.   You can sample some snippets of these recordings, as well as view a few images from one of the several Sophie Tucker collections held by the various divisions of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Image credit: NYPL Digital Gallery ID# G98C170_001

Portrait of Lydia Lopokova from color brochure advertising Ballets Russes 1916-1917 American tour

For those of us who can’t be there right now, the appearance of a couple of reviews of the current exhibition at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Diaghilev’s Theater of Marvels,  recently made us pick up our ears.  One is an overview, by Julie Bloom, in The Paper of Record, complete with the by-now-expected “multimedia” feature, which also includes information on some additional, upcoming Diaghilev tribute events in the New York area.  The other, which admittedly did more to thaw the frozen cockles of our heart, was a blog post by Oregon Ballet Theatre soloist, Adrian Fry, recounting a recent whirlwind weekend in New York, in which, along with taking class and checking out dancewear, he found the time to visit the Diaghilev show (and also tracked down a Manhattan venue that served Stumptown coffee).

We love to see stories about performers and practitioners actually using libraries and archives!  We also love coffee!  When in Portland (and even sometimes in Seattle) we enjoy the occasional visit to  Stumptown, but when in New York, we often can be found at Café Grumpy.  Counting the days now!

Image credit: NYPL Digital Gallery ID# BALRUSSE_BR01

Just a reminder that more Performing Arts Roundtable goodness awaits you tomorrow morning at 9:30 AM with the program, Saving De Niro’s Boxing Trunks: Sustaining Performing Arts Archives Collaboratively. The featured panelists, Helen Adair (Harry Ransom Center), Karen Nickeson (New York Public Library), and Libby Smigel (Dance Heritage Coalition) will discuss recent projects that have addressed 21st-century cataloging, preservation, and fair use.

Those of you who attended Wednesday’s PAR meeting had a chance to get up close and personal with said boxing trunks.  For another glimpse of the De Niro collection, you can watch this YouTube video partly narrated by Helen:

Stay tuned for more!