It is amazing that a week of my Dance Heritage Coalition Fellowship has gone by already! Time flies when you are having fun and when you are gaining valuable information that inspires you and will potentially help you build a career.

When I started the journey of becoming a dance archivist I could not have imagine that it was truly possible. I began my journey by volunteering to help build The Dance Resource Center at The University of Arizona School of Dance.

The University of Arizona Dance Resource Center

The Dance Resource center is the vision of the faculty of the U of A School of Dance. When I arrived at the center the books had been cataloged and magazines had been organized, but the books were thrown on the shelves without sequential order and some of the magazines turned out to be rare Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo programs. I have been working on enabling access for the faculty, staff, and students at The School of Dance for the past year and a half. So far I have created two finding aids, continued cataloging the books and have processed a third collection. This third collection lacks a finding aid but I will create it in the fall.Aside from my involvement in The School of Dance I had little hope of being involved as an archivist in the dance world. Because of this I had lost inspiration, the week in Washington DC has energized me and it has inspired me to carry on. Of all the activities I found the Library of Congress and Howard University to be the most inspirational.

The Library of Congress exhibition was an inspiration because I, well I think everyone, often forgets of the power dance holds as a propaganda machine. I found the messages that were ingrained in many of the choreographic pieces extremely interesting. The most intriguing story was that of Lester Horton and his work The Park.

Howard University was inspirational because the discussion centered not only within dance archiving but also focused on the need to document minorities. Actually, both experiences touched on this (whether it was noted by the archivist or not) and I think that it is important to remember this aspect of dance, especially since the library science filed has actively attempted to diversity. I believe that placing dance as a source of minority documentation can have a strong impact when one is arguing over monetary funds or when one is pleading with the boss to process, acquire, and value dance collections.

The DC week was intense in many ways: information, educational, fun, and delicious. I can’t wait to begin at UCLA.