Dance 124: World Dance Traditions

There are many dance resources available online.  Here are a few to investigate.

Please contact Karen (see the box in the lower left) if you know of new resources to add!

Dance Research at the Library of Congress (Digital Collections) -- includes materials from dance cultures in the USA and around the world

Digital Public Library of America -- AV materials and texts from cultural heritage institutions across the United States; search for danc* or by dance type or artist.

Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library -- videos of performance practices (including dance) across the Americas

Indigenous Cinema -- Indigenous-made films about music and dance hosted by the National Film Board of Canada

Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive -- essays, videos, and images of dance from the renowned American dance festival

Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library (Digital Collections) -- digital documents from the world's largest dance archive and library

Museum of Performance + Design (on Calisphere) -- digital collections from MPD in San Francisco, including documents of Bay Area Chinese theaters

Native Dance -- videos and images of Native Dance in Canada, including Inuit and Metis dance traditions

Archivo Virtual Artes Escenicas -- photos, texts, and videos with a focus on Spanish artists, but includes Hispanic perofrming artists from South America; see "etiquetas del archivo" (or "file tags," if you're having Chrome translate the site) to sort materials by subject tags

Digital Library of the Caribbean -- images, texts (including dissertations), and films from the Caribbean; also includes some South American countries

Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library -- videos of performance practices (including dance) across the Americas

Princeton University Library's Guide to Latin American Digital Resources -- links to many Hispanic digital resources, including digitized materials from Latin American national libraries and archives

ArenaPAL -- a UK image library for the performing arts (including dance); the images are copyrighted, but still useful for research

Digital Dance Archives -- videos and images about dance in the British Isles

Europeana.eu -- Europe's largest online digital library, including texts and AV materials

ImPulsTanz -- archives from the Vienna International Dance Festival

numerisdance.tv -- short films of performances, documentaries, and interview coordinated by the Maison de la Danse in Lyon, France.

Global Music Archive -- texts, images, and videos of music and dance in Africa and the Americas; you will have to see each collection individual to see what dance content in contains

Discovering the Music of Africa -- a  short documentary of music in Africa (mostly Ghana) including footage of native dance traditions; available at the Internet Archive

Centre for Cultural Resources and Training -- from India's Ministry of Culture; includes descriptions and histories of Indian dance forms

Pioneers of Chinese Dance Digital Archives -- digitized photographs of Chinese dance and dancers from the University of Michigan

Luitzenk YouTube Videos (Aboriginal and Torress Strait Islander dance videos) -- NOTE: Users of this archived resource should be aware that, in some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities, seeing images of deceased persons in film may cause sadness or distress and in some cases, offend against strongly held cultural prohibitions.

Dance Collections at the National Library of Australia -- a variety of dance materials, mostly for dance as performance art, not social dancing