Jeanne Renaud - Dance Collection Danse

DANCE COLLECTION DANSE HOSTS
GRASSROOTS ARCHIVING
WORKSHOPS
In August 2005, DCD Cofounder/Director
Miriam
Adams and Research
Coordinator Amy Bowring
began drafting a document titled
Grassroots Archiving: A
National Preservation Strategy
for Dance. Focussed on preserving
the documentation side of
our dance history (as opposed to
performed choreographic
works), the Grassroots Archiving
Strategy (dubbed “GAS”) consists
of three main components:
workshops to train Collections
Coordinators, a national
database, and a playbill deposit
program with presenters.
In the last issue of the Magazine,
our readers were informed about
the Canadian Integrated Dance
Database (CIDD), which had
received a project grant from the
Canada Council for the Arts to
help with its development. We
have been working with
database programmer and
dancer Eddie Kastrau and the
CIDD is nearly complete. It
should be available for release
by December. This software can
be used by anyone who needs to
catalogue the contents of a dance
collection. The ultimate goal is
that the information from
databases for different dance collections
across Canada will be
uploaded to a central database
on the Dance Collection Danse
web site. This national database
will become a fantastic source
for researchers around the world
and will help to increase the
exposure of dance in Canada on
a global level.
30 Dance Collection Danse
Led by Amy Bowring, the workshop
component of the Grassroots Archiving
Strategy was held in the boardroom of
The National Ballet of Canada on
September 28 and 29, 2006. Demand
was so high among faculty and graduate
students in the Dance Department
at York University that a scaled-down
version of the workshop was
given at York on September 21.
DCD provided basic archiving
how-to lessons to over 60 people
through these workshops.
With assistance from the Canada
Council Flying Squad program,
we were able to subsidize the
travel of several participants and
ended up with representation
from Vancouver, Calgary,
Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg,
Guelph, Oakville, Toronto,
Thornhill (ON), Mansfield (ON),
Montreal, Charlottetown and St.
John’s. The workshop provided
information on preventive conservation,
proper storage, handling
artifacts, organizing methods,
digitization, making inventories
and catalogues, budgets,
and a tutorial on the Canadian
Integrated Dance Database.
Participants visited Dance
Collection Danse and also toured
the archives of The National
Ballet of Canada. The National
Ballet’s Sharon Vanderlinde,
Manager of Archives and
Education, and Adrienne Nevile,
Archives Coordinator, were on
hand to provide additional
expertise and advice.
Once a new section of the DCD
web site has been developed for
the GAS and the CIDD, we will
post the contact information for
the first group of Collections
Coordinators on our web site.
Dance artists and companies can
then contact a Collections
Coordinator from various cities
to help them with their archival
needs. DCD plans to hold archiving
workshops in the future.