Just Press "Play"
June 18, 2014

Nazimova in the “Dance of the Seven Veils”

Eiko in “Water”

Move over, YouTube. The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts is working its way through the digitization of 24,000 dance films, many of them rarely seen. Want to watch 1923 silent film star Alla Nazimova’s Dance of the Seven Veils? What about the butoh-esque Water (2011) by Eiko & Koma, performed in the Paul Milstein Pool at Lincoln Center? Both can now be viewed via the NYPL website thanks to a multiyear grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. Until now, curator Jan Schmidt says, “You’d have to go to the Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center, look for a video in a catalog, write down the number, find someone to search for it in the basement and have him connect the videotape deck to a machine upstairs. Now you can just press play.”

 

 

Photos courtesy of NYPL

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