ATDF’s “Tap It Out” in Times Square

It’s going to be a good winter for dance archives. (What a sentence.) The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts has announced that choreographer David Gordon is donating his complete archives to the Library. As a bonus, Gordon’s created new works about the act of archiving, which he’ll show in workshop form this Thursday, January 21 (and again on January 28). The Library will also screen a 2011 performance of Gordon’s Dancing Henry Five, February 8.

And on February 12, the Library of Congress will celebrate the launch of an interactive tap dance archive, “Tap Dance in America,” compiled by Constance Valis Hill, director of preservation at the American Tap Dance Foundation. The archive will serve as an encyclopedia of American tap dance, searchable by title, date, venue, dancer, choreographer, director, producer and performance medium. It includes more than 2,820 records of tap performance and 180 biographies!

To kick off the new archive, ATDF is hosting a tap talk, screening the PBS special Tap Talk and offering a weekend teen tap intensive.

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Photo by Debi Field, courtesy of ATDF