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Visions and Voices: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Images of Dance

A guide to research on dance to accompany the Visions and Voices program featuring Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.

Images of Dance

Below are databases and websites where you can locate images of dancers, performances, and visualizations of human movement. Note that most dance company web sites include a gallery of photographs from past performances or teaching dance. Descriptions of resources are adapted or quoted from vendor websites.

  • ArtStor -- a collection of more than over 1.6 million digital images and selected photographs that can be used, once an account is set up, for scholarly work. The collection is international in scope. Images are derived from a wide variety of sources, such as, museums, archaeological sites, photo archives, slide collections, and art publishers. To browse dance images, select the category Dancers in Art or search the names of dancers, dance styles, and The subject guide for Theater and Dance [pdf] lists sources and types of images in the collection.
  • Catalog of Art Museum Images Online -- offers a growing digital collection of art works from around the world, representing the collections of prominent museums, that highlights the creative output of cultures around the world, from prehistoric to contemporary times, and covering the complete range of human expressivion in all its forms.
  • CriticalDance -- this links to the archive of dance images [mostly ballet] created by this international non-profit organization devoted to promoting and supporting the dance arts that also .
  • Digital Public Library of America -- offers a single point of access to millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sound recordings, images, and moving images from a variety of libraries, archives, and museums throughout the United States. Users can browse and search the DPLA's collections by timeline, map, format, and topic. Registering for a DPLA account allows the creation of lists and saved items and searches for future reference.
  • New York Public Library Digital Collection -- includes materials digitized from the holdings of the New York Public Library, including images archived in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the Performing Arts Library.