The Online Program of events for the 2025 AMS-SMT Joint Annual Meeting appears below. This program is subject to change. The final program will be published in early November.
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Tracing the Intersection of Dance and Music through the University of Minnesota Performing Arts Archive and the Francis V Gorman Rare Arts Books, Media, and Artists Archives
Time:
Saturday, 08/Nov/2025:
10:45am - 12:15pm
Location: Northstar Ballroom B
Session Topics:
AMS
Presentations
Tracing the Intersection of Dance and Music through the University of Minnesota Performing Arts Archive and the Francis V Gorman Rare Arts Books, Media, and Artists Archives
Chair(s): Destiny Meadows (The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) , Rachel Gain (Yale University)
Presenter(s): Deborah Ultan (University of Minnesota)
Organized by the AMS Music and Dance Study Group.
In writing about live performance, music and dance scholars often rely on archival materials in a variety of formats to piece together details about these ephemeral events. Such archival materials afford rich interpretation, while also posing myriad challenges. Archives provide incomplete records of the events they document, with their contents and gaps determined by those with the power to collect and store items (Derrida 1995). As such, archives center dominant populations and music/dance traditions (Harris, Barwick, & Troy 2022)—although archival silences and unconventional remnants can themselves prove a rich space for theorizing and excavation (Hartman 2008; Brooks 2021). Moreover, unlike the plastic arts, music and dance’s material traces capture the work or performance indirectly; for instance, sometimes the only physical trace of choreography is in a score, and Wong (2019) examines how embodied performance practice gets translated in part through photos. What can we learn about the relationship between music and movement through silent and static materials?
To address these issues, the Music and Dance Study group presents this special session on archival materials, led by Deborah Ultan, who is the Librarian/Archivist/Curator of the University of Minnesota Performing Arts Archive. In this ninety-minute workshop, attendees will interact with the wide range of materials related to music and dance held in the UMN library’s special collections, including photographs, choreographic scores, and handwritten music. In the twentieth century, Minneapolis became a hub for dance in the Midwest, both spawning local talent and attracting some of the key names of American dance history. The archival holdings, spanning over a century, encompass a range of dance styles and historical moments from the thriving Minnesota dance scene, showcasing a range of cultural influences and interdisciplinary collaborations. Through our confrontation with these physical residues of local music and dance history, we will reflect on crucial questions, such as how archival practices shape performance history, and which cities, dance practices, and bodies have been a focus of scholarship compared to those that have been marginalized. Further, conference attendees can explore opportunities for future research related to the collection’s unique holdings, while developing skills and frameworks for working with dance-related archives more broadly.
