Materials in the Collection - Photographs

At the Ballets Russes Archive, we have a wide variety of materials that comprise our collections.  The most prevalent type of material that we have are photographs.  Nearly every collection contains photos, and some have photos as their primary type of item.

Being a dance archive, the typical photograph that people expect to see and that many donors give is the studio portrait.  These are often taken for a role, but they may also be used for a professional portfolio.

Paula Tennyson as Odette in Swan Lake.  Photo by Maurice Seymour

Many of these professional portraits are staged or only done in a photography studio.  However, professionals were also brought in to take shots during performances.

Performance of Swan Lake by the Original Ballet Russe.  

Many of the photographs that we find the most interesting are the backstage photos.  These provide a unique look into the experiences of the dancers from a view most patrons would never get to see. 

Tatiana Bechenova backstage with the Original Ballet Russe

Other truly entertaining photos come to us from general snapshots.  The dancers spent a lot of time together engaging in tourism, travel, and, occasionally, general silliness.   

Racing with eggs on board a ship.

Of course, our favorites come from our personal grouping of photos - "Dancers with Animals"

Nathalie Branitzka-Hoyer with a koala on Australian tour in 1936-7

Introducing Big Bertha

Like any heritage institution, the Ballets Russes Archive is constantly thinking about the storage needs of the collections.  No one has enough storage, and everyone is hoping to have newer and better facilities.  This Archive is no exception.

When the Archive began, there was no specific place designated for the collections.  The Archive moved into a space designated for storage and preparation used by the School of Dance.  Our space features a refrigerator, a sink, and lots of decorations for special events.  The cabinets that lined the walls held lights for performances, old posters and programs from the School, and serving items for gatherings and fundraisers.

To save money, the Archive shifted these items out of the file cabinets and moved in the archival boxes. The problem with this was archival boxes just fit exactly into the drawers and were difficult to move in and out.  Each of these boxes had to be removed carefully, yet over time, the edges would catch leaving the corners torn or the flaps looking ragged.  In addition, the higher boxes were harder to remove if they were heavy because they were higher than the normal range of motion used.

Old Storage System

Removal was often awkward and
there was a risk of damage to the material.

Luckily, the School of Dance is eligible for money from the Restricted Fund for Building Maintenance that was part of the grant bestowed on the University by the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation.  This fund allows the School to make changes to the physical assets of the Donald W. Reynolds Performing Art Center, which houses the Archive.  This year, the Fund allowed us to replace our old file cabinets with custom storage cabinets for our archival collections.  A former graduate assistant, Tara Davis, designed the layout of these cabinets and started sourcing vendors for us.  In the end, we got our cabinets from Delta Designs.  They were easy to work with and were able to make these large cabinets for us in a relatively short amount of time.

Big Bertha 1 and Big Bertha 2

To prepare for the move, we planned out where the various collections should go and made slightly bad drawings of drawer and shelf layouts.  Our Dance Fellow, Sierra Codalata, made a layout for where all of the materials would go before the move.  We had to take all of our collections out of the old cabinets and lay them out on tables in another room.

On moving day, the guys from Shipping and Receiving came in with our shiny new cabinets, they referred to them as Big Bertha.  We were so delighted by the term that that became the official name. We use it as the location within the Archive, referring to them as Big Bertha 1 (BB1) and Big Bertha 2 (BB2).

BB1 allows for storage of the few textiles we have (seen at bottom)

BB2 is where most of our books, scores, and scrapbooks are stored 

Retrieving materials from these cabinets is so much easier, even from the higher shelves.  The only issue we've had is that the drawers can't be pulled out too far or they fall.  We did have to do some hands-on construction as the shelves were a little too close together for the boxes, so we had to move them to fit.

Easier access to material!

Thanks to the Reynolds Fund for making this upgrade possible! Our only wish is that we had more of them in preparation for future collections.

Getting to Know the Collections - Nathalie Branitzka-Hoyer

Welcome to the Ballets Russes Archives series  - Getting to Know the Collections.  We wanted to share some of our most interesting collections with you.  Our first selection is the Nathalie Branitzka-Hoyer collection. 

Nathalie Branitzka was born July 18, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia. She studied ballet at the Petrograd Ballet School under the famous teacher Agrippina Vaganova in St. Petersburg. She later studied with Lubov Egorova in Paris. She started her professional career in the Anna Pavlova Company, continuing with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe and appeared with Vera Trefilova and Pierre Vladimioff in Berlin. Following Diaghilev’s death, she performed with Boris Kniaseff's ballet company in Paris in 1930. She joined with De Basil's Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo dancing from 1932-1937. Rising to soloist, she made a world tour and appeared in many works by Leonid Massine, including Choreartium, Jeux d'Enfants, Beach and Scuola di Ballo, and in Mikhail Fokine's Carnaval and Les Sylphides. She moved to US to teach with her husband, Jan Hoyer, who had also been a member of both companies. She was the director of her own eponymous ballet school in New York City. She died March 8, 1977, in New York City.

Nathalie Branitzka-Hoyer

The Nathalie Branitzka-Hoyer collection is our one of our largest and most diverse collections.  It was donated by her son, Andre von Hoyer.  We have over 1,000 items, and it is the only collection large enough to warrant having series.  We have eight series in the collection.

The first and largest is manuscripts.  These materials include individual performance programs, season long souvenir programs, and notes.

De Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo Performance Program from Royal Opera House Covent Garden, July 24, 1935

Series 2 is scrapbooks.  We have 7 scrapbooks from Nathalie Branitzka's time with the companies.  

Series 3 is photographic materials.  These include photos, negatives, and photographic postcards.  

Snapshot of Nathalie Branitzka and three dancers petting a koala on Australia tour, 1936-7

Series 4 is moving images.  We have five 8 mm reels of footage from the Ballet Russe and touring.

Series 5 is publications.  This series includes a number of different magazines.  

Issue of Dance and Dancers from October 1950; Volume 1, Number 10

Series 6 is books.  This is our largest collection of books and includes a number of Russian titles.

Our Ballet - Published in 1896

Series 7 is scores.  We have scores from many of the great ballets, including Firebird, Swan Lake, and the Nutcracker.

Sleeping Beauty

Series 8 is posters.  Because these posters are from the 1930's, they are not in very good shape.  Hopefully, we will be able to start conservation on them this year.

So, that's the Branitzka-Hoyer collection.  We're looking forward to sharing more of our materials with you over the next few months.