DVDs and VHS videocassettes in the TCU Library's Media collection, housed in the Music/Media Library, cannot be browsed from the shelves but can be browsed online (click to see search instructions and other information). Videos can also be searched according to categories such as Modern Dance. Up to 10 videos can be checked out for one week, with two renewals. Click to see an Advanced Search / catalog list of DVD/Blu-ray/VHS videos related to dance, or a list of streaming videos, via FrogScholar.
Streaming videos in the TCU Library's databases can be played directly from links in catalog records, or from the databases themselves. Per catalog records, whether you're using the Advanced Search tab at library.tcu.edu or searching directly from the FrogScholar search box, you'll select Material Type Video and then, on the results page, select "online." Use "Tweak/Sort" to rearrange search results by title, author, oldest or newest. Note: for some video titles the library offers both DVD/VHS information and a streaming (online) link in one catalog record; records for such items may only be retrievable as "Physical," "Media Collection" items. Selected video databases are below. If you're interested in African dance, check out the Video Resources on African Dance guide. <About video linking>
Dance in Video database (Dance Online) - select "Dance in Video" from Collections to search videos, which cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. Included are performances from top ballet companies; experimental works from up-and-coming dance troupes; documentaries by and about leading choreographers; dance training videos and other items covering a wide range of 20th and 21st century dance styles. Available to the TCU Community from anywhere and to guests within the library building. Clips, embedding and linking to/from precise segments is possible. Permanent links to videos are available through the Embed/link tool.
Medici.TV - Medici.TV adds music and dance content to the TCU Library’s holdings as of August 2024. To construct durable links to works or segments, try adding this prefix to Medici’s urls: http://library.tcu.edu/PURL/EZproxy_link.asp?url= .
Filmaker's Library database - available from anywhere to the TCU community and to guests within the library building, this growing database provides award-winning documentaries across all disciplines, including Dance. Filmaker's Library has an additional offering: transcripts are available for documentaries in this database. Clips, embedding and linking to/from precise segments is possible. Permanent links to videos are available through the Embed/link tool. Sample Water Flowing Together: Jock Soto.
Films on Demand (Films for the Humanities and Sciences, BBC, PBS and more) - available to an unlimited number of TCU users, this database offers thousands of full length educational videos. Content includes the humanities, social sciences, health, medicine and more. Clips, embedding and linking to/from films or precise segments is possible (see directions below). For the dance community, perusing dance titles via the "Music and Dance" page is easy - simply select "Dance" from the Subject list. This list is sortable by "Choreography," "General" and "Performance," revealing complete dance productions and films like Bill T. Jones: Still/Here. However, many more dance-related hits are obtained by searching "by segments" rather than "by title," e.g. when searching from the home page for segments on dance - especially world (international) and ethnic dance. These dance-related segments - short, long and in-between - are primarily from films that are not about dance per se. Sample segments: "Modern Butoh Dance" from the film Theater in Japan: Yesterday and Today; "
Academic Video Online (Proquest) - documentaries, interviews, performances, news programs and newsreels relevant to University level courses. This database finds both short film segments and full-length films and series.
Digital Theatre Plus - primarily a boon for plays and the like, this database nonetheless offers some productions and documentaries having to do with ballet or other forms of dance, such as world dance. Currently there are no Resource or Genre selections that are dance related (there is for Musical Theatre), so it's necessary to use the top search box to search for, say, ballet (as of 3/12/21, 11 hits) or dance (as of 3/12/21, 58 hits). Some of the hits, however, are "Concise Introductions" which are merely PDF documents detailing the person or topic.
Dance on Camera Journal - from the Dance Films Association running through 2011, this journal offered information on trends and new works. The archives of Dance on Camera Journal was available until recently from the Dance Films Association, but access has lapsed.
International Journal of Screendance - formed by a collaboration of universities, this new, international, artist-led journal explores the field of Screendance. It is said to be the first-ever scholarly journal wholly dedicated to this growing area of worldwide interdisciplinary practice. The publication purports to examine screendance in the context of contemporary cultural debates about interdisciplinarity, artistic agency, practice as theory, and curatorial practices.
Pentacle, a not-for-profit management support organization for dance companies and project-based artists working in dance and theater, once sponsored Movement Media, an organization providing services, strategies, and opportunities for dance artists to make dance works for screen and use media to promote and enhance their artistic pursuits. MM is no longer in evidence, but elsewhere on the web are the Move the Frame blog archives (through 2009) and the UMove Festival, once a part of this effort.
History of Dance on Screen - this 90-minute Arthaus Musik documentary film examines how the media and dance have influenced one another in the twentieth century, embracing new art forms such as dance movies and ballet films (dance created specifically for the camera). In-depth interviews feature such persons as Alvin Ailey, Pina Bausch, Maurice Bejart, Martha Graham, Roland Petit and many others. Housed in the Music/Media Library, GV1779 .H57 2013.
Video Dance & the Video Dance Lectures - in this 77-minute film from First Light Video Publishing choreographers, television directors and dancers gather together in Sydney, Australia to participate in the first national dance video how-to course. This program presents some of the dance experiments from that project.
Guides to dance in films and videos; making dance films
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Dances's Duet With the Camera: Motion Pictures, 2016 [ebook] - this collection of essays by various authors explores the relationship between live dance and film. Chapters cover a range of topics that explore | |
| dance film, contemporary dance with film on stage, dance as an ideal medium to be captured by 3D images and videodance as kin to site-specific choreography. | ||
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The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, 2013 [ebook] - this work studies films, television shows, commercials, music videos, and YouTube, offering new ways to understand the content |
| using methodologies from critical dance studies, performance studies, and film/media analysis. Many questions are asked and answered, incuding "What role does a specific film have in the genealogy of Hollywood dance film? How does the Hollywood dance film inform how dance operates in making cultural meanings?" | ||
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Dying swans and madmen: ballet, the body, and narrative cinema, 2008 [ebook]. Chapters: Introduction : ballet in tin cans -- A channel for progress : theatrical dance, popular culture, and (the) American |
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| Ballet -- Gender, genre, and the ballet film through 1947: part 1, the life of a ballerina is indeed tough -- Gender, genre, and the ballet film through 1947 : part 2, the man was mad, but a genius! -- If you can disregard the plot : the red shoes in an American context -- The second act will be quite different : cinema, culture, and ballet in the 1950s -- Turning points: -- Ballet and its bodies in the "post-studio" era. | ||
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Dance on Camera: a Guide to Dance Films and Videos, 1998 - the most comprehensive catalog available on dance films and videos in distribution as of that year. This is a revised edition of the Dance Film |
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| and Video Guide by the Dance Films Association and Dance Horizons, 1991, an A-to-Z listing of films on dance with choreographer / dancer / composer / director name, dance company, and subject indexes, and a thorough guide to the appearances of dancers and/or choreographers' work on film. The 1991 work covers only released films or videos, not archival footage, home movies etc. A still earlier work from the Dance Films Association is Modern Dance & Ballet on Film and Video: a Catalog, 1986. Location: all of these titles are in the Music/Media Library's reference stacks. | ||
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Film Choreographers and Dance Directors: an illustrated biographical encyclopedia, 1997 - this comprehensive bio-guide also offers a decade-by-decade history of dance on film and a filmography of |
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| important choreographic works for each decade. Location: Music/Media Library reference stacks, GV 1779 B55 1997. | ||
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Dance Film Directory; An Annotated and Evaluative Guide to Film on Ballet and Modern Dance - Princeton, 1979 - ballet, modern, "ethnic," and Hollywood musical styles are included, as well as five |
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| indexes, including choreographers, dances, dancers and film titles. Location: Music/Media Library reference stacks, GV 1595 M89. | ||
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Guide to Dance in Film: a Catalog of US Productions - Gale, 1978; a guide to dance on screen including dance sequences, with names of dancers, choreographers, directors, etc. Offers name, production |
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| company, and country-of-origin indexes. Location: Music/Media Library reference stacks, GV 1779 P37. | ||
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Social Dancing in America: a History and Reference - Greenwood Press, 2007; vol. 2 contains a bibliography with a select list of Hollywood movies, organized by the type of dance depicted in them. Location: Reference, GV 1623 G56. |
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Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art, 2001 - a comprehensive introduction to the rich diversity of screen dance genres. This title first provides a |
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| contextual overview of dance in the screen media and analyzes a selection of case studies from the popular dance imagery of music video and Hollywood, through to experimental art dance. The focus then turns to video dance - dance originally choreographed for the camera. Location: Main Stacks, GV1779 D62 2001 | ||
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Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, 2002 - a hundred-year history of dance in film and a guide to the art of putting dance on film. Also in print, main stacks |
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| quarto (oversized books area), GV 1779 E58 2002 | ||
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Screendance: Inscribing the Ephemeral Image [ebook], Oxford University Press, 2012 - about this book |
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Making Video Dance: a Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Dance for the Screen, 2006 - the first ever how-to manual for choreographers, dancers and students who want to make dance films. Location: main |
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| stacks GV 1779 M37 2006. Author Katrina McPherson's website is also well worth checking out. | ||
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Dancefilm: Choreography and the Moving Image - from Oxford University Press, this 2011 work traces the history of dance in film and examines how choreographic elements inform cinematic operations, |
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| arguing that the intersection of dance and film produces distinct, cine-choreographic practices that are specific to dancefilm. Location: main stacks GV 1779 B73 2011 | ||
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Oxford handbook of screendance studies - from Oxford University Press, this 2016 work offers a scholarly overview of the histories, practices, and critical and theoretical foundations of the rapidly changing | |
| landscape of screendance. Scholars from the fields of dance, performance, visual art, cinema, and media arts articulate the practice of screendance as an interdisciplinary, hybrid form that has yet to be correctly sited as an academic field worthy of critical investigation. Each essay discusses and reframes current issues, as a means of promoting and enriching dialogue within the wider community of dance and the moving image. Topics addressed include politics of the body; agency, race, and gender in screendance; the relationship of choreography to image; constructs of space and time; dance and interactive and digital technology; and production and curatorial practice. Location: Main Stacks, Call No. GV1779 R664 2016 | ||
