Madeline Smith, Ballet Tech, Spring 2019, NEH
My Spring semester internship was at Ballet Tech, the New York City Public School for Dance, founded in 1978 by choreographer Eliot Feld. Under the supervision of Audiovisual Archivist Marie Lascu and Archivist Jennifer Marck Moran, I performed a number of tasks aimed at the management and preservation of Ballet Tech's rich mixed media archive, which documents Feld's choreographic legacy. The archive includes historic dance photography, audiovisual recordings related to Eliot Feld's career as a choreographer beginning the in the 1960s, and recordings of performances and rehearsals of all the ballets Eliot has choreographed from the 1960s to present, including those for the public school Ballet Tech. Tasks included: inventorying Ballet Tech's videotape and film collection related to recordings of rehearsals and performances from the 1960s to present to gain a better understanding of what the collection contained and identifying true masters for potential preservation level digitization; scanning, rehousing, and cataloging photographs from Ballet Tech’s historic collection of dance photography and adding the photographs to Ballet Tech’s Omeka-based digital archive; and digitizing VHS tapes for access purposes. I also was able to visit other institutions around Manhattan and learn about the operation of their archives. This internship afforded me the opportunity to gain hands-on experience working with audiovisual materials and I feel extremely fortunate to have worked with such a historically significant collection that spans the entire career of Eliot Feld, a modern ballet innovator.
Madeline Smith interned at Ballet Tech in Spring 2019.
