About the Jerome Robbins Dance Division

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Third Floor
Phone: (212) 870-1657
Fully accessible to wheelchairs

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of The New York Public Library is the largest and most comprehensive archive in the world devoted to the documentation of dance. Chronicling the art of dance in all its forms, the Division acts as much more than a library. We preserve the history of dance by gathering diverse written, visual, and aural resources, and work to ensure the art form's continuity through active documentation and educational programs.

Founded in 1944, the Dance Division is used regularly by choreographers, dancers, critics, historians, journalists, publicists, filmmakers, graphic artists, students, and the general public. While the Division contains more than 44,000 books about dance, these account for only a small percent of its vast holdings. Other resources available for study free of charge include papers and manuscript collections, moving image and audio recordings, clippings and program files, and original prints and designs.

To learn more about our current activities, read our annual reports at the bottom of this page.

Circulating Collection

The Dance Division circulating collection is free to check out with a library card, and consists of an extensive array of books, encyclopedias, periodicals and commercial DVDs which illuminate all aspects of theatrical and non-theatrical forms of dance. The collection is especially strong in dance history, dance instruction, and biographies of leading dance figures.

Circulating and reference materials can be found on the Library’s 1st and 2nd floor.

A collage featuring people partner dancing

The Castle gavotte: scrapbook

Clippings Files

Articles culled from hundreds of American and foreign newspapers have been arranged under names of choreographers, dancers and companies to create thousands of clipping files. These, along with program files and an unsurpassed journal collection, aid in the process of primary-source research.

Iconography, Prints, and Designs

Prints, original designs, posters, and photographs provide rich insights into details of costume and set design, overall production development, as well as performance style. The Division’s collection of images portray a range of performances, set designs, companies and dancers, both notable and lesser-known, from the 17th century through current day.

Materials from the Research Collections can be accessed on the Library’s third floor. Most materials, including moving image and audio recordings, are available to researchers on a daily, first-come, first-served basis, without appointment.

Check out our Frequently Asked Questions for more information.

Dance Audio Archive

Home to more than 4,000 unique and rare audio recordings that capture the voices and ideas of performers, choreographers, composers, designers, and dance scholars from the mid-20th century to the present. These recordings, mostly acquired through donations, encompass a wide range of original content.

The audio content includes:

Dance Oral History Project

A distinct, searchable collection of over 500 in-depth audio interviews that have been initiated and recorded by the Library in an effort to add to the existing primary source material available to researchers in dance.

Listen to excerpts of selected Oral History Project interviews on our Project Playlist.

Moving Image Archive

Chita Rivera, dancers in rehearsal for stage production West Side Story, Martha Swope

Chita Rivera, West Side Story

The moving image archive of the Dance Division began when choreographer Jerome Robbins donated six cans of film—along with a gift of a small percentage of his royalties as author of the musical Fiddler on the Roof—to the Division in 1965. Half a century later, the archive has grown to over 25,000 titles of moving image materials on a variety of film, video and digital formats through donors’ gifts and original documentations. Past projects undertaken by the Moving Image Archive and Dance Original Documentations offer innovative solutions to the recording of performances, the preservation of at-risk recordings, and providing our researchers with broader digital access. Examples include:

The Collaborative Editing Project to Document Dance

The Bhutan Dance Project, in collaboration with Core of Culture, is a project to record and preserve the Kingdom of Bhutan’s disappearing dance traditions.

Dance Original Documentations

Unique to the Dance Division is our commitment to document live dance performances. Through in-house efforts of original documentation since 1967, our Moving Image Archive has created, and added to its collections, footage of over 2,600 dance performances primarily in New York City. Find performances in the catalog by searching under names of choreographers, dancers, or companies, and view them in the Library’s Reading Room.

Digital Collections

Vaslav Nijinsky, Afternoon of a Faun

Many collections in NYPL’s Digital Collections database represent the growing number of materials being digitized by the Division. Below are a select few of the collections that anyone can view online.

View all of the Digital Collections items in the Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

Education and Outreach

Denishawn school, 1923

We present materials from our collection to frame dance practice in a historical context. To enhance the learning experience we offer:

Virtual lessons
In-person class visits to complement classroom or studio learning
Guided tours of the building
Research assistance and catalog instruction to help students access our archive on their own
Dance exhibit tours with an emphasis on inquiry-based learning
Curriculum guides

Find out more about our Educational Programming

If you are ready to book your visit, please fill out the visit request form.

Still not sure of classroom or organization needs? Contact our Education Coordinator at 212-870-1746.

Dance Research Fellowship

The 2024 Dance Research Fellows

Every year, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division invites dancers, choreographers, scholars, and artists to apply for the Dance Research Fellowship. The selected fellows then go on to research a particular subject relevant to the Dance Division's archive. Fellows receive $10,000, dedicated support to work with a dance librarian as they work in the archive, and an opportunity to present their research projects at our annual Dance Symposium, a cornerstone event in the New York dance world.

Read about our current Dance Research Fellows.