Subject Guide: Dance Studies
Contact the Academic Liaison Librarian with responsibility for Dance
Helping you discover ... Dance (Printable PDF version)
Reference Materials
Archival Sound Recordings
The British Library Sound Archive, one of the world's largest sound archives, offers a ground-breaking online digital resource of sound recordings reflecting the broad spectrum of its holdings.
Dictionary of National Biography 50,000 biographies of people who shaped the history of the British Isles and beyond, from the earliest times to the year 2002. Includes portraits and images.
International Encyclopedia of Dance Covers the full spectrum of dance—theatrical, ritual, dance-drama, folk, traditional, ethnic, and social dance. Cultural and national overviews accompanied by entries on dance forms, music and costumes, performances, and biographies of dancers and choreographers. Print version at Quick Ref. 792.803/COH.
Naxos Music Library gives access to over 80,000 tracks (5,500 CDs) from the entire Naxos, Marco Polo and Da Capo music catalogues online. Genres of music covered include: classical, jazz, blues, world music, Chinese music, Ballet, film music and opera. Access on and off campus is with a Naxos password available from the Enquiry Desk in the Library. N.B. Requires Media Player 9/10
Oxford English Dictionary A fully searchable online version of the Second print edition of the OED.
Oxford Music Online (formerly Grove Music Online) provides online full text access to: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , second edition, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, second edition. Grove online includes audio examples, bibliographies and external web links.
Oxford Reference Online: Performing Arts Collection Full text encyclopaedias and dictionaries in the performing arts.
Journals & Newspapers
Printed Journals
Dance Studies journals are held on the 4th floor of the Library. Some older issues are kept in our reserve stack. A list of printed journals relevant to Dance Studies can be downloaded here.
Electronic Journals
The full text of selected journals is available online. For more details about how to access these, look at our electronic journals web page.
This includes the complete back runs over 400 titles. .
This full text database covers approximately 12,000 international, national and local publications, including newspapers.
Project Muse Humanities and Social Sciences Collections
Full text access to over 200 electronic journals in the arts and humanities and social sciences.
Finding journal articles
Bibliographic databases that you can use in order to find journal articles that are relevant to the particular topic you are studying are listed below. For more details on how to search for journal articles quickly and effectively, look at our web page: Finding Articles in Journals.
Anthropology Index Online Produced by the Royal Anthropological Institute, an index to current journals received by the Anthropology Library at the Centre for Anthropology (British Museum).
British Humanities Index . The BHI indexes British journals and newspapers from 1985 onwards, covering the arts and humanities.
CATNYP - New York Public Library Research libraries dance collection catalog The Dance Collection catalog lists works about all forms of dance, from all cultures, in print and other media. It includes materials in many languages and serves as an index to an international range of dance periodicals.
International Bibliography of Theatre and Dance A fully indexed, cross-referenced and annotated databank of over 60,000 journal articles, books, book articles and dissertation abstracts on all aspects of theatre and performance in 126 countries.
Web of Science: Arts and Humanities Citation Index This database fully indexes over 1,100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals, from 1981 onwards. Available through the Web of Science gateway.
Video and Image Databases
Dance in Video
Dance in Video contains video clips of dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Access is via Shibboleth off campus.
ARTSTOR A digital library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences with a set of tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes. Please note this resource is currently only available on campus.
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) Picture Library A database dedicated to images on South Asia. The Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909-1995) collection is useful for visual documentation of tribal cultures in South Asia and the Himalayas. Images can be used from this site in a non-commercial way site under the terms of the Creative Commons Licence.
Electronic Books (e-books)
Ebrary Ebrary offers access to over 35,000 titles many of those relevant to your studies.
Visit our e-books page to find out other e-books platforms the library subscribes to!
Useful Web sites
The Arts Council of England Provides detailed information on arts funding and resources in the UK. ACE dance publications are downloadable from this site.
Artpromote.com A guide to museum exhibitions, library collections, and related resources for researching music in art and finding musical images online.
ballet.co An online guide to ballet and dance in the UK.
balletcompanies.com Gateway to over 2,000 links to ballet and dance companies worldwide
Dance UK Dance news, conferences, publications, courses and other information
Digital Dance Archives This is a public access portal which allows viewers to discover 5 dance archives at the University of Surrey and Siobhan Davies Replay at the Coventry University.
Foundation of Community Dance The professional organisation for anyone involved in creating opportunities for people to experience and participate in dance.
Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive This is an online archive where you can view excerpts of dance performances spanning from the 1930s to the present day.
londondance.com London dance news, reviews, discussions and organisations.
National Resource Centre for Dance Information about the NRCD at the University of Surrey plus links to a wide range of dance web sites
AHDS Performing Arts collects and promotes the use of digital resources to support research and teaching across the performing arts: dance, theatre, film, broadcast arts and music. Its web page provides links to major Internet resources in the performing arts.
Researcher's Companion Interactive research skills tutorial from Roehampton University. It has a section on Dance.
Siobhan Davies Archive Online This started as a project in 2007 and is the first online dance archive of its kind. It contains video clips, moving images, audio and text resources of Davies's work.
Other libraries
Roehampton students may use the library at the University of Surrey as well as libraries in the SCONUL Access Scheme. Roehampton staff may also use borrow from the libraries of the M25 Consortium. Full information of these schemes plus details of how to access the British Library can be found on our Guide to using other libraries.
Dance researchers might also consider using the following libraries:
British Film Institute 21, Stephen Street, London W1P 1PL Tel: 020 7255 1444
The world's largest collection of information on film and television, containing books, periodicals and newspaper cuttings, scripts, publicity material and collections of papers. Reference use only.
Laban Centre for Movement and Dance Laban, Creekside London SE8 3DZ Tel: 020 8691 8600
Phone to check opening times or make an appointment. A small charge is made
Royal Academy of Dance Library 36 Battersea Square, London SW11 3RA Tel: 020 7223 0091
Comprehensive dance reference collection. Students pay a small charge to use the collection. Admission strictly by appointment only.
V&A Theatre Collections Online Theatre Collections Reading Room, Blythe House, 23 Blythe Road, London, W14 0QX
E-mail tmenquiries@vam.ac.uk for an appointment in the reading room (needs to be arranged 2 weeks in advance)
Since the closure the the Theatre Museum in Convent Garden in January 2007, the V&A are making available those theatre collections online. This is a huge project and work is in progress. The library of the V&A Theatre Collections holds complete runs of many 20th century periodicals relating to the theatre and has a strong reference collection. An appointment is necessary to use the reading room.
National Resource Centre for Dance University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH Tel:01483 259 316
Admission by appointment only.
Westminster Reference Library 35 St. Martins Street, London WC2H 7HP Tel: 020 7641 4636 This public reference library has a good performing arts collection.