Dance Costumes Collection at the Bancroft, 1913-1945

Last week  I came upon the most marvelous collection of Dance artifacts while I was doing a bit of research via Calisphere (a digital consortium of primary sources via the University of California) and the California Digital Library. The beauty of these illustrations stopped me dead in my tracks. Called the Paget-Fredericks Dance Collection, it includes about 2,000 drawings, photographs, paintings and memorabilia that date from between circa 1913 and 1945.

It is the collection of San Francisco born artist Joseph Rous Paget-Fredericks (for those interested, the Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library also houses a collection of his papers dating from 1920-1960). He was a student  of Léon Bakst, and “his dance drawings and paintings were exhibited in Europe and the United States”(via the finding aid). He later published a book, I Shall always Love the West: Impressions of the Incomparable Anna Pavlova during her several Visits to California (1952).

Nearly 400 of these works are available online through the Online Archive of California (OAC). It includes works depicting great as well as unknown dancers in the 20th century – such as Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Vaslav Nijinsky, Anna Pavlova and Ruth St. Dennis.  Though not available, researchers should note that the collection includes illustrations of Adolph Bolm and Louisa Casati, among others. Happily, this collection also includes set and costume designs for Swan Lake at the SF Opera House, a number of productions at the Greek Theater in Berkeley and for a number of ballets and performances.

As I was scrolling through the collection, I came upon what appears to be a gold mine: “1964.020, Historic Dance Costumes“: this section included costumes belonging to Loie Fuler, Anna Pavlova and Isadora Duncan (even Marie Taglioni’s fan!) are included here (These are a part of 30 dance costumes on long term loan from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). Sadly, no photographs of these pieces are included online.

In total though – it’s a vast collection – and I hope to find some time in the near future to see if any of it relates to my current research (which it might!). I could spend hours going through these photographs and illustrations, but I’ve chosen just a few to highlight here. Some of them have no captions, dates or titles. But some of real gems – including some pithy ones like “Isadora–far too heavy… if only she would cut down and diet!”.