Archive Open Day

 

We had an Archive Open Day recently where we invited all staff and students at Trinity Laban to drop in and see what lies behind the ‘archive’ door in the Laban Library and Archive.

As well as displaying an Art of Movement Studio (what the Dance Faculty was first called when established) scarf, dating from 1962, we also had a tunic donated by a former participant in Art of Movement Studio classes in the 1950s, a prospectus from when the Art of Movement Studio first opened in Manchester in the late 1940s, original drawings by Rudolf Laban donated to us by a former student of his, and of course a photograph of ‘the moustache’ as worn by a certain Anthony Bowne in the first years of Transitions Dance Company.

And as it was also Research Degree Programme week for our postgraduate students we featured two case studies demonstrating how two researchers have used the archive collections in their research.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, we also premiered a film, made by our resident AV/IT supremo Ian Peppiatt, of independent researcher Thea Barnes talking about how she began and developed her research in the Laban Archive.

So if you missed it, we hope to hold more Open Days in the new academic year so keep an eye out for updates. And in the meantime, if you want to explore your archive, have a go at searching the archive catalogue to see what we’ve got

Summer visitors to the Laban Archive

The Laban Archive welcomed Jill and Ruth Cregeen on 26 July 2013. Their father, Alan Cregeen, was a leading light in the Manchester Dance Circle, a group run by Sylvia Bodmer, a former student and dancer with Rudolf Laban and acclaimed exponent of his theories and teachings,  which was set up in the 1940s and continued into the 1980s. Jill and Ruth brought in some photographs of their father and other members of the Manchester Dance Circle, and kindly allowed us to copy them and add them to the Sylvia Bodmer Collection. They also identified a lot of dancers in the photographs we already hold of the Dance Circle, and found notes and reports written by their father in the minute books. We hope they come back soon with a copy of the film they have which we’re hoping features footage of the Circle performing. If you would like to see the photographs Jill and Ruth donated to the archive or have material you would like to donate, contact us at Archivist@trinitylaban.ac.uk

Welcome to the Laban Archive!

Have you ever wondered what was inside the Archive? This blog will show you. We will let you know what we have and what the Archivist does with all of that ‘stuff’!