Research & Subject Guides: Dance: Reference

Reference Databases

Britannica Online Academic Edition
Updated regularly. Fulltext. Includes the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary and Thesaurus, Notable Quotations, and Gateway to the Classics, which provides PDF versions of selected classic texts.
Music Online: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
Contains overviews of specific geographic regions, surveys of their musical heritage, and descriptions of musical genres, practices, and performances. Articles include photographs of musicians, musical instruments,audio recordings, and the cultural context of dances, rituals, and ceremonies.
Oxford English Dictionary
Current. A historical dictionary. The accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. It is a guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of over half a million words, both present and past. Traces the usage of words.
Oxford Handbooks Online: Music
Oxford Handbooks Online in Music form a network of reference articles on current scholarship in all areas of music research including historical musicology, ethnomusicology, theory, pedagogy, dance, and technology. OHO complements and completes the volumes in print by updating and expanding on them and by creating links between the volumes. While OHO aims to provide reference works for any current field of inquiry, the series pays particular attention to newly established and emerging fields. The contributions assembled in OHO do not merely constitute summaries of previous research but often cover genuinely new ground. The essays are addressed primarily to scholars who require access to the current state of scholarship in a given field, and they present in-depth investigations by leading scholars.
Oxford Reference
Current/Regularly updated. A fulltext reference collection that includes facts, figures, definitions, and translations from over 175 Oxford dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, guides, encyclopedias, and the "Oxford Companions" series.

NOTE: Titles with subscription/access have a green, open lock at end of each title; no subscription/access for ones with a red closed lock at end of each title.

Library Catalogue Reference

Oxford Dictionary of Dance by Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell
The Oxford Dictionary of Dance offers wide coverage of dancers, choreographers, teachers, composers, technical terms, major works, important films, and organizations involved in the dance world. It embraces the new activity within traditional forms like ballet as well as the stream of new dance languages invented by fresh generations of choreographers and the many dance forms imported from the rest of the world. There is information on classical ballet, Spanish flamenco, Indian Bharata Natyam, Japanese Butoh, and jazz. The volume also covers post-modern dance, examining everything from Balanchine to recent practitioners of Eurocrash, minimalism, and contact improvisation. Ranging from the history of music to the changing design of the ballet shoe, this is a comprehensive dictionary compiled by two leading authorities on dance.
International Dictionary of Modern Dance by Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgraf (Editor); Glynis Benbow-Niemier (Contribution by); St. James Press Staff
Call Number: MAIN OVERSIZE x GV1585 .B46 1998
ISBN: 1558623590
Publication Date: 1998-05-01
Offering an up-to-date and comprehensive examination of modern dance, this reference offers alphabetically arranged essays, selected, written and reviewed by expert contributors.
International encyclopedia of dance: a project of Dance Perspectives Foundation, Inc. by Selma Jeanne Cohen, ed.
Call Number: Main Library Reference PN2035 .W56
(Oxford University Press, 1998.) "Exciting and fascinating, this reference work succeeds in its goal of bringing "joy as well as enlightenment" about all forms of dance in all countries of the world. An extremely useful synoptic outline of contents" with nine sections (including "Ritual and Religion" and "Popular Entertainment") enables the user to explore dance in its cultural and social aspects, while topical essays complement the 2,000-plus entries. Heavily illustrated with black-and-white photographs, the encyclopedia captures the fluid movement of dance; with its depth and scope, this outstanding work has carved a well-deserved niche."--"Outstanding Reference Sources: the 1999 Selection of New Titles," American Libraries, May 1999.
Grey House performing arts directory, 2011/12 by Richard Gottlieb, ed.
Call Number: Music Library - Reference - PN1561 .G74 2011
Over 8,500 listings of major performance Organizations, Facilities and Information Resources. Organized by discipline, with detailed information on Dance Companies. The section on Information Resources covers hundreds of Performing Arts Associations, Magazines, Newsletters, Trade Shows, Directories, Databases and Industry Web Sites; and Five indexes: Entry Name Index, Executive Name Index, Performance Facilities Index, Geographic Index and Information Resources Index.
The New York Public Library Performing Arts Desk Reference by New York Public Library Staff
Call Number: North Reading Room Reference PN1584 .N49 1994
ISBN: 9780671799120
Publication Date: 1994-10-01
Basic data and introductory information organized into three parts: theater, music, and dance.

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