Armgard von Bardeleben

Another collection that I worked with at the Library of Congress was the papers of Armgard von Bardeleben. Armgard was a dancer with the Martha Graham Dance Company and worked with many well-known modern dancers, including Pearl Lang and Yuriko. Armgard was especially known for her reconstructions of Mary Wigman’s pieces; the masks for Hexentanz can be seen below.

All images reproduced by Nicole Topich from the Armgard von Bardeleben collection at the Library of Congress Performing Arts Division.

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Library of Congress Dance Exhibit

During my last week at the Library of Congress, we presented an exhibit of recent acquisitions to the dance collections. It was really great to show and explain the materials to a wider audience. I have included a few photos of it below:

All images reproduced by Nicole Topich at the Library of Congress Performing Arts Division.

Louis Hightower and Marge Champion

Before Marge danced with Gower, her first dance partner was Louis Hightower. Louis was the movement model for Prince Charming in Disney’s 1937 Snow White film alongside Marge, which can be seen in the Life magazine article about Snow White. Tragically, Louis was killed in the Normandy landings on D-Day, and Marge’s new dance partner after World War II was Gower Champion.

 

All images reproduced by Nicole Topich from the Marge Champion Collection at the Library of Congress Performing Arts Division.

Photographs of Marge Champion

There are hundreds of amazing photographs of Marge from the collection and I wanted to include a few on the blog, including some from her Broadway productions and a few pages of her scrapbook:

I couldn’t resist posting all of the photographs of Marge with the violins:

All images reproduced by Nicole Topich from the Marge Champion Collection at the Library of Congress Performing Arts Division.

Orchestrations and other items

There are also many manuscript musical scores in the collection from Marge and Gower’s early career. I have included some images of the scores, along with pictures of the three giant scrapbooks in the collection, a few artsy items, and a 3D image of Marge and Gower.

 

All images reproduced by Nicole Topich from the Marge Champion Collection at the Library of Congress Performing Arts Division.

Materials from Ernest Belcher

Along with the many amazing photographs from Ernest Belcher, there were also his ballet shoes and several film reels, including one from 1910! Thankfully the reels had been transferred to safety film from nitrate:

All images reproduced by Nicole Topich from the Marge Champion Collection at the Library of Congress Performing Arts Division.

Additional Ernest Belcher photographs

There was an addition of Ernest Belcher photographs to the collection this week, including images of Belcher dancing and posing with his dance partner Dorothy Edwards:

All images reproduced by Nicole Topich from the Marge Champion Collection at the Library of Congress Performing Arts Division.