NY Public Library's Rosenberg Dance Curator Linda Murray on the Ted Shawn Papers

BroadwayWorld.com continues our exclusive content series, in collaboration with The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which delves into the library's unparalleled archives, and resources. Below, check out a piece by Linda Murray, Dance Curator for the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts on: Ted Shawn Papers, Additions.

Every institution has this story. An item goes missing only to miraculously resurrect at an opportune moment or a collection is uncovered that was long since forgotten about. For the Jerome Robbins Dance Division that story is about the Ted Shawn Papers.

Ted Shawn was one of the most prominent figures in American dance in the 20th century. Along with Ruth St. Denis, he was one half of the Denishawn Company which boasted dancers no less than Doris Humphrey and Martha Graham among its ranks. In the aftermath of his split from St. Denis in 1929, he then ran his own all-male dance company, aptly titled Ted Shawn and his Men Dancers, a fairly radical move in that time. But most famously of all, Shawn is beloved by the international dance community for being the founder of Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival.

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division received the Ted Shawn Papers in 1992, the result of a generous gift by John Christian. As one might imagine with a collection belonging to a choreographer of Shawn's stature, work began straight away and boxes of correspondence, writings, financial material and photographs were processed and the collection was made available to the public who has been enjoying it for over two decades. Except that the story doesn't end there. Fast forward to 2014 when the Assistant Curator of the Dance Division, Danielle Castronovo, was reorganizing the storage for some of our collections in one of our facilities. There were Shawn boxes on shelves, but she had always been told that these boxes merely held duplicate material of items already in the collection. However, archivists are born sleuths and Castronovo's curiosity led her to explore further. It didn't take her long to realize that what she had encountered was not duplicates of material, but a treasure trove of previously unseen correspondence, posters, programs, scrapbooks, papers and photographs.

It's not often that new material emerges after so much time for a figure as significant as Shawn. The New York Public Library has spent the last year preserving and processing these materials, which are now available to the public for the first time as part of a new collection called Ted Shawn Papers, Additions. For Ted Shawn fans, this discovery will bring immense joy. The wealth of new information to be extracted from these papers has yet to be fully understood and the photographs that emerged from this event are stunning. However, when asked to include an image with this article I chose one of several handwritten ballet cards from the collection. The progression of stretches, followed by barre exercises and then center work will be familiar to anyone who has ever studied ballet which is why I find them remarkable. We so often think of Ted Shawn as a modern dancer that we forget his technical skill too. The cards were a lovely reminder to me that, much like his collection, Shawn was an elusive and complex artist, to multilayered to define under one title.