Dancing still: interpreting visual archives in dance.

Before the advent of film, dances of the past tended to leave their heritage in written forms such as historiography, criticism, notation and fiction. Often, visual images complement the record. All of these sources, however, are static and, as such, appear to be at odds with the essential nature of dance as movement. It is argued in this paper, however, that the still visual image can speak eloquently of movement: of its context, its choreography and its production values. These sources have, therefore, a key role to play in re-constructing dances that are lost to historical memory.
The debate is exemplified by the use of two case studies drawn from newly accessible archives on early twentieth century British theatre dance. Housed at the National Resource Centre for Dance, University of Surrey, they provide a rich source of information on the dance forms of Natural Movement and Classical Greek
Dance. Allied to international trends in the arts, education, philosophy and spirituality, these forms turned to nature and ‘the natural’ as embodying notions of freedom, balance and holistic harmony of body, mind and emotion. The British exponents of these forms of dance – also called ‘free’, ‘interpretative’ or ‘expressive’ dance - have been largely forgotten
Photographs, costumes and properties from 1910s – 1930s contribute to the construction of knowledge about how these performers actually moved. These sources are not just instrumental in informing dance scholarship, however, for they are each situated within broader arts and crafts traditions which have their own languages and structures. As such, they are worthy of examination as contributing to the (re)- production of a far broader cultural memory.