Inventory of the Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, ca. 1830 - [ongoing] The Newberry Library Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections 60 West Walton Street Chicago, Illinois 60610-7324 USA Phone: 312-255-3506 Fax: 312-255-3646 E-Mail: specialcolls@newberry.org URL: http://www.newberry.org Machine-readable finding aid encoded by Alison Hinderliter, 2006, Shannon Yule, 2007. ©2005.

Administrative Information

Cite As

Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, Midwest Manuscript Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Provenance

Gift of Ann Barzel, 1982-2005.

Processed by

Newberry Library Staff and volunteers, 1982-present.

Access

The Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection are open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room; 1 box at a time (Priority III).

Ownership and Literary Rights

The Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection is the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections.

Biography of Ann Barzel

Dance critic, teacher, and historian.

Ann Barzel was born in Minneapolis on Dec. 13, 1905. Her family moved to Des Moines, Iowa in 1914, and it was there, at the Jewish Settlement House, where Barzel took her first dance lessons. She took dance classes from Elizabeth Werblosky, who had studied with the Denishawn Company. In 1920, the family moved again, to Chicago (3134 W. 16th Street). In Chicago Barzel attended Crane Technical High School and Junior College (now Malcolm X College), and then graduated from the University of Chicago in 1925 with a bachelor’s degree and two years of graduate work in the humanities. During this time she was also teaching at a Hebrew school on weekday afternoons and taking dance classes on Fridays and Saturdays. Her first Chicago dance teachers were Mark Turbyfill and Adolph Bolm. From about 1931 to 1943, Barzel performed as a dancer. She studied various styles of dance in Chicago, New York, London, and Paris with Michel Fokine, Alexandre Volinine, Doris Humphrey, the School of American Ballet, Vecheslav Swoboda, Nicholas Legat, and others. She danced in productions of the Chicago Civic Opera Ballet and danced with a group directed by Berenice Holmes, who had inherited Adolph Bolm’s dance school when Bolm left Chicago. After college, Barzel also had a career as a teacher at Penn Elementary School (1616 S Avers Avenue, near 16th and Pulaski); she taught at Penn until 1967.

In the 1940’s, Barzel became sought after as a knowledgeable and gifted lecturer on dance, as well as a teacher of dance technique. From 1945 to 1961 she took the train to Milwaukee every Saturday and taught ballet classes at the Adele Artinian School of Dance. She lectured on the history of dance at the University of Chicago, Columbia College, and many other institutions. It was during this time that she was also making a regular career out of reviewing dance, theatre, and nightclub events in Chicago. She was dance critic for the Chicago Times, 1946-1950, when she joined Chicago’s American (later Chicago Today), 1951-1974. Barzel also wrote for Dance Magazine for 40 years, covering dance events in the Midwest for the magazine. She wrote for the Lerner Skyline newspapers (Chicago weekly) from 1974 through 2003, for Ballet Review, Ballet Annual, Dance News, and for various other international dance publications.

From 1956 to 1975 she served on the advisory panel for dance for the State Department’s International Cultural Agency, and from 1966 to 1974 as dance consultant for the Illinois Arts Council. Barzel was a founder of the Ballet Guild of Chicago and has served on the boards of many dance and arts-related organizations, such as the Chicago Dance Council, Free Street Theater, Urban Gateways, and Wisdom Bridge Theater. Barzel has frequently been called upon to act as judge, panel participant or field reporter for international dance events. In 1975, Miss Barzel was given an award by the Association of Illinois Dance Companies in recognition of her service to dance in Illinois, and in 1979 she was granted the Governor’s Award for service to the arts. She was placed on the lifetime honors list by the Chicago Dance Arts Coalition in 1986, was recipient of the 1994 Vaslav Nijinsky Medal sponsored by the Polish Artists Agency in Warsaw, and was sole honoree at the 1995 “Toast” to the Cultural Center, sponsored by Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs.

Ann Barzel died on February 12, 2007.

Scope and Content of the Collection

Collection of materials about dance, encompassing the 20th century as well as the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, predominantly in Chicago but also reflecting a global view of the predominance and importance of all kinds of dance in human civilization and culture.

Materials include dance programs and souvenir books, photographs of dancers and performances, advertising posters, art prints, scrapbooks, audio and film/video material, artifacts, and subject files. The subject files, which are by far the largest part of the research collection, include newsclippings, programs, brochures, notes, and ephemeral material reflecting Barzel's life-long devotion to documenting dance and its history in Chicago and beyond.

Currently, the first four series (Subject Files, Photographs, Scrapbooks, and Souvenir Books) are processed and inventoried at the folder level. The remaining series (Posters, Prints, Audiovisual, and Artifacts) are in process and there are draft inventories available in the Library; see curator for details. For information about Ann Barzel's own films she took of dancers and dance companies, please see the Library's online catalog.

Narrative descriptions of the subject matter, types of material, and arrangement of each series are available through the Organization section of the finding aid.

Papers are organized in the following series:

Series 1: Subject Files, 1890s-ongoing. Box(es) 1-425

Over 400 boxes of clippings, programs, brochures, fliers, images, and press releases about dancers, dance companies, dance styles, festivals, and various topics. Occasionally there are also administrative files for companies or organizations in which Barzel participated (such as the National Endowment for the Arts and Chicago City Ballet). Many subjects overlap, and the researcher is encouraged to check under many different subject headings for similar materials.

Arranged alphabetically.

Series 2: Photographs, ca. 1920s-ongoing. Box(es) 1-1-OS+

Mostly promotional photo prints of dancers, but also includes some cabinet cards / cartes de visite, cigarette cards, oversize prints, negatives, slides, and transparencies.

Arranged by size (oversize and oversize plus are filed at the end) and alphabetically therein.

Series 3: Scrapbooks, ca. 1834-1959. Box(es) 1-17

Oversized books of compiled clippings, photographs, programs, and other materials, compiled by Barzel or by others.

There are also scrapbooks (not oversize) in the Subject Files series: for examples, see the Avery Kite Scrapbook on Pavley-Oukrainsky filed under Pavley-Oukrainsky; Davran, Virginia – Scrapbook (photocopies); Friedman, Madge – Scrapbook pages; Littlefield Ballet – Scrapbook; and Martha Graham Dance Company – Scrapbook page.

Arranged by size and topic of scrapbook.

Series 4: Souvenir Books, 1909-2005. Box(es) 1 - 48

Souvenir books are books, usually oversized, sold at dance performances. They usually include more photographs and biographical information about the dancers and the company than the free performance programs. This series includes very early souvenir books of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and Anna Pavlova, as well as substantial runs of American Ballet Theatre, Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, The Hamburg Ballet, The Joffrey Ballet, New York City Ballet, Original Ballet Russe, and Royal Ballet (formerly Sadler's Wells). Souvenir books that don't reflect a company are arranged by subject, such as Circus, Films, Festivals, Ice Skating, Musical Theatre and Film, and Theaters. There are also topics by nationality for miscellaneous programs, such as Japan - Dancers and Companies, and Russia - Dancers and Companies.

Arranged alphabetically by company or topic, and chronologically therein.

Series 5: Posters . Box(es)

Promotional posters, rolled and flat, and also including window cards and broadsides advertising dance companies and/or dance festivals..

Arranged by size and alphabetically therein..

Series 6: Prints . Box(es)

Includes artwork, illustrations, and sketches for costumes and set desgins.

Series 7: Audiovisual . Box(es)

Audio material (vinyl records, audiocassettes, compact discs) and film and video material, commercial and noncommercial recordings are included in this series. Most of the video material are on VHS videocassette tapes.

Arranged by medium.

Series 8: Artifacts. Box(es)

Dance-related materials of an artifactual nature collected by Barzel in Chicago and in her travels around the world. Includes calendars, Christmas cards, toys, dolls, statuettes and figurines, travel souvenirs, masks, fans and other dance accessories, toe shoes, and flipbooks. Of particular interest are toe shoes worn by famous ballerinas Anna Pavlova, Margot Fonteyn, and Alicia Alonso, and a wig worn by Adolph Bolm.

Arranged by type of material.

Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Newberry Library's public catalog. Researchers desiring additional materials on a particular topic should search the catalog using these headings.

Names

• **corporate name
• **personal name: lastname, firstname, dates
• Barzel, Ann

Subjects

• **form/genre heading
• **geographic name
• **occupation
• **subject
• Manuscripts, American--Illinois--Chicago

Other Finding Aids

For correspondence, works, biographical materials, and personal photographs of Ann Barzel, please see the Ann Barzel Papers Inventory, Newberry Library.

Barzel's large collection of books and periodicals about dance and dancers are to be cataloged separately; see curator for details.

Black and white and color silent films taken by Barzel during her career have been digitized; viewing copies are available at the Newberry Library and at the Chicago Public Library, Visual and Performing Arts Division of the Harold Washington Library Center. For holdings at the Newberry Library, please consult the Library's online catalog and search under Barzel or by dancer, dance company, or production.

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