{"id":6416,"date":"2019-10-16T15:47:07","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T19:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/?p=6416"},"modified":"2019-10-16T15:47:13","modified_gmt":"2019-10-16T19:47:13","slug":"event-apollo-at-nypl-performing-arts-branch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentwork.prattsi.org\/foundations\/2019\/10\/16\/event-apollo-at-nypl-performing-arts-branch\/","title":{"rendered":"Event: “Apollo” at NYPL Performing Arts Branch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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On\nThursday, October 10th<\/sup>, I attended an event at the Performing Arts\nBranch of the New York Public Library called \u201cApollo.\u201d The event was part\nlecture part film, and it was led by two leading scholars on dance, Alastair\nMacaulay and Robert Greskovic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little bit of background first. The ballet \u201cApollo\u201d is a lesser-

known ballet. It\u2019s an obscure work that is known for having very famous collaborators, Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine. Both of these names are very recognizable in the classical music and ballet world, respectively. However, \u201cApollo\u201d as a work is not. I personally had never heard of this particular ballet, and I consider myself to be pretty well versed in the world of dance. It premiered on April 1928 with original choreography by Adolph Bolm but was later reworked by Balanchine. Bolm\u2019s choreography is pretty much usurped by Balanchine\u2019s, and no one uses choreography that wasn\u2019t originally created by Balanchine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story of the ballet is centered on, no surprise here, the god Apollo. Apollo comes to life and is greeted by three Muses, Calliope, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore. Each of the Muses gives Apollo a different gift. They give him the gift of poetry, rhetoric, and dance respectively. They dance with him both as a group and individually.\u00a0 At the end of the ballet, Apollo ascends back to Mount Olympus in the heavens with the Muses being left behind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to one of the presenters, Macaulay, this ballet is simultaneously about making art and the creation of art. It\u2019s about the \u201cgrowing up\u201d of art. He talked in-depth about how in later iterations of the ballet, Balanchine would say that he wanted to get rid of the narrative entirely. Thus, in the production of the ballet with Mikael Barisnikov dancing the role of Apollo, he eliminated the Prologue section of the ballet and also changed the ending. According to MacCaulay\u2019s lecture, Balanchine was apparently known for saying that in his mind, Apollo was always meant to be a work in progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how does this fascinating obscure piece of dance fit into what we are dealing with as information professionals? For me, I found this event and piece of ballet history fascinating because of the way that the information about it was being cataloged and collected and later on, archived. Prior to this event, there was a three-day seminar with NYPL employees, the two men leading the event, and also some of the dancers who danced in the various productions that the show has been through throughout the years. Their information was collected via the archival video that was taken. The people who couldn\u2019t be there at the seminar i.e. other dancers such as Mikael Barishnokov who contributed their information via one on one interviews with MacCaulay and Greskovic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So the ultimate question is, how is all of this information being cataloged and then archived? I noticed before the lecture started, a video camera was set up in the back of the auditorium where the lecture was taking place. The employees running the lecture must have planned in advance for this archival footage to be taken. They must have wanted to save the presentation as a whole. However, how are the lecture itself and the interview material from the various collaborators being saved? For example, some people might not think it\u2019s important to have the lecture notes that MacCauley wrote saved, cataloged and archived but some may. I personally would be interested in seeing those notes, but I know that many people wouldn\u2019t. It relates back to some of

<\/div><\/div>our earlier readings that dealt with archiving, such as Schwartz\u2019s article, \u201cArchives, Records, and Power.\u201d The article deals with whoever is archiving the material at hand is the one with the power. If I was the one taking in this collection of information (video, lecture notes, PowerPoint slides), then I would ultimately have to create a narrative about the materials at hand. I would be able to organize the information in a certain way and make a certain narrative around the materials. Schwartz says, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhether over ideas or feelings,\nactions or transactions, the choice of what to record and the decision over\nwhat to preserve, and thereby privilege, occur within socially constructed, but\nnow naturalized frameworks that determine the significance of what becomes\narchives.\u201d (3)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In looking at this particular ballet and how these two scholars were recording what was important, I thought it was interesting that they chose certain images and certain video clips over others. I know that I clearly missed a bunch of material in the three-day symposium that took place weeks prior because we only saw short clips from it, but I do think it\u2019s interesting on what was preserved and what was not. Obviously, this is a lesser-known ballet, but it has big important names in the dance and classical music world. If this was a lesser-known ballet with no big names attached, would it still be archived in as much detail? Would anyone care to have a three-day symposium on this material? I\u2019m not really sure. Schwartz also says that \u201ccontrol of the archive \u2013 variously defined \u2013 means control of society and

<\/div><\/div>thus control of determining history\u2019s winners and losers.\u201d (4) Would we ultimately classify this ballet into the winner category because these two dance scholars ultimately deemed it important to one, host a three-day symposium on and two, host a public lecture on it?<\/div><\/div><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In conclusion, I feel that going to this lecture prompted me to think about a variety of issues in terms of being an information professional. It makes me think about how we\u2019re archiving material and how we\u2019re using it to move forward in our profession. I stand by my question of who wins here and who loses? Do we have an answer to what is getting saved, cataloged and archived or is it ultimately just random? I still feel that this ballet is one of the more obscure ones, and I know that I\u2019m glad that I know about

<\/div><\/div>it and its\u2019 history but I\u2019m not one hundred percent sure that I would choose to save the information about this ballet over another one that is also obscure but with less famous collaborators. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NYPL Performing Arts Lecture series. Attended on October 10th, 2019.

<\/div><\/div>Sponsored by the NYPL Performing Arts Branch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div><\/div>Cook, Terry & Schwartz J.M (2002). Archives, Records, and Power: The Making of Modern Memory. Archival Science.<\/em> 1-19. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apollo (ballet). In Wikipedia<\/em>. Retrieved October 15th, 2019 from https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Apollo_(ballet)<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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