June 14, 2006

Global Historical Dance Video Project

I'd like to propose a global, non-propriety, collaborative dance video project for dancers and educators:

One of the online resources that I think would be invaluable would be a huge video library with thousands upon thousands of clips that included demonstrations of a massive range of dance styles throughout history.

Anybody could contribute their own videos to this project. Upon uploading your video, you would tag it to indicate the style and period of dance along with a text description.

Then in a centralized wiki devoted to this project, you could add a listing and link to your video in the appropriate section. For example, in Wikipedia there is a "History of Dance" section. We could create a new wiki along these lines, but in our case the main objective would be to categorize thousands of videos by style and other elements.

The end result of such a collaborative project is that by harnessing the collective strength of dance enthusiasts around the world, we could build a great resource that would be an invaluable educational tool.

Personally I'd like it because I'm very curious to learn more about the interconnections among different dance styles and how different genres evolved over time based on a range of influences.

Lately I've been reading a lot of history books the cover the period of the conquest (after 1492), the revolutionary period in the Americas (about 1750-1850) and slavery (I list some of the recent books I've read below). There are quite a few references to dance in most of the books I've read. One of the things I'd like to understand is how the dance forms that are danced today throughout the Americas evolved over time and how different cultures and traditions contributed to each of these dances.

Salsa, for instance, has a rich tradition with multiple influences. What, for example, were the actual dance forms and styles over the past centuries that contributed to and became part of the way Salsa is danced today in different parts of the world? A video library like the one I describe above could provide a great visual gallery to help provide answers to this question about the origins of Salsa.

My Recent History Reading List

- "Brutal Journey: The Epic Story of the First Crossing of North America" by Paul Schneider.

- "Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community and War" by Nathaniel Philbrick.

- "Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves and American Revolution" by Simon Schama.

- "Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America" by Ira Berlin.

- "Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution" by Laurent Dubois.

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