Footnotes: Eva Anderson's Baltimore Dance Theater Collection Comes to Langsdale

Eva Anderson's Baltimore Dance Theater, poster detail (photo collage), 1982

Anderson floating on air during rehearsal, 1977

Modern dance legend and Howard County resident Eva Anderson has bestowed many gifts in her illustrious life.  For more than 40 years, Anderson mesmerized audiences with her unique, graceful mode of expression by performing on stages around the world-- in places like Italy, Germany, and New York City. She refined her moves and informed her unique style with tireless study, and by immersing herself in modern dance, ballet, and with formal instruction in traditional African dance. Eventually Ms. Anderson brought her dynamism to Baltimore in 1975, where she shared her talents in choreography, teaching, and movement with the Baltimore Dance Theater as an instructor, and later as the artistic director. Dance students-- in Baltimore city, and later in Howard County-- recall being in thrall to Eva Anderson (“Ms. Eva”) who was in the vanguard of modern dance in Baltimore.

Documenting Community Arts in Baltimore

Screen capture from the exhibit, normaneross.wordpress.com

For the past two years, the library’s Special Collections department has worked with members of the community to recognize and preserve the legacy of community arts in Baltimore, with particular focus on the contributions of African Americans to the arts.

Last year, we hosted a pre-Artscape event and worked with researchers who conducted oral history interviews in the library. This year, we received a UB grant to digitize 16 mm films from the Cultural Arts Program and worked with a UB undergraduate student to create an exhibit highlighting a community arts leader.

Film Project

When 19 reels of motion picture film returned to the library after digitization, we were thrilled to discover more than 40 individual movies! The collection documents not only poetry, dance, and visual arts from the Cultural Arts Program, but also a wide range of human services and programs from CAP’s parent organization, the Baltimore Urban Services Agency.

Much of the digitized film was created by Baltimore City youth, under the director of producer Rachel Wohl, for Baltimore’s public access television channel, WBFF. Archivists in Special Collections had the opportunity to meet Ms. Wohl and get additional historical details about the films, which can be viewed and downloaded in their entirety here, on the library’s Internet Archive site.

Intern Exhibit

Special Collections was also lucky to have the opportunity to work with UB Integrated Arts intern, Hannah Smith, on an exhibit to honor the legacy of Norman Ross. Mr. Ross devoted his life to Baltimore’s community arts, as a musician and founder of the Cultural Arts Program, the Eubie Blake Museum, and AFRAM, the city’s African-American festival.

In addition to the materials Hannah created for the display case in the Special Collections Research Room on the 4th floor of the library, she also put together a digital exhibit. The exhibit website brings together her biographical research into Mr. Ross’ life, as well as highlights from over 10,000 archival photographic negatives she carefully examined!

As an archivist, I appreciate how working with the recent past affords opportunities to make connections to the present day. Our collaborative efforts to recognize the history of Baltimore’s community arts have connected Special Collections to many talented and committed individuals, and each one of them deserves recognition. Thank you, Norman Ross, Angela Koukoui, Breck Chapman, Pete O’Neal, Rachel Wohl, Janikka Simms, Hannah Smith, and Skip Elsheimer!

Special Collections Highlight: Baltimore Voices Company

Today we are highlighting a collection from the Library’s Special Collections Department (offices and Research Room can be found on the 4th Floor of the Learning Commons): the Baltimore Voices Company Collection. 

Formed in 1979, the Baltimore Voices Company (BVC) was the Baltimore Theatre Project's contribution to a larger, multi-faceted local history initiative known as the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project (or BNHP, another archival collection held here at Langsdale Library). In order to create a theatrical production that was performed throughout the city in 1980, company members utilized existing BNHP oral histories and conducted their own tape-recorded interviews. The BVC's interviews were organized around specific themes, including labor, education, and community organizing. The collection at Langsdale contains oral history tapes, transcripts of interviews, biographical sketches, financial documents, publications, posters, photographs, brochures and more. For digital copies of some of the audio and documents, please see the digital exhibit.

<<Siobhan Hagan, AV Archivist

Dark Rooms: Simon Schama's "The Power of Art"

In 2008 I moved out on my own, like completely on my own, like no roommates (good riddance), no dorms, nothing but me and a room. I was just about to start my first semester at UB, so a couple days before the start of class I moved into a tiny but still pretty comfortable studio apartment a few blocks north of the Washington Monument, on Calvert Street. The initial weeks were a mess. It was mid-August, so: hot. And, BGE wouldn’t come for almost two weeks—something to do with the previous tenants not paying their bill—so when I was at home, which I tried to be as little as possible, I sat around as the day squeezed me out onto the linoleum floors, and at night I tried to savor every crisp drop of the coldest beer I could find at the local liquor store.

I’ve never been happier to go to class than during those weeks. After class, I went directly to the library, picked a spot in a study room and rooted myself to the chair. The glittering potential and resultant optimism I felt signing the lease had started slipping into some kind of maelstrom of stress as the hot, dark days turned to weeks. This was five years ago. Though, in retrospect, it wasn’t that bad. Like most things that don’t physically hurt you—and even some that do—problems seem bigger and the barbs longer as they’re happening; what, in the moment, stresses us out, when looked at differently, big-picture-wise, are just mild inconveniences. Those first weeks on Calvert were such weeks. Painful in its dull time, chock full of boredom and stubbed toes and unanswered emails and uncharged cell phones that sat on the bed next to me like a pouty and spiteful child, unwilling to acknowledge my presence.

National Poetry Month and the Snot-Nosed Kid

National poetry month is really kind of a sad affair. Fiction doesn’t get a month. Film doesn’t either. And TV—are you kidding. They get that section of the year that lasts (and I’m approximating) the entirety of every year, year after year. But poetry: that squirmy child alone in the back of the lunch room timidly opening the lunch box his mother modified with foam-rubber because, come on, he’s fragile and the corners might bruise his knees as he walks to school. Alone at the table, he organizes the box’s contents—a bag of carrots, sandwich, sippy cup—in some esoteric but exacting way that, despite his outward appearance of shunning attention, secretly begs for it. He endures in a constant state of conflict over the meaning of what attention he gets. Is uncomfortable. The other children scowl at him. They regard him with angry curiosity between their spoonfuls of chocolate Snack Pack. They dismiss him almost as quickly as they consider him. They say, “Oh, really? So, we still make creatures like that. Strange world.”

“It’s a shame,” the principal thinks, “such a smart, sensitive young man, with so much to say but no one to listen. A cruel world.” He shakes his head at the thought. He stews in its heavy cloud. Considers implications and solutions. Maybe a light. He sits a little taller, his eyes widening. His what-a-sad-sad-word thought grows and darkens. He realizes the profundity of its truth, realizes the extent of the injustice in the world, realizes, as the light comes on brighter, that he alone possesses the power and empathy to change the course of events if not in the history of mankind at least for this snot-nosed hypersensitive boy. He immediately flips the switch for the intercom and gives his baritone announcement:

“Now hear this. For too long the snot-nosed boy with the padded lunch box has been ignored. This will stop...

"...for one month.

The Power of Public Archives

Photo credit: Xpressive4ever Dance Inc. 

There is something very powerful about public archives when they are used by citizens to improve conditions for the next generation.

That's exactly what Angela Koukoui and her colleagues are doing at Langsdale Library. Angela is using archival material from Langsdale's Special Collections Department to advocate for arts funding in Baltimore public schools. Her relationship to this topic is in no way theoretical. Now the founder and artistic director of a local nonprofit for city youth, Angela grew up in East Baltimore in the 1980s, where she trained as a dancer through the city's Cultural Arts Program and went on to study dance at The Baltimore School for the Arts.

According to Ms. Koukoui, "I didn’t go looking for the arts, the arts found me in my own Baltimore City community and embraced me with gifts of opportunities that I never thought I could obtain."

What drew Angela to Lansdale Library was the rich visual history of the Cultural Arts Program (CAP) documented by the photographer Robert "Breck" Chapman and held in special collections. CAP's origins trace back to the War on Poverty's Model Cities Program and the grassroots efforts of parents at Baltimore's Dunbar High School. The CAP program was the cultural education arm of city services that were delivered to residents through a network of neighborhood centers. In the 1970s and 80s, these programs were conducted through the municipal Urban Services Agency. One of these citywide centers (known as Gallery 409, and later, the Eubie Blake Center) became the performing and visuals arts hub of CAP. When CAP was eliminated from city government in the 1990s, the Eubie Blake Center transitioned to nonprofit status.

In addition to the archival material Angela is using to research the history of Cultural Arts, she's also conducting interviews with key community leaders, arts instructors, and politicians to further her advocacy efforts. This work is being done to support the Governor's Leadership Council Task Force on the Arts. "Because of the great gifts instilled in me through the arts, I’ve had the honor to give back to the community that once gave back to me."

To learn more about Angela's work, please visit the Xpressive4ever Dance Inc. Facebook page.

Station North, and Those that Make it all Artsy

Paul Moscatt in his studio, via website

What do a bunch of artists holed up in an old, bottle-cap factory have to do with librarians holed up in the Special Collections Dept. of Langsdale?

More than you might think.

Let's start by defining some of the players. First off: artists. We all have some idea of who and what they are, or believe we do. But chances are that unless you have a few artist friends, or are one yourself, there's a pretty fair chance that the image you'll picture is a variation on the mad characterture we have all been fed as Vincent van Gogh--maybe not as insane as he, not quite as famous, and maybe with a particular body part still attached. He is, for better or worse, the archetype for which no living artist emulates (the person, that is, not his work). And I can prove it, but give me a second.

It's Artscape Time Again

(Photo by Gavin St. Ours)

Midtown Baltimore prepares to welcome the 32nd year of Artscape, billed as "America's largest free arts festival."

The festival runs July 19-21, but street closures and parking restrictions have already begun to take effect.

Need to know how Artscape will impact you? Check the traffic modifications.

Wondering what Artscape events are being hosted by UB? Read the news release.