Scope and arrangement
The Lucile Brahms Nathanson papers are arranged in three series:
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38 items; 3 folders
Series I.-The Freda Miller Memorial Fund(1960-1962) consists of an announcement pertaining to the Memorial Fund(grant), correspondence of panel and applicants, proposals for choreographic grant, and resumes from applicants.
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169 items; 11 folders
Series II.-The Conferences On Creative Teaching of Dance To Children(1954-1964) contain programs, agenda and schedules which provide additional information on participants and their biographies, flyers, promotional material, budgets and evaluations on the conferences, two newspaper clippings, memos, announcements, a manuscript and correspondences (mainly business). The correspondences are filed in chronological order with the incoming correspondence.
This series is divided into conferences (1-10), correspondence, budgets and miscellaneous. It is of interest to note the wide variety of artists and educators who participated in these conferences: Margaret H'Doubler, Mary Hinkson, Lucas Hoving, Doris Humphrey, Anna Jooss, Murray Louis, Agnes de Mille, Daniel Nagrin, Jerome Robbins, Bessie Schoenberg and Glen Tetley, just to name a few. Another point of interest is a manuscript pertaining to a panel discussion about Doris Humphrey written by Walter Terry. Mr. Terry was the interviewer, the panel consists of Katherine Litz, Edith Orcutt, Nona Schurman and Helen Tamiris. This took place during the 6th conference.
In the file dealing with the budgets there is a summary covering 1955-1960; it notes that the conferences had to be discontinued due to lack of funding and misappropriation of funds, not by Lucile Nathanson's hands. The conferences were reinstated in 1963 but were discontinued after the 10th anniversary conference, 1964.
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1960-1975approx. 130 items; 13 folders
Series III.-The Charles Weidman/ Doris Humphrey Project(1960-197-) consists of correspondence with the Music Publishers Holding Corp. and Lucy Venable, a notator, pertaining to the book on Weidman/Humphrey Technique. There are incomplete and complete drafts on the proposal for the book, a list of advisor's names and biographies, minutes outlining detailed progress of the project, extensive notes, notations and descriptions of the Weidman/Humphrey exercises and accompanying sheet music, both original hand written and printed scores. There is an extensive list made up of dates, place of premiere of each choreographic work and the names of the dancers involved.
The objective of this project was to identify and preserve those techniques of greatest significance (Weidman/Humphrey) as examples of the principles and elements explored through teaching; to notate and describe all chosen techniques; to place each study in its proper historical perspective and identify the aesthetic and movement principles involved; and to detail the dates, dancers' names and place of premiere of each choreographic work.