- unitid
-
{"value"=>"18475", "type"=>"local_mss"}
{"value"=>"*MGZMD 263", "type"=>"local_call"}
{"value"=>"b19081524", "type"=>"local_b"}
- unitdate
-
{"value"=>"1927-2005", "type"=>"inclusive", "normal"=>"1927/2005"}
{"value"=>"1976-2003", "type"=>"bulk", "normal"=>"1976/2003"}
- unittitle
-
{"value"=>"Deena Burton papers"}
- physdesc
-
{"format"=>"structured", "physdesc_components"=>[{"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"21 boxes", "unit"=>"containers"}, {"name"=>"extent", "value"=>"8.4 Linear Feet", "unit"=>"linear_feet"}], "supress_display"=>true}
- repository
-
{"value"=>"<span class=\"corpname\">Jerome Robbins Dance Division</span>"}
- abstract
-
{"value"=>"Deena Burton (1948-2005) was an American dancer and expert in Indonesian dance who founded the non-profit Arts Indonesia. The Deena Burton papers document Burton's study and performance of Indonesian dance, both in the United States and in Indonesia."}
- langmaterial
-
{"value"=>"Multiple languages"}
{"value"=>"Materials in English and Indonesian."}
- origination
-
{"value"=>"Burton, Deena", "type"=>"persname", "role"=>"dnc"}
- bioghist
-
{"value"=>"<p>Deena Burton (1948-2005), an American dancer and expert in Indonesian dance was born in Brooklyn to Arthur and Beatrice Burton. As child and young adult, Burton studied dance with Marjory Mazia, at the Henry Street Settlement, and at the New Dance Group. She went on to study Asian theater at the University of Wisconsin under A. C. Scott, where she first discovered Javanese dance. After graduation, Burton continued to study Indonesian dance, first with Hardjjo Susilo in Hawaii and then with Ben Suharto and Theresa Suharti at the Center for World Music in California.</p> <p>In 1976, Burton traveled to Java where she studied and researched dance-drama for four years, studying with masters like Sudji, a master of the topeng babakan dance form and Kandeg, a master of the wayang orange dance form. She danced with several Indonesian companies and was a member of the Ratna Budaya Dance Company from 1978-1980, appearing in the works of leading Indonesian choreographers such as Sardono, Endo Suanda, and S. Karjono. Burton's study of Indonesian dance was unique in that she studied a wide variety of dance styles including Monkey style, clown style, Gagah or strong male style, Alusan or refined male style, and the Putri style that was traditionally danced by women. Throughout her career, Burton would remain interested in both the classical Javanese court style of Yogyakarta, and the village oriented mask dance-drama from Cirebon area in West Java.</p> <p>In addition to studying dance, Burton initiated and organized several projects in Indonesia. She produced traditional village performances for a series of cultural tours for Westerners, and in 1979, she coordinated a video dance documentation project sponsored by the Jakarta Department of Cultural Affairs.</p> <p>In 1980, Burton moved back to New York City and began performing extensively. In 1981, she choreographed <span class=\"title\">Arabian Nights</span> with Chameleon Theatrix and in 1982 she co-choreographed <span class=\"title\">Red Snow</span> which was directed by Korean artist Du-Yee Change. Additionally, Burton performed with the Asian American Dance Theatre, the Asia Society, Hospital Audiences, and with Gamelan Son of Lion. Burton also founded the Bali-Java Dance Theatre in 1982. The following year, Burton convinced the Indonesian Consulate in New York to allow a Javanese gamelan that had been stored in the consulate's basement since the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair to be used. Initially called the New York Indonesian Consulate Gamelan, the ensemble was renamed Gamelan Kusuma Laras. Burton acted as the administrative director and often performed in the gamelan, playing the bonang panerus.</p> <p>In 1984 and 1985, Burton co-organized the Artists Inspired by Asia festival, a festival of American performances of Asian music, theater, and dance. In 1986, Burton produced a similar festival focused solely on Indonesian art called Artists Inspired by Indonesia. She also began the process of turning Bali-Java Dance Theater and Gamelan Kusuma Laras into a not-for-profit arts organization, Arts Indonesian, of which she was the director until her death.</p> <p>In 1984, she met composer Skip La Plante, who would become her husband in 1989. Together they created <span class=\"title\">The Ramayana</span> (1984), a solo dance piece where Burton portrayed a multitude of characters in traditional Javanese dance styles while La Plante played accompanying music. In 1985, Burton restaged <span class=\"title\">Ramayana</span> with a larger cast for the East-West Fusion Theatre. Burton and La Plante continued to collaborate with performances of the <span class=\"title\">The Patchwork Girl of Oz</span> (1987), <span class=\"title\">Pak Kandeg's Story</span> (1988), <span class=\"title\">Arjuna Wiwaha</span> (1995), and <span class=\"title\">Panji Tales</span> (2000).</p> <p>During this time, Burton continued her academic work. She graduated with a Master's degree in Arts Administration from Columbia University in 1982. The New York Public Library's Library of the Performing Arts hired Burton, in 1986, to edit ten hours of footage shot in the 1920s of Indonesian court rituals and performances by ethnographer Tassilo Adam. In 1990, Burton enrolled in the Performance Studies program at New York University, where she received her doctorate in 1997, writing her dissertation on the ethnologist Claire Holt.</p> <p>Claire Holt was a Lativian-born, and Russian-educated American, who lived in New York City in the 1920s and the Dutch East Indies in the 1930s, where she met Margaret Mead and other prominent sociologists and archeologists, including Willem Stuttenheim who became her mentor and lover. Holt returned to the United States to work for government intelligence until she resigned that post in 1954 to take the position of Associate Researcher at Cornell University, a situation she held until her death. Holt's seminal work was <span class=\"title\">Art in Indonesia: Continuities and Change</span>, published in 1967.</p> <p>Burton returned to Indonesia two more times. In 1989, she obtained a Fulbright Grant to bring the edited Adam's films to Indonesia where she screened and presented copies of the finished work to various educational institutions and dignitaries. During this trip, Burton studied dance with Rama Sasminto Marsadawa and gave birth to her son Roan. In 1996, Burton returned to Indonesia to research her dissertation on Holt, as well as perform with the Gamelan Kusuma Laras at the Yogyakarta Gamelan Festival.</p> <p>Following her graduation from New York University, Burton joined the faculty of Eugene Lang College, teaching courses on Asian theater and dance as well as working with Young Audiences New York, teaching dance workshops at various elementary and grammar schools. Burton died of cancer, in 2005, at the age of 56.</p>"}
- scopecontent
-
{"value"=>"<p>The Deena Burton papers documents Burton's study and performance of Indonesian dance, both in the United States and in Indonesia. Included are research materials of Burton's dissertation of ethnologist Claire Holt, and files regarding the editing and cataloging the films of Tassilo Adam for the New York Public Library. The collection contains both personal and professional correspondence, sketches, lyrics, and choreographic notes, photographs of performances and her travels and studies in Indonesia, and notebooks from her graduate work at New York University. There is a small amount of material regarding Burton's work as an educator. The papers are in both English and Indonesian.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p class='list-head'>The Deena Burton papers are arranged in five series:</p>\n<ul class='arrangement series-descriptions'>\n<li><div class='series-title'><a href='/dan/18475#c1436289'>Series I: Correspondence</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1965-2003</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series is composed of personal and professional correspondence, from correspondents in both the United States and Indonesia. It is arranged in chronological order by decade. Correspondence from 1976-1980 and 1989-1990 documents her travels in Indonesia and her study of dance there, particularly in long letters she wrote to her mother. Also documented is her work in the United States regarding her research projects, dance performances, and her work with Arts Indonesia, Artists Inspired by Asia, Artists Inspired by Indonesian, and Gamelan Son of Lion. The correspondence is in English and Indonesian.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/dan/18475#c1436297'>Series II: Dance Scholarship and Performance</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1927-2003</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series II contains material relating to Burton's study of dance and her career as a performer. It is arranged alphabetically by subject. Burton's academic studies, her performances, and her administrative work were interconnected and often informed each other. For example, the choreographic and research notes Burton collected in Indonesia contain her own notations and interpretations that later influenced her choreography for performances produced in the United States, like <span class=\"title\">Arabian Nights</span> and <span class=\"title\">The Ramayana</span>. Additionally, Burton wrote her dissertation on Claire Holt entitled <span class=\"title\">Sitting at the Feet of Gurus: The Life and Ethnography of Claire Holt</span>, but also did a performance piece that incorporated dance with spoken word derived from Holt's correspondence and writings.</p> <p>Files for <span class=\"title\">Sitting at the Feet of Gurus</span> hold incomplete drafts, primarily of the introduction and acknowledgments, correspondence regarding Burton's effort to have Holt included in the <span class=\"title\">American National Biography</span>, subject files, and photographs of Holt. The research files regarding Claire Holt are extensive and contain photocopies of primary documents obtained by Burton from various archives and from Holt's descendents. The date span for these files can be quite broad as they occasionally contain Burton's corresponding notes.</p> <p>The Tassilo Adam film project includes notes on the pre-and-post edits of the film as well as notes detailing the dissection process. Burton's Fulbright Grant application details the scope and goals of Burton's trip to Indonesia to screen and distribute the completed work. Also included are photographs taken by Adam that were collected by Burton.</p> <p>Choreographic and research notes reflect information collected by Burton in Indonesia and are rich with Javanese poetry and folk tales, dance and music notations, choreographic interpretations, and sketches of traditional costumes, masks, and staging. The earlier notebooks contain similar information. Later notebooks (1990-1997) regard coursework for Burton's doctorate in Performance Studies from New York University and are often interleaved with Burton's assignments and writing. Teaching materials include handouts, choreography, and thank you cards from Burton's Young Audience New York workshops.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/dan/18475#c1436386'>Series III: Photographs</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1976-2003</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Photographs are arranged alphabetically by subject. The bulk of the material reflects Burton's first trip to Indonesia (1976-1980) and includes photographs of Indonesians, dancers, and performances that document various Javanese dancing styles, costumes and masks, and the day-to-day lifestyles of the Javanese. Notable subjects include Burton's teachers, Kandeg, Sudji, and Wayan Dibia. There is a large amount of photographs from Bali-Java Dance Theatre performances, and Kandeg's home and studio in Cirebon, West Java. Photographs of masks includes prints of Burton's own mask collection.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/dan/18475#c1436426'>Series IV: Printed Material</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1974-2004</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>Series IV contains a large amount of printed material collected by Burton. The material was divided by Burton into material published in Indonesia and in the United States; material from Indonesia is arranged by region and material from the United States is arranged by organization. This series includes programs, clippings, fliers, conference materials, and organizational brochures. It was often assumed that audiences might be unfamiliar with Indonesian dance and the programs are quite rich with detailed historical narratives and plot and story synapses. While material from Indonesia reflects primarily dance, material from the United States also includes fliers and programs for art exhibits and musical performances. Additionally, the unsorted files contains documents from collaborations between Burton and La Plante. Most of the printed material from Indonesia is in Indonesian.</p></div></li><li><div class='series-title'><a href='/dan/18475#c1436441'>Series V: Personal Miscellany</a></div>\n<div class='series-date'>1976-2005</div>\n<div class='series-description'><p>This series is arranged alphabetically and includes a file containing biographical material for Burton, correspondence and forms regarding the loan of Burton's masks to the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden, reviews of Burton's performances, and a small amount of writing that includes reminiscences of Indonesia and poetry.</p></div></li></ul>\n", "type"=>"arrangement"}
- acqinfo
-
{"value"=>"<p>Donated by Skip La Plante, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2017.</p>"}
- processinfo
-
{"type"=>"processing", "value"=>"<p>Compiled by <span class=\"name\">Susan Malsbury</span> in <span class=\"date\">2011</span>.</p>"}
{"value"=>"<p>Susan Malsbury.</p>"}
- userestrict
-
{"value"=>"<p>The author/creator retains the copyright of materials. For information on obtaining permission to publish, contact the Dance Division at dance@nypl.org.</p>"}
- revisiondesc
-
{"value"=>"Additional photographs processed by Susan M. Kline.", "date"=>"2017-08-09"}
- date_start
-
1927
- keydate
-
1927
- date_end
-
2005
- date_inclusive_start
-
1927
- date_inclusive_end
-
2005
- date_bulk_start
-
1976
- date_bulk_end
-
2003
- extent_statement
-
8.4 linear feet (21 boxes)
- prefercite
-
{"value"=>"Deena Burton papers, *MGZMD 263. Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts"}