Scope and arrangement
The Carl Wolz papers document his career as an educator and choreographer. The collection contains awards, choreographic notes, conference materials, correspondence, contracts, documents from various institutions with which Wolz worked, programs, and teaching materials. Although Wolz is best known for his work with the World Dance Alliance, those records are not found here.
Wolz's choreographic notes are not traditional labanotation. Instead, the notes consist of lists of dancers, ideas, sketches, and general brainstorming. Wolz conference materials primarily consist of handouts and correspondence relating to various dance and educational conferences and exhibitions he attended, both in the United States and abroad.
Wolz's correspondence represents the later part of his career. Many of the letters are in Japanese and are thank you notes from students he taught both at the Hong Kong Performing Arts Center as well as the Japan Women's College of Physical Education. There is a folder of letters from Ted Shawn which Wolz kept separately, consisting of some personal notes as well as several of Shawn's long "Christmas letters" which detail his past year.
Institutional materials encompass letters, notes and programs from Wolz's career as a teacher and performer. His roles are varied: he was a featured dancer for the St. Louis Municipal Opera, the Dean of Dance at the Hong Kong Performing Arts Center, and he lectured, choreographed, and arranged dances for many other institutions. Folders may contain only programs listing Wolz's participation in a specific event.
Wolz's notes are handwritten and were taken at lectures or conferences during the presentations of other dance educators and historians. His photographs hold a small selection of personal snapshots of Wolz, mostly at award banquets, and photographs of Japanese dancers.
Wolz's collection of programs holds primarily Japanese dance materials. The bulk of the programs are entirely in Japanese. Korean and Chinese performances are also represented. Unlike the programs in the institutional files, these programs document events in which Wolz was not directly involved. He attended many Asian dance performances during his time in Japan.
Wolz's teaching materials consist of lecture notes, printed articles, notes by other professors, course outlines and requirements, exams, and other related materials concerning his 30 year career as a dance educator. Wolz taught modern dance technique, labanotation, dance history, dance research, and dance composition. His teaching files sometimes are a course to a folder, but more often they are general subject headings from which he could draw for any of his courses. He used the files repeatedly for reference in different courses.
Arrangement
Alphabetical by subject.