Scope and arrangement
The Betty White collection of Margaret Gage papers (1950-1960) holds notes, sheet music, and dance image plates that belonged to American dance teacher and choreographer Margaret Gage.
The notebooks in this collection contain Gage’s handwritten and typewritten descriptions of dance exercises by Isadora Duncan and Hanya Holm. The exercises are described in detail and some of them are illustrated with rough sketches. The image plates depict one male and one female dancer in different positions. Some of the images are labeled with titles, such as “Waltz,” and nearly all of them are annotated with scaling information for publication. The sheet music, for Pindar’s Athenian Dithyramb, is accompanied by an essay entitled “Some Building Blocks for Rhythmic Choir.” The essay is a general examination of the technical movements and dance routines used by rhythmic choirs. The collection also holds a Mary Wigman puppet.