InfoGuides: Dance: Find Dance Videos

Dance Streaming Resources during COVID-19

This is a list of websites offering special access to online dance content during COVID-10. Many of these are only temporarily available. Please be sure to check out our list of dance databases and online videos below for additional resources!

Ailey All Access
For a limited time, Alvin Ailey is thrilled to share full length videos of the Company performing on stage!
Trisha Brown Dance Company
TBDC is offering free videos and performances through their website for a limited time. Check their website for information and announcements.
Mondays with Martha
On Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2:30 p.m. Eastern, the Martha Graham Dance Company invites viewers to tune into its YouTube channel for screenings of all things Graham, including vintage clips of the modern dance matriarch herself. The troupe’s artistic director, Janet Eilber, offers commentary through the live chat feature, joined by special guests.
PlayBAC from the Baryshnikov Arts Center
In this weekly series, the Baryshnikov Arts Center presents high-quality, never-before-seen videos from its archive of performances filmed over the past 15 years. Each Thursday at 5 p.m. Eastern, a new video is posted on the center’s website and stays up for a week.
(Re)Live Arts Streaming
New York Live Arts and its resident troupe, the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, present a rotating selection of talks and performances from their archives. The queue changes every Thursday and stays up for a week.

Video Databases

Several library databases contain streaming videos, documentaries, and films. Search the following databases to find dance videos:

Dance Online: Dance in Video
Contains dance productions and documentaries by the most influential performers and companies of the 20th century. Selections cover ballet, tap, jazz, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as forerunners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance.
View a tutorial on this database here.

Dance Videos in Films on Demand
Direct link to Films on Demand videos on dance. Searching the entire collection provides more films.

OntheBoards
A website that delivers full-length, high quality contemporary performance films to your TV, desktop or mobile device.
Docuseek2 Complete Collection
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Focused on documentaries and social issues films. Try browsing by Art & Architecture > Performing Arts > Dance.
Academic Video Online
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Provides access to over 70,000 video titles from numerous unique content partners including Sony Pictures Classics, Film Platform, Filmakers Library, Milestone Films, Microtraining Associates, PBS, and many more. Subject coverage is broad. Interactive transcripts and closed captions are available. View a tutorial on this database here.

Videos on the Web

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on Youtube
Watch the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on Youtube. Ailey is renowned for promoting African-American cultural experience and the preservation and enrichment of the American modern dance.
The Chocolate Factory Theater Company
For years, this small but vital space for experimental dance and theater, in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens, has been building an under-the-radar Vimeo archive of all that happens there (or most of it). Browse dozens of performances, along with helpful “context videos” in which the artists talk about their work.
Fisher Center UPSTREAMING
Each Wednesday UPSTREAMING will release new content, including digital commissions and beloved performances from our archives. Watch innovative dance, theater, and musical performance that engage artists and audiences in the development and examination of artistic ideas, offering perspectives from the past and present, as well as visions of the future.
Jacob's Pillow Dance Interactive
This resource features excepts from performances at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, America's longest running international dance festival.
Martha Graham Dance Company on Youtube
Find the latest performance clips as well as historical archival footage of America's oldest and most influential modern dance company!
Merce Cunningham Trust on YouTube
Established by Cunningham in 2000, the Merce Cunningham Trust preserves and maintain the integrity of the choreographic and other works of Merce Cunningham and Cunningham Technique. Check out their YouTube Channel for rehearsals, excerpts, and interviews with Merce Cunningham.
Numeridanse
"Numeridanse.tv is the first international dance video library online and completely free. This project, initiated by Charles Picq, thought by performing arts professionals, aims to discover the world of dance." Contributors include Ballet National de Marseille and the French Ministry of Culture, among others.
Ubuweb Dance
A small, but varied, collection of streaming, theatrical, dance video. Ranges from Fred Astaire to Simone Forti.

Dance Videos in the Catalog

To locate dance films and videos in the catalog:

In the Library Search located on the library homepage, search for keyterms. After hitting the Search button, use the left sidebar to filter by Resource Type > Videos.

Key terms examples:

Modern dance
Filmed ballets
Filmed dance
Televised dance