February 27th, 2012
Anyone who knows me, knows that I LOVE sports. I love watching sports, playing sports, coaching sports, and occasionally, writing about sports. Last October, I even wrote a blog post about why I love sports so much. I could imagine myself working for the Baseball Hall of Fame, or working at a historical society with athletic materials. But never did I think working for a dance institution would be in the cards for me. Actually if someone told me this time last year that I would be spending a year working at a dance institution, I would probably tell you that you needed to get your head checked out.
It just wasn’t something on my radar.
But it is funny how things change during the course of a year. Right now I’m an intern at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre working with the institution’s dance archives. And despite the hesitations I had going into the internship (for example I knew NOTHING about dance or ballet), I have found this to be an amazing experience.
To say the least, the archives at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre (PBT), isn’t your typical archives. Actually, for the past few months, I’ve been working with my supervisor to create an inventory of our collections and process a few minor collections. We aren’t receiving many reference calls or beginning any digitization projects. We are just trying to take an inventory, do some preliminary weeding, and work on a long term plan for the archives.
But through this entire experience I’ve learned an incredible amount about the history of ballet, and really began to appreciate the unique culture of dance institutions.
Right now, I’m happy/nervous/anxious/excited (and whatever other emotion you can put in here) to say that I’ve officially begun the job search. And I’ve even begun to apply at different universities, or societies that are looking to hire an archivist to work with different dance or music collections.
Regardless of where I end up or what type of institution I get my first full-time archives job in, I know that the experience at the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre has been a positive experience and taught me a lot about the history of dance institutions and working with these types of archival institutions.
It is funny to see Sports Editor of the Elon University student newspaper on my resume a few lines below, intern at Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre. But this experience at the ballet just gives me some more diversity to my background.
And while I think I still would choose to go to a baseball game over going to a ballet (which I’ve seen two since I’ve started in August), I can honestly say, working with dance archives has been a positive and a great learning experience.
