Dance Archivists Share Their Secrets from Jacob's Pillow, Martha Graham and David Gordon

The noon talk series as part of the Harkens Dance Festival was a discussion from 4 leading archivists of dance for the Public Library for the Performing Arts, Jacob's Pillow, Martha Graham & David Gordon Companies.  These illustrious speakers' work ensures the legacies & factual accuracies  of prominent dance companies.  The advantage of digitized formatting is a vital tool in capturing & storing the ongoing accumulation of choreography, artifacts, photos, notes, costumes and voluminous other materials pertaining to the dance companies, the choreographers, dancers and historic relevance.  A film was shown that was written, directed & performed by David Gordon that provided a scripted dialogue & dance between two people explaining the story he wanted to tell for posterity.  The curator said that the artists methods strive for a continuous enigmatic obvious presentation of dance's impact.  This conundrum beat onward and while I was fascinated with the footage shown, methods of organizing material and the dance presentation of 2 Martha Graham's solos, I was left puzzled.  There was no time left for Q&A.  This is few things I would like to know anyway: how are the materials evaluated & edited, is there a system to pare down material or does everything just keep piling up and what artistic direction do the archivists receive from experts or professionals.  I have more questions and plenty of awe for the processes & practices of archivists.  The title Show and Tell: Archivists Share their Secrets let me to believe there are immeasurable mysteries and secrets to uncover.