| Collecting Strand | National Resource Centre for Dance |
| Level | Collection |
| Ref No | EM |
| Title | EMMA Dance Company and Midlands Dance Company Archive |
| Date | 1970s-1985 |
| Extent | 25 boxes of papers, 7 boxes of photographs, 3 DVDs, 3 betacam videos, 1 umatic tape and 3 open reel videos |
| Name of Creator | EMMA Dance Company Limited |
| Midlands Dance Company |
| Description | The collection comprises the corporate archive of EMMA Dance Company and its successor Midlands Dance Company (note: records relating to New Midlands Dance do not form a part of the archive). Included within the archive are: recordings of performances, photographs of performances and company members, records relating to staff, information relating to tours, publicity material, press cuttings, correspondence files, reports, grant applications, and correspondence with funding bodies. |
| Arrangement | Material arranged at time of cataloguing according to the format-based classification scheme which was then in use by the National Resource Centre for Dance. |
| Administrative History | EMMA Dance Company was a touring dance company based in the East Midlands. The company was established in 1976 by Gideon Avrahami who had been appointed as the arts worker at East Midlands Arts, the name EMMA standing for East Midlands Mobile Arts. Avrahami also created a counterpart EMMA Theatre Company.
EMMA Dance Company gave its first performance in January 1977 with Avrahami as its Artistic Director and Jacqueline Jeffrey as Company Manager. Throughout its existence the company was funded primarily by East Midlands Arts but also received grants from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Nottinghamshire County Council, Northern Arts and the Gulbenkian Foundation, in addition to private sponsorship.
In 1981 East Midlands Arts discontinued funding and the company became independent. The following year EMMA Theatre Company was disbanded, however EMMA Dance Company was able to receive new funding jointly from East Midlands Arts and West Midlands Arts. Reflecting this change, in 1982 the company was relaunched as Midlands Dance Company, giving its debut performance in March 1983. Avrahami was succeeded as Artistic Director by Nicholas Carroll, who had previously worked with EMMA as rehearsal director.
In 1985, the company was re-established as New Midlands Dance, with Leslie Hutchison as the new Artistic Director. The records of New Midlands Dance do not form a part of this archive. |
| Language | English |
| Accruals | No accruals are expected. |
| Custodial History | The contents of the archive were created by EMMA Dance Company and Midlands Dance Company over the course of their existence. In 1984-1985 a postgraduate student of the University of Surrey approached Gideon Avrahami and Midlands Dance Company with a view to researching the history of EMMA Dance Company and assisting with the selection and arrangement of material for a combined company archive. As part of this work, Avrahami appears to have temporarily loaned his own records relating to EMMA to the National Resource Centre for Dance, the bulk of which were then deposited on a permanent basis. The remainder of the records relating to EMMA were deposited along with the records of the Midlands Dance Company by New Midlands Dance in late 1985. The material was subsequently managed as a single collection by the National Resource Centre for Dance.
Since arriving at the National Resource Centre for Dance some of the audio visual items have been periodically migrated to new media formats. |