Leaping to Life in the Archives

From the New York Times (registration required):

The Jerome Robbins Dance Division of the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center is one of the city\’s great cultural treasure troves. It is the largest dance archive in the world, with holdings that date back to 1460. But even dance fanatics tend to forget about this research center once known simply as \”the Dance Collection.\”

What could dance, that restlessly vital art form, have to do with dusty tomes pored over in sleep-inducing fluorescent light and in tomblike silence?

More.