Shameful confession.

I have BOXES of programs. In a one room apartment. And programs spilling out of boxes. Programs piled on flat surfaces. Piles of programs the kitty loves to knock over.

Do you save your programs, only the special ones, or do you heave them?

Any stories of special programs you saved or programs you WISH you had saved?

If you save them, how do you organize and store them? Have you found a good method to save space?

Those of us hoping to unclutter our lives at least a bit want to know.

A few years ago, I purged. Whhhhhhhhtttt! All out. Even the signed ones.

When I got my computer, I thought I would start a log (including corps substitutions), but that never happened. Yet.

I guess I've started a new collection, but that should be headed for recycling pretty soon.

Ones I wish I'd kept? Gelsey's one and only ABT Swan Lake and her final Leaves. Darci's first Symphony in C. Martine's last Swan Lake. And the one from NYCB the day Balanchine died.

I'm the last person who should dole advise on this matter, but what I've heard some people do and what I've always said I would get around doing is this: Collect each month's group of programs, keep one for the articles etc... and then pull out the cast list for the others and put them inside the whole copy and then put a rubberband around them. I guess you could save one or two, if they have value such as the day of Balanchine's death or Farrell's retirement. That would at least cut the volumn down.

I save everything and can't find anything.

I keep my ticket stubs. Much smaller, less clutter!

You think I didn't take that approach??? They still took up too much space. Then, all the rubber bands crumbled.

I like Socalgal's idea. I'm constantly finding ticket stubs . Until the last couple of years, they were too general to be worth keeping -- showing only the date, the theater, and the company. Now they tend to include the program. Nifty.

If we could get the cast listed on the back, that'd be great!!!

It depends on what you have the space to support. If you have the room for it, various library and archival supply houses like Gaylord, University Products and Hollinger Corp make or supply acid-free boxes to house artifacts like these. They also make mylar or polypropylene sleeves for additional buffering without total loss of air circulation. For long-term preservation of data, you are probably best advised to photocopy the relevant information onto acid-free paper and make a notebook of them, organized however you like. Keep them away from vinyl. If it smells "like plastic" it's not good for them. And rubber bands are full of sulfur - if you must bundle them together, use cotton twill tape.

Wallpaper your sitting room with them?

Just programmes? I'm also lumbered with books (around 200), magazines, videos, DVD's, photos, posters, scrapbooks and dance memorabilia including shoes, plates, lacquer boxes etc., etc. Somehow they just seem to accumulate......

I save them. I justify it to myself because I do go back every so often to find out who I saw doing something, or when I first saw a piece. I also save my notes, stuffed in the back of the program. I am coming up on the edge of critical mass in terms of storage (I live with a family of packrats -- one of my son's favorite questions as a small child was "can I keep this forever?") and am, very slowly, purging some stuff, but not programs.

The cardboard box problem just got too much for me earlier this year and I went out and bought a large filing cabinet - not pretty, but I can now find anything I want without crawling about on the floor etc. And of course I now have lots of empty cardboard boxes which are gradually filling up with things from e-bay, more books, more programmes....

My mum's got some pretty amazing things from 60- 70's RB and ENB memorabilia. My favorite is the RB salutes the U.S.A programme poster with Vergie Derman and Mark Silver. One programme she has is from the Shakespeare evening at the RB which included the premiere of Macmillan's Images of Love, Helpmann's Hamlet, and Ashton's The Dream.

I usually move every 15 yers or so, and there is always somebody around who will say to me "Do you REALLY need all that stuff?" I guess I am ready for another overhaul---I have been living in this location for 19 years---when I moved here I sold two huge boxes to the Ballet store near Lincoln Center--and I have more than made up for that loss.

What about scanning the performance pages & ticket stubs & making a CD once each month or so? Then we would only need to keep one copy of each season's full programs, should we so desire.

I just got a scanner & thought I would do this ... when I get the time to do 30+ years of programs.

Will this work?

I thought of doing the same thing, Zerbinetta, although storing them on my hard drive rather than on CDs. That way, it would be easy to search.

I saved my programs the first three years. I also had scrapbooks with every article I could find. Then I went to so many performances there were far more programs than there was time to even throw the programs into a shopping bag. Oh, how I envy those who kept performance diaries!

The idea of scanning everything and keeping it on CD ROM is right up there with turning base metal into gold. I will do it right after I find the Sorcerer's Stone and the Holy Grail. I have invented several systems, and use none of them. It's sad. I did jettison some inventory, so I have only about fifteen huge plastic storage bins of stuff. Not to mention the stacks on the desk, on the bookshelves, etc. This is depressing. I think I will go read a book. There's one I've been wanting to get to right here in this pile over here. It's an appealing pile--Merce Cunningham's Notes on Choreography, MFK Fisher's Sister Age, Robert Gottlieb's Balanchine....and a lot of programs.

[quote=Alexandra,Dec 12 2004, 01:51 AM]
I thought of doing the same thing, Zerbinetta, although storing them on my hard drive rather than on CDs. That way, it would be easy to search.

I love the "store & search" idea but 30 years times an average of 225 performances per year would take up a huge amount of memory, wouldn't it? & then the 30 years to come as well ..

Doesn't this board provide the motivation some of us have needed in that regard? Thanks, AT!

When I was about to move from NYC to Seattle a decade ago, I decided to keep the opera programs -- I had fewer -- and to toss all of the ballet one-page casts lists; I've now come to regret this.

In rather Luddite fashion, before the big toss, I bought one of those blank books covered with marbled Italian paper, and started logging the principal roles and performers from all of the performances. (It took weeks, but it kept me busy and anxiety about the move away.) There's sort of an index (ballet name by first letter, and page number[s]).

The downsides are: 1. Trying to read my own handwriting, particularly when the performer is someone who is unfamiliar to me and I never see again and 2. I've lost the history of which corps members danced the second demisoloist in [name the ballet].

Last night I was looking through old opera cast lists to see if I had heard Gary Rideout in Doktor Faust in the San Francisco Opera production -- he sang in the Met production and was the Siegfried in Adelaide -- and it was a trip down memory lane, in which I saw that I had heard him as Flavio in the SFO production of Norma from 1998, as well as being reminded of all of the small roles that James Morris had sung in the 70's, such as Lodovico in Otello. I'll never have that experience with ballet, because I don't have the programs anymore. Even with opera, there are the programs from when I was a teenager that I didn't save: several Ramey performances of Mefistofele, all of the Sills "Queen Triology" performances, as well as a couple of her Lucias and a Violetta. (Sob.) And, like Carbro, at least I wish I had saved the programs from the performances performed the day Balanchine died, as well as several retirement performances and from the Balanchine Celebration.

The upsides are 1. When I try to find anything, I go through Major Role memory lane! I'm now on my third book 2. When I want to know who I saw perform Sugar Plum fairy, I can just look down the Sugar Plum fairy columns!

I also keep ticket stubs in a tall, clear glass vase, and rue the day I came home midway through my freshman year of college and decided that all of that high school stuff was not relevant anymore and tossed away my scrapbook, with all of the Knicks and Rangers ticket stubs I had saved religiously.

I save all my programs, even though they usually don't have much historical or sentimental value. The most recent of mine that has any meaning was ABT's Romeo and Juliet this summer, which was Ashley Tuttle's final performance.

I also have a program from this Summer's Ashton Festival at Lincoln Center, signed by Sylvie Guillem, who performed in Margueritte and Armand. I got to meet her because my friend performed with her once and went back stage to say hi.

My favorite program was from a performance that I'm too young to have even attended. It is the world premiere of Baryshnikov's Don Quixote or Kitri's Wedding on March 23, 1978 at the J.F.K. Center for Performing Arts, with Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland. I got it when I bought the book Baryshnikov at Work online and the program was enclosed in the book. Too bad it wasn't signed. It was a nice little treat, though.

When I was in college, I spent one semester close enough to NYC to go in several times a week for academic classes and then on weekends, for shows, music, and ballet. I saved my programs for many years. Then, I got married and decided to toss out the old life!

Boy, was I stupid!

Now, my daughter does ballet (little did I know at the time I was in NYC that I would have a daughter, let alone one who danced). And, now I want to know who I saw when I saw the ballets. I remember the ballets, just not the dancers.

Now, when we go to ballets, I save at least one copy of the program, the tickets, and whatever else I might pick up. One summer, my daughter and I went to SPAC four or so times a week, and I saved all those programs (with lots of autographs collected by my child).

I have vowed to never throw away another ballet program again! (I'll let my daughter do that for me when she goes through my life's collections, after I'm gone).

Every Christmas I ask for a 4-drawer file cabinet; maybe I'll get one this year.

It's that "after I'm gone" part I'm worried about, pj. Some poor wretch having to go through hundreds of mini-size shopping bags bursting with 35 or 40 programs per ..
...& all the while muttering "what was she thinking???"

I have saved all of my programs, not only from ballets, but from plays, symphonies, etc. My first one is from attending my first play, "The Sound of Music" at the elegant Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, at the age of 10. In high school, I used to usher at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater so as to see the plays for free. It's fascinating to see how far most of those actors have gone.

I keep them in those decorative rectangular boxes that come in various sizes. Mel mentioned some sources. I've bought mine at Steinmart, of all places, but "Hold Everything" and the Archival Company are good sources. I like to reflect on where I was --literally and figuratively-- at the time I attended the various performances. They've also proven to be good sources of research material. When stored in these boxes, they take up a surprisingly small amount of space.

Ditto for the ticket stubs. I've been saving them forever in a pretty glass bowl. Everything from a 1988 Brewers vs. Yankees game at Yankee Stadium to one general admission to Mount Vernon to American Ballet Theatre presents Ballet in America at the Kennedy Center to various European train ticket stubs -- it all goes in the bowl. Some are pretty faded, but it's a fun bowl to go through now and then, and again, very little space taken up for such a fun collective souvenir.

This is not my idea, but it DOES work..

I was for years on a jury that selected the winners of hte Isadora Duncan Awards, and the committee chair came up with this method:

go to a stationers'. Knock yourselves out: buy all the art-gum erasers, protracters, and white-out you think you'll ever need, but then get FOCUSSED-- FOR THIS you'll need -- a loose-leaf binder, one per year, and a whole box of window-pages (pace, Mel), with 3-hole edging so you can insert the pages in the binder --

Fill the binder with window-pages. Mark the binding with the year (e.g., "Programs 2005").

you then insert chronologically into hte windows the cast-lists and as much of hte program as you don't want to rip off and throw away. If you go 3 times a week, you might need two binders per year. The binder goes on a book-shelf, next to those from the year before.

A serious librarian will of course object to he clear-plastic window-pages -- I guess after 5 years you have to reassess the situation; but in hte meantime, it's really pretty tidy, and not much harm comes to the documents.... they're not printed on acid-free paper themselves, so eventually they'll dry up and crumble.... but maybe later you'll have time to sort and copy them. Scanners will be much faster in 10 years....

Jane's solution is of course the best, this side of having your librarian and scrivener handle all this for you, but you need room for a filing cabinet.... for this you just need a couple of feet of shelving....

A file cabinet's not such a bad idea if you think "antique." Mine is a 4-drawer, turn of the century, American oak. You can save your programs and justify your addiction to antiquing.

Problem is, that oak is very very high in tannic acid. While it may be fine for files you toss every three years, it's not good for long-term preservation.

I save mine. I don't have a whole bunch right now, they're just in a pile under my bed but when I do get a lot I'd probably put them into some sort of filling system. Like a file cabinet or plastic boxes. I'm really organized!

This reminds me of a cartoon caption from my youth (several decades ago): "One of these days we've got to get organized." I always thought that when I retired from the workaday world, I would get my programs in order and peruse them at leisure. Meanwhile, I threw my programs into boxes, drawers, and even filing cabinets. (But not under the bed -- there was too much other stuff already there.) Then one day, twenty years ago or so, I realized the programs were in a hopeless mess. I've continued saving new ones, shoving them into any available empty space, but long ago gave up hope of any kind of organization.

I hope you'll do better, TexasKelly!

Apparently everybody does it, with variations. When Nureyev died, his effects in his New York City apartment were sold, but the problem was getting all the kilim rugs out from under his bed! It took a millwright to lift the bed, and a curator to identify them, and an appraiser to assign them a pre-sale dollar valuation.

I keep the cast page only...having been to almost 1,000 opera performances and about 500 ballet/dance events (to say nothing of concerts & recitals), these fill many file folders and boxes. They are in sequence.

I have also kept, since I was eleven, an Opera Diary which extended to ballet when I started going in the 70s...this is now in it's 22nd volume and includes asides about everything from the weather to people I slept with. I once asked a friend to read some of it to see he thought it might be interesting enough to edit & try to publish...after a few pages he said, "You should leave out all his stuff about opera and ballet and just publish the juicy parts." That would be sort of like publishing the new Fonteyn biography without referring to the fact that she was a ballerina.

It's funny to read over things from the past...like, I was not bowled over by Suzanne Farrell on the night she returned to NYCB - later she bowled me over plenty of times. And I was neutral about SERENADE at first, now it's my favorite ballet. I used to think the big costume ballets were "real ballets" and much of NYCB's rep a bit far-fetched. Now I feel the opposite.

I keep everything! Movers love people like me! I keep my dance programs in expanding files, like the center part of an accordion, in chronological order, and when the files fill up, I slip them into sturdy boxes.

I find they're pretty complete after about 1971. I would like to have my program for a Ballets Russes Petrushka around 1955 which I remember a little of, but mostly I wish I could remember more of what my programs prove I did watch.

Why keep old programs anyway? For me, part of the reason has to do with wanting to repeat the ephemeral experience of dance, one of the arts which no sooner exists than it disappears. Isn't that part of your reason, too? We don't want it to end, we want to hold on to it, don't we? (Doesn't talking about dance try to address a similar need, among others?) So we hold onto the program. For the same reason, I write changes and comments on the cast sheets, to hold onto more of the experience.

Sometimes looking up an old program brings a surprise beyond the resonance with memory. Recently I saw Balanchine's Apollo by the Joffrey Ballet at Ravinia, and I remembered liking better one by MCB I had seen there years ago, from a more distant seat at that. I found out their cast had included Franklin Gamero and Ileana Lopez, names which meant nothing to me at the time but which have come to mean more in recent years.

And as with any archive, a collection of programs may helpfully answer a factual question, as when pmeja asked recently what NYCB danced the day Balanchine died, on this thread about what Lincoln Kirstein said then: http://balletalert.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17903

(I could probably mail photocopies of the casting pages, or the whole program, for the NYCB performances on that day, if anyone would like to send me PMs about that, but be advised I have written changes on them.)

As to archiving, I think Mel and Alexandra have it right. An old friend, an electronics engineer, says, leave on paper what is on paper. If it's scanned and saved to a hard disk for fast searching, back up to a second hard disk which is used for that only, being unplugged and set aside most of the time. Haven't we all lost some hard disk files, never to read them again, or am I the lucky one? But hard disks might be searched faster than CDs.

My friend says the permanence of data on recordable media is controversial, and doesn't compare with paper. Data on unused hard drives seems to stay there, while the dyes which are the basis for optically-recordable media like CD-Rs and DVD-Rs change over time. Leave a CD-R in the glove compartment of a car on a sunny day, where my friend has measured temperatures of 170? F. (77? C.), and you can have a blank disk by evening. This is an extreme example, but it serves to illustrate what can happen in a short time. (Mass-produced CDs and DVDs aren't subject to erasure because they are not recorded individually but molded, much like Lp records were.)