Professor Nancy Lee Ruyter Estate Gift Supports Dance Collection
UC Irvine Dance Professor Nancy Lee Ruyter has made an estate gift to support the future management and research use of the Nancy Lee Ruyter Collection. The gift will establish the Nancy Lee Ruyter Library Fund, which will also support the preservation, management, growth, and research use of the Libraries’ highly recognized Dance Collection.
“We are exceptionally grateful for Nancy’s trust in the Libraries as the permanent home for her extensive collection of dance materials, as well as her keen understanding of the importance of financial support to ensure the collection will be preserved and made accessible for scholarly research in perpetuity,” said University Librarian Lorelei Tanji.
Ruyter’s gift of materials and financial support will make a significant impact on the Libraries’ Dance Collection. She joins many other noted UCI dance faculty who have donated their own papers and helped the Libraries build upon the excellence of the Dance Collection.
“I am grateful to the university for my many wonderful years of working here and delighted that the Libraries will provide a safe home for all of my treasured books and archival materials, and that they will thus be available to future researchers,” said Ruyter.
In addition to her significant estate gift, Ruyter has made a generous current gift to support the processing and preservation of archival materials that she donated some years ago on the work of François Delsarte (1811-1871), the French voice and acting teacher who developed an important system of expression that has influenced the training of performing artists in Europe and the United States and significantly influenced the development of twentieth-century modern concert dance.
Nancy Lee Ruyter is a dance historian, teacher, and choreographer who has been a professor of dance at UC Irvine since 1982. Her degrees in history include a B.A. from University of California, Riverside, and a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University. Her practical training in dance has included ballet, modern, Spanish, East Indian, Balkan, and other world dance forms. Her publications include Reformers and Visionaries: The Americanization of the Art of Dance (1979); The Cultivation of Body and Mind in 19th-Century American Delsartism (1999); and many articles on the Delsarte system and its uses, Spanish dance, Balkan dance, Latin American and Spanish theater, and theater movement.
For further information, please contact Julie Sully, Head of Marketing and Special Events (x44658 or jsully@uci.edu).