Networks of Performance and Patronage: Russian Artists in American Dance, Vaudeville, and Opera, 1909-1947

Abstract

As part of my PhD dissertation in Musicology,I am building a network graph (visualized using Gephi) of Russian émigré and traveling performers who toured the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. By visualizing these relationships in a graph, I more clearly define the extent to which these people are related while presenting these relationships in a way that is more useful and illustrative than prose text. The relationships that exist between the people in my study fall into six types: artistic (when individuals collaborate together for a performance or other creative enterprise), patron (when one individual is providing money or influence in support of another with no expectation of reciprocation), professional (when an individual is employed by another individual), family (marriages, family relationships), educational (teacher-student relationships), and personal (mutual acquaintances exclusive of artistic or professional endeavors). The graph frames a more nuanced reading of particular nodes in the artistic networks of New York City in the 1920s.