Louise Lightfoot Collection

The Louise Lightfoot collection is one of a large number of unique collections held by the Music Archive of Monash University (MAMU), located at 4th floor of the Menzies Building, at the Monash Clayton Campus, rooms 404, 406, 408 and 410. This was the personal collection of Louise Lightfoot (1902-1979 ), who was an Australian dancer, choreographer and impresario. In the 1930s, she shifted her interest in early modern dance to Indian classical dance, which she studied and promoted extensively, including by touring Indian artists. The collection contains costumes, masks and dance headdresses, dance props, films, recordings (on reel to reel tape, cassette and vinyl), program brochures, scripts, contracts, letters, posters, advertisements, newspaper clippings, reports, correspondence, scrapbooks, photographs, and Lightfoot’s personal notes, journal issues and books. The oldest item is a book Monipurio Norton (Manipuri Dance) by Autambapu Sharma, written in Old Bengali in 1759.