The Doris Lewis Rare Book Room houses a sizeable special collection of rare materials related to the history of dance and ballet. The nucleus of the dance collection is the 150 items donated in 1975 by Dr. Henry Crapo, a former University of Waterloo faculty member. Dr. Crapo has continued to support the collection over the years.

Dr. Crapo's donation contains some rare and beautiful works on ballet: works by Negri, Caroso, Noverre, De la Cuisse, Arena, Dumanoir, Blasis and Bakst. The subject strengths of the collection reflect Dr. Crapo's interests in choreography and dance notation.

Of the seventeenth-century materials found here, some of the finest are Negri's Nuove inventioni de balli (Milan: 1604); Caroso's Nobilita di Dame (Venice: 1605), and Du Manoir's Le mariage de la musique avec la dance (1664).

The largest addition to the dance collection was the 300-volume collection acquired with the assistance of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant in 1982. This collection, with imprints ranging in date from 1687 to the mid-twentieth century, adds a new research dimension in the form of illustrated works containing lithographs and engravings of the period of the Romantic ballet. The provenance of the majority of works in this collection--a portion of the personal library of George Chaffee--a leading dance writer of the twentieth century, accounts in part for its strength. Many of the books Chaffee consulted in his research for his most famous writings on ballet are now a part of the Waterloo collections.

In 1985, another grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council made it possible for the Library to purchase over two dozen books supportive of the Crapo Collection.

Special Collections & Archives has prepared a digital exhibit featuring some of the items from the Henry H. Crapo Dance Collection.

A gold blazer from the University of Waterloo purchased and worn by Peter (Otis) Dallas, an undergraduate student in the second kinesiology class of 1972. The jacket includes a patch with the University of Waterloo name and the logo for the School of Physical Education and Recreation on the chest pocket. The order for the student blazers was placed by Dr. Robert (Bob) Norman and Neil Widmeyer, both faculty members in the School of Physical Education and Recreation at the time. Peter Dallas wore the blazer at every alumni reunion and recently celebrated his fiftieth-year anniversary in 2022.

One photograph album with 67 black and white photographs showing various callisthenic movements using a "wand." Each photograph includes a caption with the movement and position of the wand indicated. 5 photographs are missing from the album. The album is titled "Senior Wand Work" and dated 1906 by M. [Lucile] Adams.

One manuscript copy (1 vol. 180 pp.) of excerpts from works by Pierre Jean Burette on the history of ancient dance and sport. The transcription is in an unknown hand and was copied from the work in the Bibliothèque de la ville de Boulogne-sur-Mer. From the library of Gustave Desrat.