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The annual Taliesin Festivals of Music and Dance began in 1957 after the compeltion of the Pavilion at Taliesin West. Performances were choregraphed by Iovanna Lloyd Wright and were performed to music composed by Olgivanna Lloyd Wright. The cast was made up of members of the Taliesin Fellowship. Early performances were heavily inspired by Georges Gurdjieff's exercises and dances. The collection consists of 20 years of audio recordings from the Taliesin Music and Dance Festival and other dance performances by the Taliesin Fellowship.

Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (d. 1949) was a Greek-Armenian philosopher who lived and taught his "fourth way" in France. He was born sometime between 1866 and 1877 in Alexandropol, Armenia, which was then a governorate of the Russian Empire. After 1912, he began to instruct a group of students on esoteric knowledge (the source of which he never revealed but which he allegedly garnered after extensive travel throughout Asia), turning these into a type of philosophical system that today could be described as "self-help." After relocating to France, he established the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man, began writing his manuscripts, and engaged students in sacred music and "movements." He gathered a significant following of writers, artists, and other members of the intelligentsia from the 1920s-1940s, including this collection's co-creators, namely P.D. Ouspensky, Alfred R. Orage, and Solita Solano. Gurdjieff wrote three volumes explaining his system, which were published posthumously. Applicable to architectural researchers are Gurdjieff and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright's life-long relationship. Olgivanna lived and studied at the Institute for a number of years before immigrating to the United States. She structured much of the life at Taliesin around Gurdjieff's philosophy, and the group often performed his "movements."

Olgivanna Lloyd Wright (Olga Lazović, Olga Lazović Hinzenburg) b. Montenegro, December 27, 1898- March 1, 1985, married Frank Lloyd Wright in 1928. She was a dancer, author, and composer and helped found and operate the Taliesin Fellowship. She was vital to the preservation of Frank Lloyd Wright's legacy through the Taliesin Fellowship, preservation and fundraising campaigns, and publications on her late husband and his work, including her books Our House, The Shining Brow, the Roots of Life, and Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life, His Work, His Words. The collection contains extensive correspondence as well as Olgivanna Lloyd Wright's notes, drafts and typed manuscripts of her books and unpublished writing, autobiographical material, transcriptions of taped audio material including weekly talks to the Taliesin Fellowship as well as public talks, and newspaper clippings of published articles.