Media Library for Dance and Theatre (Mediathek für Tanz und Theater)
With more than 13,000 videos and supplementary materials, the Media Library for Dance and Theatre is one of the most extensive publicly accessible audiovisual documentation centres for the performing arts in Germany. It documents developments in contemporary dance, theatre and performative production formats.
Besides collecting media objects, the media library realises filmic documentation of dance and theatre productions on its own. The digitisation and preservation of these documents is an important area of work.
The critical analysis of the media library's holdings in collaboration with artists and scholars is an important concern.
The media library is a place for exchange on artistic, cultural-political and technological developments in dance and theatre, thus serving as an interdisciplinary hub for archival, theoretical and practical work in the performing arts. The close connection to rehearsal and research processes in the ITI's rehearsal room, STUDIO2, in the work area archive and practice is particularly evident here.
The media library is a project of the International Theatre Institute Germany, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media (BKM).
Stocks and Collections
With its focus on media-based objects documenting the contemporary performing arts, the Media Library hosts several collections in the field of dance, music theatre, non-verbal theatre and interdisciplinary forms of performative productions. It hosts several festival collections such as Theater der Welt, Music Theatre Now, Divadlo Plzeň as well as parts of the festival Tanz im August and Bonn Biennial. Supporting artists in the long-term documentation of their work it further has a strong local focus on artistic productions of the Berlin independent dance and theatre scene.