19 personal archives, 2 institutional archives (Tanzfabrik, Tanztheater der Komischen Oper), 1 dance collection comprising approx. 400 theater holdings, approx. 200 shelf meters, AVM materials not counted;

highlights: Mary Wigman Archive, Gret Palucca Archive, Tatjana Gsovsky/Gert Reinholm Archive, Gerhard Bohner Archive, Johann Kresnik Archive, Susanne Linke Archive, Reinhild Hoffmann Archive, Tom Schilling Archive, Arila Siegert Archive, Lilo Gruber Archive, Egon Bischoff Archive, Karin Waehner Archive, Joachim Schlömer Archive;

Not included in this list, for example: Ruth Berghaus Archive, Maria Matray Archive (AdK film archive), Franz Gauker Collection on Kurt Hübner's directorship in Bremen (here: Kresnik), Werner Schloske Archive (photographer in Stuttgart, including Cranko);

Focus on expressive dance, German dance theater, dance in the GDR, dance in Berlin, classical ballet in Berlin.

https://archiv.net.adk.de/
https://www.adk.de/de/archiv/archivabteilungen/darstellende-kunst/

The university archive of the Palucca University of Dance Dresden stores historically and legally significant documents from all organs, committees, and institutions of the university as well as its direct predecessor institutions. It holds approximately 350 linear meters of written documents, including student files, estates, posters, flyers, etc. The collection also includes more than 2,600 film recordings of school programs, public performances, and internal rehearsals, as well as recordings of the final exams for all degree programs over the last 16 years.

The diversity of the dance work is also documented by approximately 10,000 photographs. With its almost complete collection of approximately 5,000 press articles on the work of Gret Palucca and the development of the university up to the present day, the university archive has a unique collection that is of particular interest to dance historians and dance scholars.

Website : https://palucca.eu/hochschule/campus/archiv

Historian, archivist, and media educator has been working in television documentation at the German Broadcasting Archive (DRA) for over 10 years and has been part of the Retro Spezial DDR editorial team since 2020. This archive opening project makes videos from GDR television available in the ARD media library. The DRA is part of the ARD Retro network, which represents the media archives of all ARD stations and makes selected holdings available via the media library.

Website :

https://www.dra.de/de/das-dra/ueber-uns

https://www.ardmediathek.de/retrospezialddr

https://www.ardmediathek.de/retro

Founded in 1948 by dancer and educator Kurt Peters, the German Dance Archive Cologne is a globally networked information, documentation, and research center for dance. Thanks to its unique holdings and affiliated exhibition space, it ranks among the most renowned archives of dance art worldwide.

In addition to preserving evidence of dance art, the German Dance Archive Cologne is dedicated to archival and scientific research and presentation in exhibitions and publications.

In the affiliated dance museum, the German Dance Archive presents annually changing thematic exhibitions that draw on the archive's rich holdings.

The German Dance Archive Cologne is an affiliated institute of the Cologne University of Music and Dance and cooperates with the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen, another dance education institution based in North Rhine-Westphalia. Together with the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the German Dance Archive Cologne has initiated the NRW Dance Studies Award, which is presented every five years.

Website: www.deutsches-tanzarchiv.de

The German Dance Film Institute in Bremen is a national archive for the collection, preservation, processing, and production of audiovisual dance documents.

Founded in 1988/89 as a non-profit organization, the institute supports the work of choreographers, dance companies, theaters, specialist journalists, academics, and television stations by providing access to its collected materials and assists in the production, restoration, and digitization of analog dance videos and films.

Interested parties can access information about the archived material via a specially developed dance-related database. The archive, whose holdings are continuously expanded and updated, currently comprises approximately 40,000 data carriers, consisting of various recording standards – analog and digital.

The institute creates its own video productions, develops event and lecture series, and cooperates on a project basis locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally with a wide variety of cultural institutions.

Website: https://www.deutsches-tanzfilminstitut.de/

Collecting, preserving, and exhibiting theatrical memorabilia, thereby making theater history visible as cultural history and opening it up for discussion—these are the tasks undertaken by the German Theater Museum, centrally located in the arcades of Munich's Hofgarten. Through changing special exhibitions and its extensive collection, the museum invites visitors to explore and research theater history in its regional, national, and international contexts.

Today, the collection of the German Theater Museum includes reviews and programs, over 250,000 graphic sheets dating back to the Baroque period, approximately 400 stage design models, approximately 500,000 autographs, and the world's largest collection of theater photography with nearly 5 million analog images, including important collections on dance history such as the estate of Munich photographer Hanns Holdt (1887-1944). The most valuable holdings of the library date back to the Renaissance. Numerous bequests and estates are preserved and made accessible to the public.

Website:

www.deutschestheatermuseum.de

Klaus Dilger is the founder and editor of the online platform www.TANZwebNRW.de for dance criticism in words, images, and film. Since 2011, a lively and contemporary archive of dance works in and from North Rhine-Westphalia has been created here, with over 800 dance films and trailers for world premieres and reviews to date. He is an author and dance filmmaker, as well as co-founder and board member of TANZ.media e.V., an association for the promotion of quality journalism in dance. In the 1990s, together with Susan Buirge, he led the feasibility study for a European Center for Choreography at the Abbaye des Prémontrées in Pont-a-Mousson on behalf of the French government, with a focus on “The Memory of Dance.”
 

Website:

www.TANZwebNRW.de
www.TANZ.media  

Susanne Foellmer is Professor of Dance Studies at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, UK. Her research focuses on contemporary dance and performance, as well as the Weimar period, with an emphasis on concepts of the body and aesthetic theory, dance and ‘other’ media, materiality, and the politics of the performing arts. From 2014-18, she led the DFG project “ÜberReste. Strategien des Bleibens in den darstellenden Künsten” (Remains: Strategies of Permanence in the Performing Arts). She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Greifswald (until September 2023).

Current publications include: “The Archival Turn in Dance/Studies.” In A. David et.al. (eds.) Dance Fields: Staking a Claim for Dance Studies in the 21st Century. Dance Books 2020; Performing Arts in Transition. Moving Between Media (ed., with M. K. Schmidt/C. Schmitz), Routledge 2019; forthcoming: On Remnants and Vestiges. Negotiating Persistence and Ephemerality in the Performing Arts, Routledge 2023.

Work as dramaturg for Rubato, Isabelle Schad, Meg Stuart, Jeremy Wade, among others.

https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/persons/susanne-foellmer

https://www.wiko-greifswald.de/fellows/alfried-krupp-fellows-programm/fellows-finden/2022-2023/foellmer-professorin-dr-susanne/
 

The Folkwang Dance Archive (Folkwang Tanz Archive - FTA)  documents the history of the Institute for Contemporary Dance and the founding of the Folkwang University of the Arts in 1927. Kurt Jooss collected newspaper clippings about the Folkwang School at that time, announcements of performances, correspondence, and much more. Over the years, his collection has been expanded to include photos, programs, posters, reviews, sheet music, music and film tapes thanks to the considerable activities of the dance department and the Folkwang Dance Studio, and it continues to grow today. Important components of the FTA include the estates of Hans Züllig and Gisela Reber, as well as the kinetography archive, which houses recordings by Albrecht Knust and a large collection of notated folk dances. More recently, the FTA has also been expanded to include the bequests of Ilse Straeter, who accompanied the Folkwang Dance Studio for many years with her drawings. In recent years, the FTA has increasingly been involved in activities related to contemporary artistic and scientific dance research.
 

Website:
https://www.folkwang-uni.de/home/tanz/folkwang-tanzarchiv/

Dance scholar with a research interest in interdisciplinary methods in dance studies, particularly critical historical research. Numerous collaborations with the German Dance Archive Cologne with students and also in book/edition projects. Head of the MA program in Dance Studies at the HfMT and supervision of doctoral projects. 

Website : www.zzt.hfmt-koeln.de

Dieter Heitkamp was a professor of contemporary dance and director of the dance department at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts. Since 1978, he has been archiving his artistic projects and educational concepts. Together with Norbert Pape, he developed the website contactencyclopedia (no longer online) and worked with Nancy Stark Smith until her death in 2020 on a concept for a GlobalCoctact Improvisation Archive. With Romain Biget and Defne Erdur, he worked on the website wrongcontact.zone

In particular, his project going into contact – a permeable spiral installation 2014 ­ Live Legacy Project (Tanzhaus NRW) and Schwindel der Wirklichkeit (AdK Berlin) is a good example of how an archive can be used for new artistic works and educational formats.

Website :

https://archiv.mimecentrum.de/searches?commit=Suchen&page=1&query=Dieter+Heitkamp&utf8=✓  

In order to jointly establish archival structures for the independent performing arts, associations in the fields of dance and theater, as well as specialist institutions and individual actors in this area, joined forces in 2018 and founded the association “Initiative für die Archive der Freien Darstellenden Künste e.V.” (Initiative for the Archives of the Independent Performing Arts). The association emerged from a working group on archiving the independent performing arts, which has been meeting informally since 2013 to explore the idea of an archive for the arts and from the arts. In fall 2022, the three-year project “Digital Archive of the Independent Performing Arts” began. 

Website : www.theaterarchiv.org

As part of the University of Hamburg's Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts,” we are working on a research project on archiving practices and writing processes in contemporary dance and choreography. It is called “Choreographies of Archiving” and has been running since April 2020. We conducted interviews with twelve artists and were particularly interested in how, on what occasions, and with what results writing and writing play a role in the artistic process and how the resulting written material is treated in terms of archiving. We also examined selected written documents and organized a conference on the materiality of writing and writing in February 2023 (“Material Goods,” January 30 to February 4, 2023, Hamburg, Kampnagel

Website:

https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/written-artefacts/research-fields/field-e/rfe05.html
 

With currently around 13,000 videos and supplementary materials, the MTT is one of the most comprehensive publicly accessible audiovisual documentation centers for the performing arts in Germany. It documents and archives developments in contemporary dance, theater, and performative performance formats.

The ITI's media studio also continuously produces its own film documentaries of dance and theater productions, which can be viewed at the MTT. The digitization and preservation of audiovisual and supplementary documents is an important area of activity.

The critical analysis of the media library's holdings, in collaboration with artists and scholars, is an important concern. The media library is also a place for exchange on artistic, cultural-political, and technological developments in dance and theater, and thus an interface between archival, theoretical, and practical theater work. The close connection to rehearsal and research processes in the ITI's rehearsal room, STUDIO2, in the archive and practice work area is characteristic of this.

Website:

MTT database: https://archiv.mimecentrum.de/

Webseite - Studio2: https://studio2.iti-germany.de/en

Originally founded by choreographer William Forsythe in Frankfurt, Motion Bank has been combining dance studies, software development, and design at Mainz University of Applied Sciences since 2016. Its interdisciplinary research focuses on the fundamentals of digital dance research, the digital documentation of dance, and the use of digital technologies in dance practice. Motion Bank collaborates with numerous partners from the performing arts, higher education in dance, archives, and other research and cultural institutions. The in-house development of open-source software as part of the research aims to provide dance professionals and institutions with simple tools and methods for digital documentation and archival work and to make digital technologies usable in dance.

David Rittershaus is a dance and theater scholar who researches digital documentation and research in contemporary dance. He has been a research assistant at Motion Bank since 2017 and also became a project manager at Mainz University of Applied Sciences in 2022

Website: http://motionbank.org (No longer current); https://medium.com/motion-bank (more recent blog posts)

The non-profit Pina Bausch Foundation was established by her son Salomon Bausch after her death in 2009.

The foundation's mission is to keep the artistic legacy of the dancer and choreographer alive and to preserve the material she collected over decades in an archive.

The digital archive is to be made accessible to a wide audience around the world. The digital archive is to be made accessible to a wide audience around the world.

The archive team currently consists of eight employees, five of whom are full-time.

Ismaël Dia joined the Pina Bausch Foundation in 2011. Over a period of six years, he carried out the archiving, digitization, and preservation of the video archive holdings in the Pina Bausch Archive. He has been head of the Pina Bausch Archive since 2017.
In addition, materials created by the Education and Community department are also collected. Since 2022, the physical and digital materials have been cataloged using the open-source content management system Omeka. The database currently contains approximately 6,500 entries on objects, individuals, and organizations.

Website: www.pinabausch.org

The archive was established in spring 2020 as an independent department within the company. In addition to numerous autographs by Sasha Waltz, the collection mainly comprises photographs, video and audio recordings, press materials, and documents relating to all productions since 1996. The archive is supplemented by materials from international choreographers who have developed productions as guests of the company. In addition, materials created within the Education and Community department are also collected. Since 2022, the physical and digital materials have been catalogued using the open-source content management system Omeka. The database currently contains approximately 6,500 entries on objects, individuals and organisations

Website: www.sashawaltz.de

For 20 years, deufert&plischke's work has focused on creating social and transdisciplinary art spaces. Their projects are based on open, participatory processes. Contrary to a representative understanding of art, deufert&plischke's choreographic work is a space that is constantly changing and evolving through collective work. The approach of shared authorship goes hand in hand with an interest in opening up contemporary dance to new audiences. Since 2008, they have been working with the concept of the ANARCHIV. It refers to a working method in which documents and collections that have been created in the course of their artistic work are brought back into new cycles and shared with others

Website: https://www.spinnereischwelm.net

Since 2000, responsible for the exchange of science and art and, since 2006, for dance promotion at the Department of Culture of the City of Munich; from 2012 to 2015, responsible for the 1st Action Plan for the Implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its evaluation by the Department of Culture of the City of Munich.

Since 2015, head of the pilot project “Lebendiges Archiv – Living Archive” as part of the dance and theater promotion of the Cultural Department of the City of Munich, which has been a cooperation partner of the “Performing the Archive” initiative since 2016.

Publications (selection): Knowledge in the 21st Century. Complexity and Reduction, edited by Daniela Rippl and Eva Ruhnau, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2002. Repairing the World, edited by Lydia A. Hartl and Daniela Rippl, Munich: Herbert Utz Verlag, 2003. Gender Feelings. Emotion and Reason in Gender Discourse, edited by Verena Mayer and Daniela Rippl, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2007. Fear, Dimensions of an Emotion, edited by Thomas Kisser, Daniela Rippl, and Marion Tiedtke, Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2010.

“Munich as a model? Thoughts on a municipal archive for independent theater.” In: Schneider, Wolfgang; Fülle, Henning; Henniger, Christine (eds.): Performing the Archive. Study on the development of an archive for independent theater. Hildesheim, Zurich, New York 2018, pp. 177–188, pp. 303–315 [Lecture given at the 1st Concept Conference for an Archive of Independent Theater at the Literaturhaus München, October 17, 2016]

In preparation: Housing The Temporary. Approaches to One's Own History. Dance, Performance, Archive, edited by Micha Purucker, Daniela Rippl, and Katja Schneider, Munich: Allitera Verlag, 2022.

During my time at the Institute for Theater Studies at LMU Munich (until 2019), I taught several seminars on oral history, focusing primarily on the history of the local independent scene. In the course of this research, I conceived and organized the international symposium Housing the Temporary (2018) at Munich's Theater schwere reiter in collaboration with choreographer Micha Purucker and Dr. Daniela Rippl from Munich's Department of Culture. Models of artistic self-documentation and methods of local archiving were presented and discussed at this event. In addition, together with a group of students, I examined documentation strategies for communicating artistic heritage using the example of the Munich production of Pina Bausch's Für die Kinder von gestern, heute und morgen (For the Children of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow) at the Bavarian State Ballet. Currently, I am very interested in the pragmatism with which archival materials are used in different contexts and how the organizational structures of artists' archives can be preserved.

A multi-perspective approach serves as the basis for the development of a contemporary archive concept for dance, incorporating scientific, intersectional, and artistic approaches.

Following a survey and inventory analysis of Berlin's contemporary dance scene (2021) and the symposium "SENSING THE ARCHIVE (s) – SKETCHING THE ARCHIVE(S)" in April 2022, which presented the results of research conducted by the archive collaborators involved in the project, the team is now focusing on developing artistic perspectives on Berlin's dance history(ies) in its current project TANZARCHIVE IN BEWEGUNG (Dance Archives in Motion) in cooperation with four partners.

Website:
https://www.tanzraumberlin.de/runder-tisch-tanz/tanzarchiv-berlin/

The Leipzig Dance Archive (Tanzarchiv Leipzig - TAL) was founded in 1957 by Dr. Kurt Petermann at the Central House of Culture with a focus on folk dance, but soon expanded to become a documentation and research center for all areas of dance. In 1975, the institution became the Dance Archive of the GDR, a branch of the Academy of Arts (East). After the end of the GDR, the Free State of Saxony undertook to continue the Leipzig Dance Archive for use by the University of Leipzig and the University of Music and Theater, under the auspices of the Verein Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V. Since 2012, the diverse holdings (including those on Rudolf Laban and modern dance) have been stored in the special collections of the Leipzig University Library, where they are accessible for general use. 

Website:

https://home.uni-leipzig.de/tanzarchiv/de/intro/

https://home.uni-leipzig.de/tanzarchiv/de/zugaenge-fuer-recherchen/

tanznetz.de celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2021 and relaunched in April 2022. In order to present this relaunch in an editorially, technically, and graphically attractive way, not only for future content, the editorial team is now working on a meaningful review, archiving, and communication of existing content, especially the high-quality sections such as the koeglerjournal, the weigelt web, SIX QUESTIONS FOR THE DANCE TEACHERS WHO INSPIRE US, and others. Retrievability of the archive: All sections from the last 25 years will be tagged, annotated, and supplemented with relevant photos. Keywords: convert, format, tags, teasers, edit photos, retrieve new ones, or add completely new images. Provide context for German dance history over the last 25 years through current texts with contemporary witnesses. Keeping the archive “fit” and in shape for future and possible collaborations with other media and archives. The content should also be available for journalistic and scientific inquiries.
Numerous bequests and legacies are preserved and made accessible to the public.

Website:

www.tanznetz.de

www.accesstodance