The VDT has already implemented many projects and initiatives. Here is an overview of the most important initiatives and projects of the last 15 years.
 

On Thursday, January 15, 2026, the VDT will host a specialist forum on the topic of Fachforum Kultur[Gut]Schutz – Tanz gemeinsam bewahren (Specialist Forum on Cultural Heritage Protection – Preserving Dance Together) in the plenary hall of the Academy of Arts in Berlin from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. For more information and to register, please click here.
 

A needs and potential study funded by the Cultural Foundation of the German States determined the prerequisites, potential, and opportunities for a competence network to access and visualize dance as cultural heritage in the digital realm. The resulting recommendations for action can be found here. 
 

Since 2019, the VDT has been organizing the Round Table of Dance Archives and Collections in German-speaking Countries at irregular intervals. Further information can be found here. 

As part of the Cultural Heritage Dance project (funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media), five dance archives were able to work on selected digitization projects: the inventory description of the Tatjana Gsovsky-Gert Reinholm Archive, the digitization and online publication of selected dance books from the 16th and 17th centuries, digital methods in the dance archive, film portraits of dance archives and dance artists, and dance in the GDR with a focus on Patricio Bunster and Gret Palucca. Further information can be found at tanz-digital.de. 
 

Results, conclusions, and suggestions from a survey conducted by the Dance Education Conference (AK|T) and the Association of German Dance Archives (VDT) on the situation of archives, libraries, and collections at dance training institutions in Germany. You can view the document here. 
 

Since 2021, the dance archives have been working closely with artists and ensembles on the tanz:digital project run by the German Dance Association. tanz:digital was a funding program within the framework of NEUSTART KULTUR (New Start Culture) by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, which supported media-based artistic projects, new formats for the innovative digital presentation of choreographies, and dance productions and work processes. The result is the platform tanz-digital.de, which contextualizes artistic creation with audiovisual documents, cross-references to other artists, and developments in dance history (as well as media history). 
 

Zum ersten Mal trafen sich am 21. und 22. Oktober 2016 Vertreter*innen von deutschen, österreichischen und schweizerischen Tanzarchiven, um gemeinsam über die Herausforderungen zu diskutieren, denen sich die Archive in der heutigen digitalen Welt ausgesetzt sehen. Eine Dokumentation finden Sie hier. 

Daraus entstanden ist die Kölner Erklärung. 

• Dance Fund Heritage Project “Transforming Acts” (2013)
  The Transforming Acts project was an intermedia installation that explored the processes of inspiration and transformation in dance in art in general and in theater in particular. It was a collaboration between the International Theater Institute, the Media Library for Dance and Theater, the Performing Arts Archive of the Academy of Arts, and the German Dance Film Institute in Bremen.
• European Video Dance Heritage
  The EU project European Video Dance Heritage dealt with the preservation of the cultural heritage of dance at the European level, with a view to the special technological, legal, and aesthetic challenges of video dance.
• ITN-DCH
  The EU science project ITN-DCH aimed to promote research and development in the field of “digital cultural heritage” at the European level.
• Symposium ICH+I (2015)
  The symposium presented the current state of research on recording and visualization techniques and their application in the field of intangible cultural heritage and provided a platform for expert discussions.

• Inventory analysis in the VDT (2013)
  The inventory analysis of the databases of the Association of German Dance Archives in 2013 was a starting point and an indispensable basis for the subsequent quantitative and qualitative evaluation of the archives' entire holdings