Choreographer, Oral Historian, Researcher and Mentor working across Dance, Music Theater, Tanztheater and Education.
I work with artists, companies, universities, archives and cultural institutions to explore how knowledge is created, embodied, articulated and activated — through movement, oral history, archives and artistic practice.
RESEARCH & WRITING ❦ Dance History ❦ Dance Cultures ❦ Memory & Embodied Knowledge
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My current work increasingly focuses on Activating Archives and developing new approaches to Memory and Transmission, including the possibilities offered by emerging Knowledge Technologies. I am also interested in the applications of Human Embodied Knowledge beyond the Performing Arts.
About
Ricardo Viviani
choreographer, Researcher
I am a choreographer, Oral Historian and mentor working across Dance, Music Theater and Education.
I have spent many years dancing, making dances, and working with artists, theaters and cultural institutions. I am interested in how dance is created, performed and received. For the past ten years, I have worked as an Oral Historian at the Pina Bausch Foundation, where I developed a collection of Oral History interviews with dancers and other professionals involved in the work.
My work aims to create an arc between knowledge from the past, art in the present, and a desirable future. I am interested in how listening to the people who make and perform dance can open another way into dance. These stories do not explain away the dance; they offer another way into it.
I was born in São Paulo, Brazil, and began my dance training there. I later studied at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York, Theater Direction at the University of São Paulo, and Cultural Sciences at the FernUniversität in Hagen. As a dancer and choreographer, I have worked in Brazil, the United States and Germany. I have taught dance, choreography and composition, and presented my work internationally.
I am now developing work around Activating Archives, embodied knowledge, and new ways of bringing dance heritage into artistic and educational practice.
Oral History for Dance Heritage
Intensive Workshop · National Art Museum of Ukraine
Impulse Transformation Platform — Viktor Ruban · supported by Goethe-Institut Ukraine
Kyiv, Ukraine · 01–06 December 2025
Dancer Knowledge Management
Presentation · Produire la mémoire en danse : histoire orale et mnémotechniques
Université Côte d’Azur · Nice, France · November 2021
Stories that Matter
Online presentation · Roundtable on Epics, Performance and Dance
Harvard University CHS Athens · April 2021
2020–2021
Finding Your Own Voice
Semester Seminar · Folkwang Universität der Künste
Oral History with Juan Allende-Blin · Activating the Archive Euphorie und Aufbruch
Essen-Werden, Germany · Winter Semester 2020/21
Euphorie und Aufbruch
Publication · Research / Historisation Project · NRW 1959–1969
Pina Bausch Foundation · Folkwang University · Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln
Germany · 2020–2021
2019
Common Dance, Uncommon Stories
Presentation · Dancing in Common
Northwestern University · Evanston, Illinois, USA · August 2019
The Material and Immaterial of the Archive
Presentation · The Whole Life: Archives and Reality
Pina Bausch Foundation / Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Dresden, Germany · May 2019
Pina and New York
Publication · Documentary Film · Writer and Researcher
Arte1 / Producing Partners NYC / Pina Bausch Foundation
Chicago · New York · Wuppertal · Essen · Brazil · 2017
Note: This index is part of an ongoing chronological archive of Ricardo Viviani’s professional work. Each entry is intended to lead to a corresponding page documenting the project, lecture, publication, or research in greater detail.
