Type: Intellectual Production · Lecture / Presentation Date: 28 November 2023 Time-span: 14:00–15:00 Context: Dance Histories in Practice – Selected Aspects of Archiving and Historicization of Dance, CoFestival 2023 Location: Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova (+MSUM), Ljubljana, Slovenia Institution / Organisation: Nomad Dance Academy Slovenia / Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova Role: Lecturer / Presenter Status: Historical Record — documented
Abstract
Dance, as a form of communication technology, depends on various other cultural technologies for its development, execution, and reception. Orality plays a significant role at various stages of these processes. The way the labor of dance is executed involves a delicate negotiation between physical bodies and cognitive aspects, encompassing both explicit information and implicit content and knowledge. Oral History can be instrumental in documenting implicit creative choices, personal and institutional factors, workplace conditions, legacies, and the expansion of embodied knowledge. This presentation will describe methodologies and strategies for creating insightful dance oral histories.
Diversidade Do Olhar – estou muito feliz em colaborar com a São Paulo Escola de Dança. Minha contribuição é em explorar as formas de como usamos palavras na dança: a oralidade na dança.
Esse módulo é para todas as pessoas que comunicam dança: criadores, equipes e multiplicadores.
a dança dispensa palavras? sim. a dança, o ato de dançar, e a recepção da dança são processos que independem da palavra. a palavra falada, cantada ou escrita são elementos que podem ou não acompanhar a dança. o processo de criação, passa por decisões pensadas. a comunicação com outros artistas envolvidos na criação usa quase que inevitavelmente palavras, comunicação oral. a transmissão da experiência de dançar, apreciar a dança também se beneficia das ferramenta culturais que são a oralidade e a escrita. quais palavras pensadas, faladas ou escritas são essas? desde instruções como um simples ‘vamos formar um círculo’, às descrições de sentimentos, impulsos através de imagens e estórias, a oralidade faz parte do nosso imaginário. nesse módulo presencial vamos conectar a experiência visceral da dança com as várias modalidades de comunicar na fala e escrita. vamos explorar e aguçar de forma sistemática as capacidades sensoriais da experiência, dentro do visual, auditivo, táctil e pesquisar formas de criar elos entre esse fugidio e temporal para palavras. a intenção é criar pontes de percepção e expandir o vocabulário. um diferencial dentro do universo dançado brasileiro é a possibilidade de incorporar o imaginário mágico e espiritual na análise.
The Artistic Drive of Jean Cébron
Dance Oral History in a Network of Change
Jean Cébron (1927-2019) was a dancer, choreographer, and dance educator.
Juan Allende-Blin 94 is a Chilean contemporary composer, scholar, and publisher.
These men were in their early twenties when they met in 1948.
Their creative collaboration started as Allende-Blin saw Cébron in Kurt Jooss’ politically charged “The Green Table” in Santiago del Chile.
Back in Germany in the 1950s, artists that were exiled during WW II like Kurt Jooss, were confronted with hostile cultural attitudes that remained in place after the Nazi regime. Against that climate, they persevered. In a recent oral history interview, Allende-Blin recounts their efforts to create art that captured and expressed contemporary sensibilities. Their drive and resilience during the 1960s paved the way to the blossoming of original forms of dance-making in Germany.
One of the challenges of documenting artistic production in connection with political and cultural change is making the network of relationships explicit. The mapping and networking of documents under open international standards is one approach to create visibility to developments over time. In this presentation,
Ricardo Viviani will propose a visual model and notation ontologies to present this study case. The goal is to leverage the power of semantic web to create Web3 applications to network knowledge in dance.
This presentation was given at the 2022 Dance Studies Conference in Vancouver, Canada.
#strategies_of_reconciliation, #transnational_activism, #queer_activism, #archive, #historiography, #semantic_web, #dance_knowledge_management
Euphorie und Aufbruch Timeline — Sorting and grouping of 99 Documents (Viviani 2020)
Type: Publication · Research / Historisation Project Date: September 2022 Context:Tanzen/Teilen – Sharing/Dancing: Jahrbuch TanzForschung 2021 Role: Ricardo Viviani – Author · Researcher · Project Collaborator Co-authors: Anja K. Arend · Thomas Thorausch Project:Euphorie und Aufbruch — A History of Dance 1959–1969 Publisher: transcript Verlag
Sharing the Material is Sharing the Knowledge / Tanzwissen teilen im Verbund documents an experimental approach to sharing and connecting dance-archival material across institutional collections. The chapter emerged from the research project Euphorie und Aufbruch, a collaboration between the Pina Bausch Foundation, the Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln and the Folkwang Tanzarchiv / Folkwang Universität der Künste.
The chapter begins from a basic problem of dance heritage: an archive cannot contain the whole of dance. What survives is always partial, shaped by the histories of collection, preservation, description and institutional selection. The project therefore explored what might become visible when material from different archives is brought into relation rather than presented as separate institutional holdings.
For the pilot project, a selection of 99 archival documents from the three participating collections was organized around relationships between people, works, events, places and time. The resulting digital environment used a chronological timeline as a principal point of access, while also making connections between heterogeneous materials more visible.
The chapter considers archival knowledge as something that can emerge through relationships among documents, people, works and historical circumstances. In this perspective, sharing material between institutions can also become a way of sharing knowledge and making previously separated holdings meaningful in relation to one another.
A central question concerns the particular demands of dance archives. Dance is not exhausted by the documents that record it: movement, practice, embodied knowledge and changing relationships are difficult to represent through conventional archival description alone. The project therefore explored conceptual models including CIDOC CRM and FRBRoo as possible structures for relating heterogeneous information across collections.
Oral History provided another layer of connection. Ricardo Viviani’s interview with composer Juan Allende-Blin brought personal testimony and experience into dialogue with archival records. Within the project, Oral History provided a perspective through which documentary material could be connected with lived historical experience.
The wider project also included an educational strand documented through Finding Your Own Voice. Historical photographs and other archival materials were used as impulses for observation, analysis and choreographic work. Students transformed observations from archival material into concepts and choreographic assignments, bringing archival research into a contemporary artistic context.
Taken together, the chapter presents the archive as an interconnected knowledge environment rather than as a collection of isolated objects. Its concern is not simply how to preserve material, but how relationships between collections, documents, people and experience can make different forms of historical knowledge accessible.
Archival Material:
Published German chapter; project documentation; visual research materials; timeline documentation; selection of 99 archival documents; Oral History interview with Juan Allende-Blin; Finding Your Own Voice teaching materials; related research notes.
Type: Publication · Research / Historisation Project · Archival Activation Period: 2018–2021 Location: North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Role: Researcher · Oral Historian · Project Collaborator · Educator Partners: Pina Bausch Foundation · Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln · Folkwang Tanzarchiv / Folkwang Universität der Künste
Euphorie und Aufbruch — A History of Dance 1959–1969 was a collaborative research and development project involving three dance archives in North Rhine-Westphalia: the Pina Bausch Foundation, the Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln and the Folkwang Tanzarchiv. The project explored ways of connecting archival collections and making relationships between dispersed materials accessible through a shared digital environment.
The project focused on the period from 1959 to 1969, a formative decade in the development of dance and the artistic environment surrounding Pina Bausch. A selection of archival materials from the participating collections was brought together to create a shared historical view rather than separate institutional narratives.
Archival Activation
A selection of 99 archival documents — 33 from each participating archive — formed the basis of an interactive chronological timeline. The project made relationships between people, works, events, places and time more visible across the participating collections.
The project also addressed a broader question for dance archives: how can archival structures represent an art form whose primary material is movement, and how can historical relationships become accessible without reducing dance to isolated documents?
Visual Research
Euphorie und Aufbruch Timeline — Sorting and grouping of 99 Documents (Viviani 2020)
Visual organization of the archival material became an important part of the research. The documents were also approached through comparison and juxtaposition, allowing historical relationships, aesthetic developments and recurring patterns to become visible in ways that complement conventional textual description.
This visual approach treated the archive as a field for observation as well as documentation. It supported attention to the movement and artistic qualities that may be difficult to communicate through text alone.
Oral History
The project also explored digital models for connecting heterogeneous archival information, including CIDOC CRM and FRBRoo. Oral History added another layer to the archival record through an interview with composer Juan Allende-Blin.
The interview connected personal testimony with the documentary record and contributed another perspective on the people, works and circumstances represented in the project.
Finding Your Own Voice
Within the project, Ricardo Viviani taught the semester-long course Finding Your Own Voice at Folkwang Universität der Künste. Students worked with historical photographs and other archival material and used their observations as impulses for contemporary choreographic work.
The course took place remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Students submitted their work as video, creating a further context in which archival observation, choreography and the moving image could be brought together.
Archival Material:
Project documentation; timeline material; selected archival documents; visual research; Oral History interview with Juan Allende-Blin; Finding Your Own Voice teaching material; publication material.
In this workshop, the professional choreographer and oral-historian Ricardo Viviani together with Sarah Walker, a fellow oral-historian will explore in which ways the awareness of non-verbal communication elements influence the outcome of an interview.
We are always communicating with our bodies. From postures to the placement of the body in space, these elements are constantly sending messages. By being aware of which non-verbal elements are important to observe, the interviewer can help the narrator feel more comfortable. A narrator that feels comfortable with the situation is freer to talk.
Of great importance are also the signals sent by the interviewer during an interview. Appropriate clothing that respects and eases the power structures at play during an interview, postures, gestures, help to engage the narrator. The body of the interviewer is just as important as the body of the narrator.
The analysis of video interviews can also benefit from the knowledge of non-verbals. Spoken language can acquire different colors and weights according to the complex interplay of non-verbals. Most oral-historians can adjust transcripts accordingly. This workshop will help to describe how these non-verbals are at play during the interview, thus helping to articulate the reasons for adjustments.
The workshop will consist of a theoretical introduction, examples that will be played out by the workshop leaders, followed by simulating situations and analyzing them. A group exchange of experiences will round-up this session.
Type: Publication · Documentary Film · Oral History Date: 2017 Context:Pina Bausch + New York, part of the series Geografia da Arte Role: Script Writer · Researcher Production: Producing Partners NYC in collaboration with the Pina Bausch Foundation Broadcast: Arte1, Brazil Locations: New York · Chicago · Woodstock · Wuppertal · Essen
Pina Bausch + New York explored the formative relationship between Pina Bausch and New York through archival research, Oral History and conversations with artists and people connected to her experiences in the United States.
The project was Ricardo Viviani’s first major project at the Pina Bausch Foundation after joining the institution in 2016. It brought together his new role as a researcher at the Foundation with experiences from his own history as a dancer and choreographer in the New York dance environment.
Viviani had first met Pina Bausch personally in New York after performances of Viktor at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Bausch stayed with dancer Manuel Alum at his loft in TriBeCa, together with her son. Viviani was part of Alum’s performing circle and had known him since his own years at Jacob’s Pillow.
This encounter revealed connections between Viviani’s own formation in the New York dance scene and Bausch’s formative experiences in the United States. When the documentary research began, these intersections became a starting point for tracing the people, places, teachers and artistic encounters connected to Bausch’s early development.
Research
The research extended across a wide range of dance and performing-arts archives and personal networks. Viviani worked with the archives of the Pina Bausch Foundation and the Deutsches Tanzarchiv Köln, as well as collections and institutions in the United States including the 92nd Street Y, Jacob’s Pillow, the New York Public Library’s Dance Collection and the archives of Juilliard School.
At the 92nd Street Y, where Pina Bausch had danced in New York for the first time, Viviani encountered an institution that was also part of his own history as a choreographer, having received a grant and presented work there. At Jacob’s Pillow, he returned to an archive and community he had known since 1980, when he was a scholarship student there, and worked with longtime archivist and curator Norton Owen.
The research also included conversations with dance scholars and critics including Mark Franko and Deborah Jowitt, as well as tracing places, people and artistic networks connected to New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Viviani also drew on his own study with Alfredo Corvino and his knowledge of the New York dance environment.
Oral History
The documentary developed an Oral History-based account of Pina Bausch’s formative relationship with New York. Interviews and archival research brought together memories of artists, teachers, collaborators and other witnesses, allowing aspects of Bausch’s early artistic development to be reconstructed through personal testimony and historical sources.
The resulting material provides a record of experiences and encounters that are not always visible in conventional accounts of Bausch’s biography, including the teachers, artistic communities and cultural environments that she encountered in New York and the United States.
Production
The opportunity to produce the interviews arose through an independent coincidence. Rolf Salomon Bausch received a request to collaborate with a New York production company developing a series about artists and geographical places. This led to a collaboration between Producing Partners NYC and the Pina Bausch Foundation.
Interviews and filming subsequently took place in Chicago, New York, Woodstock, Wuppertal and Essen. Although the production company was based in New York, the resulting series was produced for the Brazilian cable channel Arte1.
Producing Partners, led by Tatiana Issa and Guto Barra, was responsible for the production on the New York side.
Archival Material:
Film and production documentation; research notes; Oral History interviews; archival research material; correspondence and production material where preserved; related documentation concerning Pina Bausch’s relationship with New York.
Representative documentation of Ricardo Viviani’s long-running choreographic work for the Märchen zur Weihnachtszeit at Theater Hagen.
Type: Recurring Practice · Dance Education · Young Audiences · Choreography · Theatre Period: approximately ten years — documented through individual production records Institution: Theater Hagen, Hagen, Germany Role: Choreographer · Dance Educator Audience: Children · Families · School groups · Young audiences Status: Historical record · recurring institutional practice documented through individual productions and contemporary press
Record / Description
For approximately a decade, Ricardo Viviani was repeatedly engaged as choreographer for the Märchen zur Weihnachtszeit at Theater Hagen, contributing dance and choreography to a continuing series of productions for children, families and school audiences.
This recurring body of work is best understood as a distinct strand of Viviani’s practice rather than as a collection of unrelated individual productions. The productions combined theatre, music and dance and were presented as major seasonal events for young audiences at Theater Hagen.
The individual productions are documented separately in the archive. This record preserves the larger institutional and artistic relationship: the repeated creation of choreography for young audiences within the Christmas-period programme of Theater Hagen.
The Recurring Practice
The Märchen zur Weihnachtszeit occupied a particular position in the cultural life of Theater Hagen. Contemporary reporting describes the Christmas fairy tale as a long-established pre-Christmas tradition for schools in the region and records audiences drawn from several generations.
A contemporary report from November 2012, on Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse, stated that approximately 30,000 people of all generations were expected to see the production before Christmas, including numerous school classes. The report also describes the Christmas fairy tale as part of the pre-Christmas “curriculum” for many regional schools. It specifically discusses Ricardo Viviani’s choreography and its effect on the predominantly young audience.
The figure of 30,000 is retained here as a contemporary reported expected attendance figure for the 2012 production, not as a calculated cumulative audience figure for the entire period.
Dance and Choreography
Viviani’s role within the series was specifically choreographic. Contemporary Theater Hagen publications and press material repeatedly identify him as choreographer, including documentation for Hänsel und Gretel, Kalif Storch and König Drosselbart.
The 2012 contemporary review of Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse gives additional evidence of the artistic character of this work. It describes Viviani’s choreography as contributing to the atmosphere of the production and specifically connects his choreographic approach with the imagination of a child.
This recurring engagement therefore provides substantial evidence for the development of dance as an integral component of Viviani’s work for young audiences, within large-scale theatrical productions rather than only within dedicated educational workshops.
Young Audiences / Dance Education
The Theater Hagen Märchen work is an important part of the broader Dance Educator strand in Ricardo Viviani’s archive. The audience was not incidental: the productions were conceived and programmed specifically for children, families and school groups.
The Theater Hagen programme for Hänsel und Gretel explicitly describes the responsibility of presenting fairy tales to thousands of children entering the theatre space for the first time and experiencing the performance with all their senses. The production credits Ricardo Viviani with choreography.
The recurring Märchen practice therefore represents a different but complementary form of dance education from workshop-based projects such as Carl & children in Kleve or Carnaval da Dorotéia in Frankfurt: here, children encountered dance through professional theatre productions designed specifically for young audiences.
Production History
The individual production records currently documented in the archive include the Theater Hagen Christmas-period fairy-tale productions for which Ricardo Viviani’s choreographic involvement is recorded. These records should remain the principal sources for individual production facts, dates, collaborators, premieres and production details.
The broader production history includes, among others, Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse, Der Froschkönig, Hänsel und Gretel, Kalif Storch and König Drosselbart, alongside other productions documented in the existing Theater Hagen production records.
Public Reception / Contemporary Documentation
The surviving press material provides unusually valuable evidence of the scale and cultural position of the Märchen series.
In November 2012, TV58.de reported on Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse and described an expected audience of approximately 30,000 people of all generations, including numerous school classes. The article emphasizes the long-established relationship between the Christmas fairy tale and regional schools and discusses Viviani’s choreography as an important part of the production.
In November 2013, Lokalkompass Hagen reported on the Märchenwerkstatt for Der Froschkönig, identifying Ricardo Viviani as choreographer and describing the public workshop as an opportunity to see the production process and meet members of the creative team.
Contemporary material for Hänsel und Gretel, Kalif Storch and König Drosselbart further documents Viviani’s continuing choreographic role in the series.
Institutional Context
The importance of the Märchen series lies not only in the individual productions but also in its institutional continuity at Theater Hagen. The recurring format connected professional theatre-making with a large and returning young audience, including organised school attendance and family performances.
The available documentation indicates that the theatre treated these productions as an important part of its relationship with younger audiences, while the recurring engagement of Viviani established continuity in the choreographic language of the series.
Contribution / Significance
The Theater Hagen Märchen series represents a substantial body of work in Ricardo Viviani’s development as a choreographer working with young audiences.
It demonstrates that his work with children and families extended beyond isolated educational projects into sustained professional theatre practice, where choreography formed part of large-scale productions experienced by school groups, families and multigenerational audiences.
The contemporary evidence of large attendance, repeated school participation and the theatre’s stated responsibility toward first-time young theatre visitors gives this strand particular relevance to the archive’s developing Dance Educator / Young Audiences history.
Assessment / Relevance
This recurring Theater Hagen practice is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for a long-term young-audience dimension in Viviani’s career.
It should therefore be read alongside, rather than merged with, his school-based dance education projects, cultural mediation projects and later young-audience activities. Together these records establish a broader professional strand in which dance functions as artistic creation, communication and access to culture for younger generations.
Archival Material
Surviving and identified documentation includes: individual Theater Hagen production records; Theater Hagen season programmes and theatre newspapers; contemporary press coverage; Märchenwerkstatt documentation; production photographs and other surviving visual material; and the broader Theater Hagen production list.
The 30,000 figure is retained specifically as the contemporary reported expected audience for the 2012 production Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse. It should not currently be presented as a cumulative attendance figure for the entire approximately ten-year period.
Keywords
Theater Hagen · Märchen zur Weihnachtszeit · Christmas fairy tale · young audiences · children · families · school groups · dance education · Dance Educator · choreography · children’s theatre · family theatre · cultural education · Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse · Der Froschkönig · Hänsel und Gretel · Kalif Storch · König Drosselbart · Ricardo Viviani
This record documents the recurring institutional and artistic practice of Ricardo Viviani’s work as choreographer for the Märchen zur Weihnachtszeit at Theater Hagen. Individual productions remain the primary records for production-specific facts and should not be duplicated here. Contemporary press and institutional publications are used to document the scale, continuity and young-audience context of the series. Attendance figures are retained according to their original documentary meaning and are not converted into cumulative estimates without further evidence.
