Productions – Page 2 – Ricardo Viviani

07 Dec 202503 Sep 2026

Oral History for Dance Heritage – Intensive Workshop

Oral History Intensive Workshop Team - Kyiv December 2025 — Oral History Intensive Workshop Team — Kyiv, December 2025

Type: Workshop · Oral History / Dance Heritage
Date: 1–6 December 2025
Context: Oral History for Dance Heritage
Location: National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv, Ukraine
Role: Workshop Leader · Oral Historian · Choreographer
Duration: Six-day intensive
Participants: Dance researchers and museum professionals from Ukraine
Translator: Karina Solka
Organisers: Impulse Transformation Platform · Goethe-Institut Ukraine · National Art Museum of Ukraine
Status: Historical Record

Oral History for Dance Heritage was a six-day intensive in Kyiv exploring how Oral History can contribute to the documentation, preservation and activation of dance heritage.

The workshop brought together dance researchers and museum professionals to consider the particular challenges of documenting an ephemeral art form. It connected artistic experience, Oral History, cultural memory and museum practice within the Ukrainian context.

The Workshop

The intensive drew on more than a decade of Viviani’s work as an Oral Historian in the performing arts, together with his experience as a dancer and choreographer.

A central concern was the relationship between spoken testimony and the knowledge carried through dance. Oral History can make aspects of experience, memory and artistic lineage visible and narratable, while recognising that embodied knowledge cannot be fully contained in words. The transmission of dance heritage also takes place through embodied practice, relationships and forms of knowledge that may remain only partially articulated.

The workshop therefore approached dance heritage as both documentary material and living cultural knowledge. Questions of memory, testimony, documentation, preservation and future access were considered in relation to the specific conditions of dance and to the Ukrainian cultural context.

Kyiv and the Ukrainian Context

The workshop took place during a period in which questions of cultural memory, heritage and continuity have particular significance in Ukraine. The encounter brought international Oral History experience into dialogue with Ukrainian dance researchers, museum professionals and practitioners working within conditions shaped by war, displacement and cultural transformation.

The exchange also highlighted the importance of recognising dance as part of cultural history rather than treating it solely as an ephemeral performance practice.

From Workshop to Collaborative Work

The intensive formed part of a wider collaborative process concerned with the development of approaches to documenting and preserving dance heritage in Ukraine. This process contributed to the Protocol for Archiving Dance, developed in Kyiv in 2025 by Daryna Yakymova, Viktor Ruban and Ricardo Viviani.

The resulting work addresses the relationship between documentary records, Oral History, embodied knowledge and the continuing life of dance heritage. Further methodological and working materials remain part of the associated research archive.

Archival Material

Primary and related sources:
Official invitation dated 24 November 2025; workshop documentation; presentation materials; Oral History interviews conducted in Kyiv; Protocol for Archiving Dance, Kyiv 2025; related project documentation.

07 Dec 202503 Sep 2026

Oral History for Dance Heritage – Press

Ricardo Viviani and Viktor Ruban during the Oral History for Dance Heritage workshop in Kyiv — Ricardo Viviani and Viktor Ruban. Photo: Solomiia Kozolup / Suspilne Kultura

Type: Press Report · English Summary
Date: 15 December 2025
Context: Oral History for Dance Heritage, National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU), Kyiv
Author: Maria Kabatsii
Publication: Suspilne Kultura
Subject: Archiving Ukrainian Dance Heritage

Press Report: How NAMU Works on Archiving Ukrainian Dance

This page presents an English summary of a report by Maria Kabatsii, published by Suspilne Kultura. The journalist attended one day of the six-day intensive Oral History for Dance Heritage at the National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU) in Kyiv and its concluding round table. Her report documents how dance researchers, practitioners, museum workers and historians were working to develop approaches to preserving and archiving Ukrainian dance heritage. The report focuses particularly on the adaptation of Oral History to dance and on the institutional challenges involved in bringing an ephemeral art form into museum and archival practice.

The project, Oral History for Dance Heritage, was organized by the Impulse Transformation Platform with support from the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine and in partnership with NAMU. According to the report, Ricardo Viviani was invited as a lecturer and Oral History specialist from the Pina Bausch Foundation, and researchers from different Ukrainian cities worked together with museum specialists to adapt the method to the Ukrainian dance context.

Kabatsii’s report emphasizes the difficulty of documenting dance through conventional verbal or archival means. Viviani describes the challenge as creating ways to talk about dance and to help practitioners express the depth of their knowledge. The article places this question within a wider discussion of the relationship between embodied experience, memory and the documentation of dance.

The report also describes gaps in the documentation of Ukrainian dance. Historian Taras Samchuk points to dance as a comparatively neglected research field, while curator and project initiator Viktor Ruban discusses the loss of experimental dance histories that were not documented and therefore remained primarily in personal memories and private archives. The article connects these gaps with broader questions of cultural memory and identity in Ukraine.

Final round table at the National Art Museum of Ukraine during the Oral History for Dance Heritage project — Final round table at NAMU. From left: Viktor Ruban, Khrystyna-Maria Slobodyaniuk, Taras Samchuk, Liudmyla Mova, Daryna Yakymova, Ricardo Viviani and Karina Soika. Photo: Solomiia Kozolup / Suspilne Kultura

The article places the workshop within NAMU’s recent efforts to make dance visible as an artistic medium in its own right. It refers to the museum’s earlier project “Dance in the War Zone?”, which brought contemporary dance into the museum and established a basis for subsequent collaboration between the institution and dance researchers.

Daryna Yakymova speaking during the Oral History for Dance Heritage project — Daryna Yakymova. Photo: Flora Borovyk / Suspilne Kultura

A central point in the report is the development of museum approaches for preserving dance. Daryna Yakymova explains that NAMU intends to develop storage protocols for an ephemeral art form and identifies Oral History as a method that could help document and archive this heritage. She also describes the lack of specialists with specific knowledge of dance history, terminology and archival requirements within museum institutions.

Interview recording training with Ricardo Viviani during the Oral History for Dance Heritage workshop — Interview recording training with Ricardo Viviani. Photo: Flora Borovyk / Suspilne Kultura

The report also documents practical interview training during the workshop. Alongside the methodological discussion, participants considered the practical conditions of recording and preserving oral histories and the institutional resources required to maintain a digital archive. Viviani identifies institutional support and digital infrastructure as significant challenges and stresses the need to distinguish the documentation of dance history from the process of creating dance itself.

The article concludes by connecting the preservation of Ukrainian dance with cultural memory and identity. It presents the attempt to archive dance as relevant not only within Ukraine but also internationally, because documenting Ukrainian dance can make histories and practices that remain insufficiently known accessible to wider audiences.

Archival Material:
Press article; press photographs; workshop documentation; interview-training documentation; related project material concerning Oral History for Dance Heritage and the archiving of Ukrainian dance.

31 Aug 202504 Sep 2026

Crafting Oral Histories in Dance and the Arts

International Oral History Association Conference
16-19 September 2025

Re-Thinking Oral History

Beyond Words:
Crafting Oral Histories in Dance and the Arts

Visual Presentation by Ricardo Viviani
18th of September 2025 11:00

Knowledge that is not documented often faces the risk of being forgotten.
With the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs), knowledge that is primarily non-logocentric —knowledge that doesn’t rely on words or traditional text— risks falling behind in the rapidly evolving digital landscape.
In fields like the performing arts, particularly in theatrical dance (the focus ofmy oral history community), the processes of decision-making, contextualization, and articulating non-logocentric knowledge into oral histories require specific skills.
These skills can be shared and expanded, especially within communities like theatrical dance, which transcend national borders and foster deep, personal communication and skill exchange over decades.
In this presentation, I will share my approach to creating oral histories indance, which often reflect broader transnational social and politicaldevelopments from the 1940s to the present. My methodology aims toarticulate this knowledge and create transnational legacy maps that preserveand highlight the richness of non-logocentric knowledge.

IOHA Kraków 2025

IOHA 2025 Session Abstract

IOHA 2025 Speakers

15 May 202530 Aug 2026

The Injustice of Being Silenced

Type: Presentation · Online Contribution
Title: The Injustice of Being Silenced
Date: 15–17 May 2025
Context: I International Scientific and Practical Conference Personality as a Space for Challenging and Forming the Culture (under Martial Law)
Location: National Academy of Managerial Staff of Culture and Arts, Kyiv, Ukraine
Organizer: Impulse Transformation Platform
Role: Presenter · Researcher

The Injustice of Being Silenced examines the relationship between artistic formation, personal value systems and the social and political environments in which artists come of age. The presentation draws on Ricardo Viviani’s experience both as a dance artist and as an Oral Historian working with life histories of dancers and other practitioners.

The presentation begins from the observation that artistic expression may register aspects of a person’s historical and social experience before those experiences can be fully analyzed or consciously articulated. Dance, theatre, music and performance can therefore provide traces of lived histories that exceed what can later be expressed verbally.

Viviani connects this observation to his own artistic formation during the Brazilian Military Regime (1964–1985), when dance, music and theatre developed forms of expression shaped by political constraint and resistance. The presentation considers comparable situations in other cultural contexts, including Ireland, Germany and the Balkans, where artists worked under political and social pressure.

A central concept is the idea of “anti-biographies”. Viviani uses this term for sequences of events in a person’s biography that become meaningfully contextualized through questioning and the construction of narrative. In this sense, the interview does not simply reproduce a biography already known; it can bring relationships between experience, context and value into articulation. The process has an affinity with oral traditions, in which knowledge is transmitted in forms responsive to the needs and circumstances of the present.

The presentation also considers the relationship between embodied and verbal knowledge. While Oral History is transmitted through the voices of living individuals, artistic works may embody a broader spectrum of lived experience that cannot always be directly articulated in words. Artistic expression can therefore become an additional source through which personal and collective histories may be approached.

The accompanying research notes develop these questions through case studies including Ballet Stagium and the Dzi Croquettes under the Brazilian Military Regime, as well as examples concerning divided Germany, Ireland, the Yugoslav Wars and other situations in which artistic expression developed under political or social duress. These examples examine how cultural agents developed forms, vocabularies and practices capable of expressing experiences that could not always be stated directly.

The presentation connects these observations to Viviani’s broader practice as a choreographer and Oral Historian. His personal history is not treated only as biographical information, but also as part of the perspective through which research questions are formed and artistic expression is understood.

Archival Material:
Conference abstract; presentation notes; presentation material; related research and bibliographic notes; documentation of the online contribution.

28 Nov 202306 Sep 2026

Methodologies and Functions of Oral History

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.

02 Sep 202305 Jul 2026

A Oralidade na Dança

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.

São Paulo Escola de Dança

28 Oct 202211 Jan 2026

The Artistic Drive of Jean Cébron

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

Dance Studies Association

01 Sep 202203 Sep 2026

Sharing the Material is Sharing the Knowledge

Euphorie und Aufbruch timeline showing the visual organization of archival documents — *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.