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.
Post Scriptum — 30 August 2026
This entry is revisited as part of the continuing documentation of Ricardo Viviani’s work in Oral History, archival research and the reconstruction of dance histories through personal testimony and documentary sources.
Contribution / Ertrag:
The project brought together Viviani’s experience in dance and choreography with archival and Oral History research at the beginning of his work at the Pina Bausch Foundation. As a documentary publication, it made a history of Pina Bausch’s relationship with New York accessible through a combination of testimony, archival research and film. It also created a body of research material connecting individual memories and artistic networks with documented historical places and institutions.
Assessment / Relevanz:
The entry is relevant as an early example of the combination of Oral History, archival research and documentary production in Viviani’s work at the Pina Bausch Foundation. Its particular value lies in bringing personal testimony and dispersed archival evidence together to reconstruct aspects of an artistic history that are not fully contained in conventional biographical records. The project also marks an important point of continuity between Viviani’s earlier experience in the New York dance environment and his subsequent archival practice.
Keywords:
Pina Bausch; New York; Oral History; Documentary Film; Dance History; Dance Archives; Archival Research; Biography; Memory; Artistic Networks; Tanztheater; Pina Bausch Foundation; Producing Partners; Arte1; Geografia da Arte; Ricardo Viviani
External Links
Pina Bausch + New York — IMDb
Producing Partners NYC
Oral History at the Pina Bausch Archives
Internal Link
A cat named Pino — Ricardo Viviani
Archival Note: This page forms part of an ongoing personal archive documenting Ricardo Viviani’s professional work and activities over more than four decades. Names and other personal information appear where relevant to the documented work or collaboration. If you believe that information concerning you has been published incorrectly or should be reconsidered, please contact me.