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.
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.
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.
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.
Post Scriptum — 30 August 2026
This page preserves an English summary of the Suspilne Kultura report as documentary material relating to the December 2025 workshop in Kyiv. It should be read as a secondary account of the workshop, not as a transcript or first-person report by Ricardo Viviani.
Contribution / Ertrag:
As a press report, the article documents how the workshop was perceived and communicated outside the project’s own materials. It records the interaction between dance researchers, museum specialists and Oral History practitioners and makes visible the institutional questions surrounding the preservation of dance in Ukraine. The report also provides an independent account of Viviani’s methodological emphasis on helping practitioners articulate knowledge embedded in dance.
Assessment / Relevanz:
The article is relevant as contemporary external documentation of the workshop and of the institutional discussion surrounding dance heritage at NAMU. Its value within this archive lies less in establishing the historical significance of the workshop than in preserving how the encounter was documented publicly: through questions of embodied knowledge, oral history, museum practice, cultural memory and the visibility of Ukrainian dance.
Keywords:
Press Report; Ukrainian Dance; Dance Heritage; Oral History; Embodied Knowledge; Archival Activation; National Art Museum of Ukraine; NAMU; Museum Practice; Cultural Memory; Contemporary Dance; Documentation; Ukraine; Ricardo Viviani; Maria Kabatsii
External Links
Suspilne Kultura — Рух як музейний експонат: як у НХМУ працюють над можливістю архівувати танець
Impulse Transformation Platform — Oral History for Dance Heritage
How Do You Dance in a War Zone? (2023) Maria Falconer
Internal Links
Journey to Kyiv — Dancing against Time in Kyiv
Oral History for Dance Heritage — Workshop Entry
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.