Record / Description
This record documents a period of collaboration in Kleve connecting dance, museums, schools and cultural education. From 2009 onward, Ricardo Viviani worked with schools and cultural institutions in Kleve, bringing dance and choreographic practice into encounters with visual art and museum exhibitions.
The surviving documentation shows a form of artistic education in which dance was not simply an additional activity for young people. Movement, spatial perception, bodily experience and choreographic practice became ways of encountering, interpreting and responding to artworks.
The collaboration developed principally through the network connecting Museum Kurhaus Kleve, participating schools including Karl Kisters Realschule, and the NRW state programme Kultur und Schule.
Museum and Education
The Museum Kurhaus Kleve’s documentation of Schule Kunst Museum records a year-long collaboration between the museum and five Kleve secondary schools. In 2009, students worked with exhibitions including Ettore Spalletti and with works by Stephan Balkenhol and Ewald Mataré from the museum collection. Their responses included visual and performing arts, photography, video and dance performances.
The museum identifies Ricardo Viviani as the international choreographer and dancer who worked with the students through funding from the NRW state programme Kultur und Schule. The students were not only recipients of art education but became artistic participants, presenting their own works and performances within the museum.
This institutional documentation establishes the central character of the Kleve collaboration: dance entered the museum-school relationship as an artistic practice and as a way of engaging with visual art.
Dance in the Museum
The Kleve projects explored the possibility of approaching visual art through bodily and spatial experience. Dance provided another form of attention to artworks: through movement, students could investigate space, scale, relation, perception and physical response rather than relying exclusively on verbal explanation.
This approach became particularly explicit in the later Carl & children / Tanzprojekt zu Carl Andre project. The surviving project documentation describes students engaging with Carl Andre’s sculptures through bodily and spatial perception, developing movement and choreographic responses to the works.
In this context, dance functioned simultaneously as artistic practice, a method of observation and a form of learning.
Pedagogical Development
The collaboration with Kultur und Schule also formed part of Ricardo Viviani’s own continuing development as an educator. His pedagogical studies and professional development include work with Christa Coogan and continuing-education activities associated with the NRW programme Kultur und Schule, with Anja Weber, Maria Speth and Nadja Raszewski.
His studies also included the Landesmusikakademie NRW — Pädagogisches Basisseminar I und II, with van Almsick, Schneider, Levkau and Jendrkowiak. These experiences form part of the pedagogical background to his later work connecting dance, embodied learning, cultural education and artistic practice.
The inclusion of this training is significant because the Kleve collaboration was not only a transfer of existing dance knowledge into a school and museum environment. It also involved an ongoing development of the pedagogical methods through which that knowledge could be shared.
Projects and Activities
2009 — Schule Kunst Museum / Museum Kurhaus Kleve
Students from several Kleve secondary schools worked with exhibitions at Museum Kurhaus Kleve and developed their own artistic responses. The museum’s documentation records dance performances among the resulting works and identifies Ricardo Viviani as the choreographer and dancer supporting the students through Kultur und Schule.
2010 — Workshop on the Works of Ewald Mataré
A further workshop connected dance and the encounter with visual art. Contemporary documentation is preserved in the Tanzen macht Schlau! archive.
2011/2012 — Carl & children / Tanzprojekt zu Carl Andre
A dance and education project developed with students in relation to the work of Carl Andre. The surviving documentation presents bodily perception, spatial experience, somatic thinking and movement as ways of engaging with sculpture.
The project was documented as an Endrundenteilnehmer in the 2011/2012 Kinder zum Olymp! competition. The surviving certificate identifies Karl Kisters Realschule, Kleve, and Ricardo Viviani as project partners.
2011/2012 — Klever Klangnacht / Karl Kisters Realschule
The NRW Kultur und Schule documentation records Ricardo Viviani as the artist working with Karl Kisters Realschule Kleve-Kellen in the 2011/2012 school year. The project is described as interdisciplinary and identifies body movement and dance as artistic and emotional forms of expression. It involved approximately 20 students and continued throughout the school year as a continuous measure.
Contribution / Significance
The Kleve collaborations form an important strand in Ricardo Viviani’s development of dance as a medium of cultural education. Their significance lies in the movement between institutions and forms of knowledge: museum and school, visual art and dance, observation and bodily experience, artwork and student response.
The work demonstrates an approach in which dance can enter the museum not merely as performance, but as a method for encountering and interpreting art.
The Carl & children project represents a documented culmination of this strand. Its selection as an Endrundenteilnehmer in the 2011/2012 Kinder zum Olymp! competition provides recognition of the school–artist collaboration, while the surviving project documentation preserves the particular role of dance and embodied learning within it.
Primary Documentation
Tanzen macht Schlau! remains the principal surviving contemporary documentation for this strand of work. The blog records projects and activities in Kleve from 2009 onward, including workshops connected with Ettore Spalletti, Ewald Mataré and Carl Andre.
The public presentation of this historical documentation is currently being reviewed with regard to privacy and data minimisation, particularly where historical photographs may contain identifiable children. The archival value of the surviving documentation is preserved while its public presentation is being reassessed.
Archival Material
Surviving material includes project documentation, photographs, flyers, school and museum references, the Tanzen macht Schlau! blog archive, and the Kinder zum Olymp! certificate documenting Carl & children / Tanzprojekt zu Carl Andre as an Endrundenteilnehmer in 2011/2012.
External Links
Museum Kurhaus Kleve — Schule Kunst Museum, 2009
Kultur und Schule — Klever Klangnacht
Tanzen macht Schlau!
Internal Links
Três Ensaios (e o resto)
IRIBIRI
Carnaval da Dorotéia — Tanzen mit Dorothee
Archival Note
Archival Status: Historical Record — incomplete / ongoing archival reconstruction.
This page is an umbrella record for Ricardo Viviani’s documented collaborations in Kleve involving dance, museums, schools and cultural education. It does not replace individual archival records or the contemporary documentation of the projects themselves.
External institutional sources are used where they independently document the collaboration. The Kinder zum Olymp! Endrunde status is documented by the surviving certificate held in the archive.
The Tanzen macht Schlau! blog is retained as an important contemporary source, while its public presentation is subject to ongoing privacy and GDPR review.