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.
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.
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.
