Title: Oral History for Dance Heritage — Kyiv
Date: December 2025
Location: Kyiv, Ukraine
Role: Lecturer, workshop leader, oral-history practitioner
Context: National Art Museum of Ukraine (NAMU) / International Charitable Foundation Impulse Transformation Platform / Goethe-Institut Ukraine
Summary
In December 2025, Ricardo Viviani traveled to Kyiv for a six-day intensive workshop, Oral History for Dance Heritage, bringing together Ukrainian dance researchers and practitioners, museum professionals and historians. The project explored how Oral History could be adapted to document and preserve dance heritage in the Ukrainian context. Viviani drew on his experience as a dancer, choreographer and oral historian, including his long-term work developing oral-history practices at the Pina Bausch Foundation.
The workshop addressed a fundamental challenge in documenting dance: much of dancers’ and choreographers’ knowledge is embodied and has traditionally received little verbal or archival articulation. The work therefore focused not simply on recording testimony, but on developing ways of helping practitioners articulate the depth and specificity of their knowledge of dance.
The project also situated dance heritage within contemporary Ukrainian cultural identity. Participants discussed gaps in the documentation of Ukrainian dance, including practices and histories that had remained largely within personal memories and private archives, particularly as a result of Soviet-era cultural frameworks. The workshop considered Oral History as one means of making these histories visible and contributing to their preservation.
Following the workshop, NAMU began developing a methodology and protocols for preserving dance within a museum collection, including the use of Oral History as a tool for documenting an ephemeral art form. The project therefore extended beyond the workshop itself toward an institutional approach to Activating Archives and incorporating contemporary dance into museum and heritage practices.
Significance
This project represents a development of Viviani’s work from Oral History as documentation toward Activating Archives: applying accumulated knowledge from dance, choreography and oral history to a new institutional and cultural context, with the potential to alter how dance heritage is documented, collected and preserved.
Outcome
Following the workshop, NAMU initiated the development of protocols for the preservation and museum collection of dance, including Oral History as a documentation method.
Related Material
- Journey to Kyiv / Dancing against time in Kyiv— Ricardo Viviani’s first-person account: ricardoviviani.com
- Рух як музейний експонат: як у НХМУ працюють над можливістю архівувати танець — Suspilne Kultura: suspilne.media