Digital Dance Archive

In January 2021, the Tanzarchiv Berlin steering committee invited representatives from two pioneering projects in the field of dance/archive/digitization to lead an interactive workshop: Prof. Florian Jenett and David Rittershaus from the University of Mainz of the Motion Bank project and Prof. Bernhard Thull from Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences of the Digital Pina Bausch Archive.

Motion Bank has since 2010 been exploring the possibilities of digitally recording and documenting dance and has worked on, among other projects, the video annotation tool Piecemaker in collaboration with The Forsythe Company.

For the flagship project of the Digital Pina Bausch Archive, a team from Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences has since 2011 been working together with the dancers and actors of the Pina Bausch Company to process the choreographer’s comprehensive archive.

During the extensive workshop around 45 participants, among which artists, students, archivists, researchers and journalists, discussed questions such as: How could dance and movement processes be represented in a digital archive? How should notions such as body memoryand body knowledge be handled in a digital archive?