Key Words
Archive, Body Memory, Dance, Heritage,About
What the Body Remembers. Dance Heritage Today is the Akademie der Künste’s month-long special event series that includes an exhibition on 20th-century dance history showing archival collections, iconic photographs and film clips, accompanied by performances of more than 20 current dance productions that continue to write the legacy of contemporary modern dance.
The legacy and heritage of dance is immaterial. Yet contemporary dancers and choreographers are still building on an incredibly rich and powerful modern history, which covers more or less the entire 20th century. Artists such as Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman and Valeska Gert stand for emancipation, for liberation from gender roles, for utopian awakenings and political appropriation, but also for resistance against societal conventions. Post-war modernism behaved in similar ways, be it dance theatre in Germany, Buth in Japan, modern and post-modern dance in the United States or contemporary dance in France and Belgium. They each contribute to “The Century of Dance”, a subject to which the Akademie der Künste is dedicating an exhibition, a festival, an international campus and a book publication, knowing full well that we are assuming a perspective from Germany and Europe. The topicality of dance heritage worldwide is gaining momentum and visibility; in Germany, above all through the activities of TANZFONDS ERBE over the past eight years. In the special event series at the Hanseatenweg venue, the heritage of Expressionist dance, as well as pieces ranging from Merce Cunningham and Tatsumi Hijikata to Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Xavier Le Roy, were performed as examples of contemporary art.
In his capacity as a member of the curatorial team, Ong Keng Sen gave several lectures including ‘Intercultural Archives: The Dance Archive Box Project’ on 30 August 2019, and ‘About the Archives of Sardono W. Kusumo’ on 13 September 2019, both held at Studiofoyer, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany.
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Printed Matter
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