The Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V. association, in cooperation with the Institute of Theatre Studies and the Leipzig University Library, promotes the accessibility and research of the Tanzarchiv’s collection holdings.
With events, publications, and artistic projects, the work of the association aims in particular at the public communication of the collections as well as the topics and questions connected with them in various contexts.
The cultural heritage of dance in Germany is distributed among many memorial institutions, archives and collections, most of which are united in the Association of German Dance Archives where they also pursue joint projects.
Applications for membership and collaboration in the Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V. can be made at any time and are always welcome!
History of the Tanzarchiv Leipzig
The dance archive was founded in 1957 by Dr. Kurt Petermann at the Central House for Culture to document and promote folk dance practice. It gradually expanded into a documentation and research centre for all areas of dance and movement culture. In 1975, the institution became a branch of the Academy of Arts (East Berlin) as the Dance Archive of the GDR.
After the end of the GDR, the Free State of Saxony committed itself (in the State Treaty on the Dissolution of the Academy of Arts of the GDR) to continue the Dance Archive Leipzig for joint use by the University of Leipzig and the Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy University of Music and Theatre. To this purpose, the dance archive was transferred to the custody of the Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V. association in 1993.
The financial support of this association by the Free State of Saxony ended in 2011 with the transfer of the collection to the Leipzig University Library. Since then, the holdings are preserved there as part of the special collections, accessible for general use.
Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V.
As a non-profit association, TAL e.V. sees its task primarily in promoting knowledge about dance and the examination of the history and present, theory and practice of dance. Founded in the early 1990s to enable state funding of the dance archive under new custody, TAL e.V. today serves to convey the cultural knowledge associated with the holdings and to promote both scholarly and artistic engagement with them.
The spectrum of our activities and services includes cooperation with the Leipzig University Library in indexing, making accessible, and commenting on the holdings; our own research projects with publications; the integration of the collections in teaching at the Institute of Theatre Studies; the connection of the dance knowledge contained in the Leipzig Dance Archive with similar national and international institutions as well as advising and supporting artistic projects and productions that deal with the cultural heritage in the field of dance. Thus, the mediation of historical traditions and contexts of dance is at the same time about the exchange with today’s contemporary dance practice.
If you would also like to become a member of the Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V., you can fill out the following documents and send it back to us. We are looking forward to meet you!