Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V. staff and members are available to advise on artistic projects, from initial ideas for dealing with the cultural heritage of dance to concrete enquiries about more complex research and possible academic advice and dramaturgical support for dance productions. Please send your enquiries about such offers up to project-related cooperations by e-mail to the following address: info@tanzarchiv-leipzig.de. Below you will find some exemplary projects from recent years in which individual members of the Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V. were more or less directly involved or which were created in cooperation with TAL e.V.. Tanz Digital (2021) Evaluation of the Alliance
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After studying musicology, Petermann came to the Central House of Culture, where he was initially tasked with setting up a department for folk dance. This eventually developed through his dedicated collecting and research activities into the Tanzarchiv Leipzig. Thus, Petermann’s estate also reveals the history of the Tanzarchiv. His correspondence with the Central House for Folk Art, the Academy of Arts as well as dancers and dance institutions in Germany and abroad testifies to his important role in the political-cultural life of the GDR. The Petermann collection also provides insights into a creative, restless personality who was always developing new
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Throughout his life, Jean Weidt strove to give expressive dance a political dimension. With his company Die Roten Tänzer (The Red Dancers), he organised socially critical dance evenings in Berlin from 1929. Weidt was thus an important protagonist of the political theatre of the Weimar Republic. For him, dance was a mouthpiece for issues of the working class and the oppressed. In 1933 he emigrated to France and worked in Paris, Moscow and Prague until the end of the Second World War. He became internationally known with his group Ballets Weidt, for which he created, among other things, the choreography
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One of Mary Wigman’s most famous students was Gret Palucca, who soon achieved a similar level of fame as a solo dancer and also established her own school in Dresden in 1925. After the Second World War, she was able to re-found and expand her school and educate generations of dancers – despite constant conflicts with cultural functionaries of the GDR – not only physically but also spiritually and artistically to creativity and independence. As a founding member of the Academy of Arts of the GDR, she was its vice-president from 1965-1970, which is why Palucca’s actual estate is in
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Among Laban’s students was the German dancer and dance teacher Jenny Gertz (1891-1966), who became known mainly for her dance work with children. Gertz’s communist commitment led to the closure of her school in Halle/Saale by the Gestapo during National Socialism. She emigrated to Prague and later to England, where she continued teaching children’s dance. After the end of the Second World War, Gertz returned to Halle/Saale, where her pedagogical principles and methods were hardly recognised. Her estate at the Tanzarchiv Leipzig contains letters, manuscripts and teaching materials as well as photographs and short films. Research
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The founder of modern dance in Germany, Mary Wigman began her dance career in Émile Jaques-Dalcroze’s school of rhythmic gymnastics in Hellerau. In 1912 she left Hellerau and became a pupil and collaborator of Rudolf von Laban in Ascona, Munich and Zurich. Wigman’s work as one of the best-known dancers and choreographers of expressive dance contributed greatly to the establishment of dance as an independent art form. In 1920 she opened her school in Dresden, which she continued to run until 1942. During the war she moved to Leipzig, where she continued to teach under increasingly difficult conditions. In the
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One of the most important holdings of the Tanzarchiv Leipzig is the estate of the dancer, choreographer and dance theorist Rudolf von Laban. With his “School for Art” on Monte Verità near Ascona, he developed ideas for a new movement pedagogy and a movement script from 1911 to 1917, which he further perfected at the end of the 1920s (Kinetography or Labanotation). Due to his artistic, theoretical and pedagogical impulses, he is considered a pioneer and co-founder of modern dance in Germany, where he also had a significant influence on amateur dance through movement choruses. In the 1930s, Laban also
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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
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Kurt Petermann: Tanzbibliographie. Verzeichnis der in deutscher Sprache veröffentlichten Schriften und Aufsätze zum Bühnen-, Gesellschafts-, Kinder-, Volks- und Turniertanz sowie zur Tanzwissenschaft, Tanzmusik und zum Jazz, Registerband. Herausgegeben von der Akademie der Künste, Tanzarchiv, Leipzig: VEB Bibliographisches Institut 1987 Kurt Petermann: Tanzbibliographie. Verzeichnis der in deutscher Sprache veröffentlichten Schriften und Aufsätze zum Bühnen-, Gesellschafts-, Kinder-, Volks- und Turniertanz sowie zur Tanzwissenschaft, Tanzmusik und zum Jazz, Band 3. Herausgegeben von der Akademie der Künste, Tanzarchiv der DDR, Leipzig, 2. unveränderte Auflage, München/New York/London/Paris: K. G. Saur 1982 Kurt Petermann: Tanzbibliographie. Verzeichnis der in deutscher Sprache veröffentlichten Schriften und Aufsätze zum Bühnen-,
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With the approval of the DFG the official founding of the NFDI4Culture was made possible and happened on the 1st of october 2020. The performing arts are represented within the different committees, panels and operating procedures by the chairmen of the society of theatre studies (gtw), the society for dance research (GTF), multiple associations (AG ARCHIV, THESID, VDT) as well as individual collections and archives. One of them is the dance archive Leipzig with the institute for theatre studies.   NFDI4Culture’s work programme consists of 6 task areas and the performing arts play a role in most of them:  TA1: Digitisation,
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