Dance archives and dance collections have the task of preserving and making accessible the intangible heritage of the ephemeral art of dance in a diverse and lively manner. Germany has a rich dance history and currently a diverse dance scene, whose creative achievements are often very fleeting despite modern recording techniques. The Association of German Dance Archives (VDT) works closely together to improve the accessibility and visibility of dance knowledge.

The dance archives collect and preserve a wide range of historical and contemporary materials that document the development of dance – from photos, videos and programmes to sheet music, letters, costumes and interviews. The archive materials must be carefully preserved in order to extend the life of the collection. Spatial and climatic conditions, scarce human resources, technical progress and digitisation constantly present the archives with new challenges. The collections are made accessible to researchers, educators and the interested public. This requires both careful cataloguing of the holdings and the development of suitable search and presentation methods. In addition, dance archives function as research centres that are a valuable source for academic work, exhibitions and publications. They promote academic engagement with dance history and theory.

Building on many years of collaboration within the VDT, the Cultural Heritage Dance project gives dance archives the opportunity to focus on a very special part of their archival work, share their working methods and highlight their areas of expertise. The following will be achieved as part of this project: The German Dance Archive Cologne is digitising and publishing selected dance books from the 16th and 17th centuries online. The Performing Arts Archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin is dedicating itself to the Tatjana Gsovsky-Gert Reinholm Archive, while the Leipzig Dance Archive is focusing on the dance history of the GDR, in particular the works of Patricio Bunster and Gret Palucca. In cooperation with Motionbank, the Media Library for Dance and Theatre is testing new tools for video annotation in everyday archival work in order to make dance documentation even more accessible. In addition, the Dance Film Institute in Bremen is producing short documentary films that present the digitisation projects of the dance archives in the context of the project, thus offering an insight into the preservation work.

The results of the project are constantly being added to and archive material is being made digitally accessible here: tanz-digital.de.