Virtuelle Ausstellung „Das Gedächtnis des Tanzes” ist online

‘The Memory of Dance’ virtual exhibition now online

08.10.2014

The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (DDB) has launched its second virtual exhibition, ‘The Memory of Dance’. This detailed excursion through a history of disparate dance forms is interspersed with numerous multimedia illustrations and much complementary material and can be viewed online in the DDB.

The challenge of portraying the art of dance, by nature a transient art, in an exhibition was as daunting as it was rewarding – a task tackled with passion and erudition by curator Dr Silke Röckelein, responding to a commission from the DDB. Right from the outset her introductory text on the exhibition poses the fundamental question: how can dance, an example of intangible cultural heritage, be preserved for posterity and be made accessible, on demand, to the general public?

That answers to this question have been hazarded at various junctures in the past is revealed in the exhibition in sections such as ‘The Grammar of Dance’ and ‘Dance in Pictures’. The individual passages set out different theoretical and media approaches and methods, all of which were – and continue to be - aimed at capturing, analysing and portraying a given dance as an artistic act, a cultural practice and an aesthetic experience.

The exhibition presents texts that describe dances, sets out notation systems – texts on dance – and sheds light on new opportunities - spawned by new developments in media - to measure and simulate movement. Other chapters are devoted to illustration and to photographic and filmed sequences, which likewise aim to capture all aspects of the art form – musical accompaniment, movement in space and its sequential steps, and the gestures and clothing of the dancers.

Examining the different forms of dance from the viewpoints of tradition and ritual, society and expression and a sub-genre of the performing arts, the virtual exhibition offers an overview of past and present-day methods of recording and simulating dance movements with a view to archiving them and bringing them to life.

In an interview Dr. Röckelein emphasises the multimedia aspect of the subject, which lends itself to being explored in a virtual exhibition. ‘In view of the fact that, ideally, dance can only be documented using a combination of pictures, text, sound and film, and more recently computer programmes, a dance archive has to be a multimedia database. It’s the only way to come close to capturing it in its entirety. This multimedia dimension is possible with the internet. It also enables us, through the use of links, to break with prescribed, linear approaches and to place items in new and unexpected relations to one another.’

The Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek will use these unique opportunities to convey knowledge and culture in future virtual exhibitions: Exhibitions are already being prepared on ‘Film culture in flux – World War One and the cinema of the 2nd decade of the 20th century’, ‘The Dresden Maya Codex’ and ‘KA300 – 300 years of Karlsruhe’.

To 'The Memory of Dance' exhibition