Bevara Rörelse : en fenomenologisk studie av dans och arkiv

Dance as an art form is strongly connected to the experience of movement. Dance is also connected to the experience that occur in the relation between the audience and the performers on stage. Therefore, information is based on subjective impressions. It’s something limited and framed in a certain time and space that arises, lives and dissolves in the body and in the now. To add the archival function in this context may create tension due to the notion of the archive as static and dead. The thesis aims to examine the seemingly paradoxical relation between dance and archive, with the questions which methods is used to safeguard dance? Are these methods suitable for safeguarding dance? How can these methods develop? Six deep interviews have been held, three of them with archivists dealing with dance material, and three of them with contemporary dancers and choreographers in order to understand the field from “both sides”. It explores preservation methods for dance as intangible cultural heritage with phenomenology and postmodern archival theory. By following the phenomenological ideas of Max van Manen, the thesis also examine a preservation method based on phenomenological interview. With support from the theories of Terry Cook and Wolfgang Ernst the thesis simultaneously opens up to new ideas of what an archive can be. The conclusions I have made is that contemporary dance artists take on the archival concept can inspire traditional archive in developing their preservation methods. Another conclusion is that documenting subjective experience of dance can enrich the dance archive and deepen the understanding of dance