PHAIDRA – Digital collections

MNEMEDANCE (acronym of Memory in Motion. Re-Membering Dance History) aims at inquiring into the relationship between dance and memory to rethink dance history as a discipline that can make an impact also in adjacent areas of the arts and humanities. Dance history will gain from retrieving memory as a tool because the efficacy of memory lies in the possibility of tracing the past understood as an ongoing process rather than a sum of acquired knowledge. In dance, memory is always active because it implies the movement of the bodies performing and perceiving it. MNEMEDANCE investigates the dancing body as a tool for remembering and archiving experiences and cultures, and movement as a strategy for preserving and transforming meaning. It also aims at questioning the canonical genealogies of artists and traditions that historians have often assumed without taking into account forms of removals, oblivion, or resistance. It aims as well at challenging the common assumption that dance is a form of ephemeral and non-reproducible knowledge, analyzing the role of dancers and choreographers in the construction of collective knowledge and memories, their preservation, transmission, and accessibility.