Berlin | What the Body Remembers - The Century of Dance festival

The Akademie der Künste presents an international event in Berlin 24 August-21 September, to celebrate The Century of Dance. 'What the Body Remembers' is an exhibition, a dance performance festival, an international campus and book publication, presenting perspectives on the modern history of dance, from Germany, Europe. Asia and beyond.

The 20th century is the century of dance.

The legacy and heritage of dance is immaterial. Yet contemporary dancers and choreographers are still building on an incredibly rich and powerful modern history, which covers more or less the entire 20th century. Artists such as Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman and Valeska Gert stand for emancipation, for liberation from gender roles, for utopian awakenings and political appropriation, but also for resistance against societal conventions. Post-war modernism behaved in similar ways, be it dance theatre in Germany, Butoh in Japan, modern and postmodern dance in the United States or contemporary dance in France and Belgium.

They each contribute to The Century of Dance, a subject to which the Akademie der Künste is dedicating an exhibition, a festival, an international campus and a book publication, knowing full well that we are assuming a perspective from Germany and Europe.

Dance archives in Cologne, Leipzig, Bremen and Berlin are showing unique centrepieces from their collections in a joint exhibition for the first time.

The programme curators are: Heike Albrecht, Gabriele Brandstetter, Nele Hertling, Johannes Odenthal, Ong Keng Sen, Madeline Ritter