We were shocked to learn that the Senate Department for Culture and Social Cohesion wants to stop awarding contracts for the realisation of the video documentation of dance. The background is ‘in particular the tight budget situation’. We are dismayed by this plan, which would deprive the entire dance sector of an essential component of its visibility, inter/national distribution and archiving/documentation. And we are more than irritated by the announcement at this point in time, when instead of such hasty decisions, the agenda should rather be a fight by cultural administration and cultural policy for every position from art and culture vis-à-vis the overall Berlin budget.
Cancelling €78,000 for the digital film promotion and documentation of an entire sector on the way to the savings target of €3 billion without replacement - this is not compatible with consolidating savings, but leads to clear-cutting and the loss of visibility and sustainability of Berlin dance productions!
Since 2011, Berlin's cultural administration has been funding the video documentation of Berlin dance in order to make it digitally and resource-efficiently accessible to a Berlin and international/national public. The commission has been repeatedly awarded to TanzForum Berlin / Doris Kolde and Walter Bickmann and has been successfully realised over the past 14 years as a high-quality, cinematic documentation and promotion of Berlin dance.
1,500 excellent video documentations are available online to the respective artists and productions, international/national curators, students and academics. The website tanzforumberlin.de with over 1,700 video contributions (trailers, portraits, etc.) forms a constantly growing online archive and showcase for Berlin dance.
Doris Kolde and Walter Bickmann are doing an extraordinary job for all dance professionals in Berlin and have created a video platform that no other metropolis can match. Their enormous commitment and professionalism contribute significantly to the international recognition of dance made in Berlin. The announced cost-cutting measures would bring the filmic visualisation of dance in Berlin to a complete standstill. With dramatic consequences:
All guest performance acquisition and tour planning with international/national partners as well as selection processes for funding programmes are based on high-quality video documentation.
The dance sector in Berlin does not have any major theatres that provide video documentation as standard, so it is more than dependent on this bundled service. Even now, hardly any artists or collectives can afford such documentation from the ever decreasing project funding.The cancellation of video documentation in conjunction with the Dance Distribution Fund, which will also be discontinued next year, makes the sustainable exploitation and international distribution of Berlin dance productions almost impossible. But in financially strained times, shouldn't instruments that form a basis for additional fundraising also be used?
Dance representatives have recently repeatedly emphasised in the context of the dance hearing in the Berlin Culture Committee that dance must be particularly spared from the upcoming cuts due to its lack of structures, as every cut will cause the fragile funding structure of this sector to collapse. This example makes the damage we have warned about concrete.
As the TanzRaumBerlin network, we are resolutely opposed to any cuts in Berlin culture and appeal for a substantive dialogue in these difficult times. We demand the general preservation of the video documentation of dance and a simplified allocation to TanzForum Berlin, whose excellent is an indispensable unique selling point from the point of view of professional dance in Berlin.
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Netzwerk TanzRaumBerlin
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Kontakt
Tanzbüro Berlin, Marie Henrion & Antonia Gersch (Leitung und Ko-Leitung) · Uferstr. 23, D-13357 Berlin · Tel.: 030–46064351, postnoSpam@tanzbuero-berlin.de