Journées du Matrimoine 2025
Why are women so little visible in archives, even though they have significantly shaped the history of dance?
A guided tour through SAPA’s archives sheds light on the traces that women have left in Swiss contemporary dance.
This will be followed by a panel discussion with Diane Decker and Marie-Jane Otth (choreographers from Lausanne), Dr Julia Wehren (theater scholar and dance researcher) and Céline Bösch (Co-Head of Archive and Competence Center at SAPA). The focus will be on questions of memory, visibility, and the transmission of choreographic matrimoine.
Women in the performing arts have not only had to fight for visibility and artistic recognition; they have also faced their archives being accorded less attention. The traces of their careers and their archiving practices often remain invisible or fragmentary.
This discussion addresses that absence: why are there so few archives by women? What becomes of their collections? Diane Decker and Marie Jane Otth, key figures in the development of contemporary dance in Switzerland since the 1970s, will share their perspectives and engage with the audience. Both have initiated not only foundational structures in Lausanne, but also aesthetic ventures whose legacy deserves to be passed on to future generations.
In this conversation, they will speak with two archive specialists to explore several questions: what is preserved without being truly archived, and why? Who turns to the archives, and for what reasons — or, conversely, why do some keep their distance? SAPA preserves oral history interviews, video material, and press articles on these two major figures, but not their personal archives. What would need to change for their legacy to find its rightful place?
