SAPA Foundation: The history of an archive

From three to two and finally one – from ASD, mediathektanz.ch, STS, CSD/STA to SAPA. Established in 2017 through the merger of the Swiss Dance Archive/Collection Suisse de la danse and the Swiss Theatre Collection, the SAPA Foundation, Swiss Archive of the Performing Arts, can build on a long collecting tradition. One aim of the Swiss Theatre Collection, which emerged from today’s Swiss Society for Theatre Culture (SGTK), founded in 1927, was to collect theatre literature from Switzerland and abroad, as well as visual materials and models of theatre buildings, which were later made accessible to the public in a museum. Traces of this earlier collecting activity are numerous, even if different goals are pursued today.

In Lausanne, in 1993 the dance researcher and journalist Jean Pierre Pastori took the initiative to preserve the rich choreographic tradition around Lake Geneva, and the fabled costume of Flore Revalles, star of the Ballets Russes, soon became one of the showpieces of the  Archives Suisse de la danse.

That times and collection objects change was recognised like few others by Wolfgang Brunner in Zurich. In 2005, together with Eva Richterich, he founded mediathek tanz.ch for the long-term archiving of audiovisual recordings of dance productions.

It soon became apparent that joining forces between East and West would serve the common purpose – in 2011 the foundation was laid for the Schweizer Tanzarchiv/Collection Suisse de la Danse.

This example set a precedent – the merger of STA and STS created a new whole. Thanks to the differing collection profiles of the predecessor institutions, the archival holdings complement one another; they encompass the performing arts from across Switzerland and all disciplines – since 2017 SAPA has been active in diverse and multilingual ways.