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An international symposium about alternative ways of documenting and (an)archiving dance by STUK, Life Long Burning and Counterpoint KU Leuven.

Re:wind - Expanding Documentation invites artists, scholars, dancers, archivists, heritage workers and activists to chart, critically reflect on and expand the idea of dance documentation. Highlighting the essential role of documentation in the transmission of dance, the symposium investigates how dance is translated, mediated, disseminated, and transformed into material and immaterial forms and how these forms actively shape the afterlives, meanings, and historiographies of dance.

Rather than treating documentation as a faithful reconstruction of an original live event, ‘Expanding Documentation’ approaches documentation as an autonomous, generative practice in its own right. Participants are invited to explore alternative modes of documenting and (an)archiving dance that blur established boundaries between event and document, presence and absence, original and copy. These expanded practices open space for experimental, performative, and fictional approaches to documentation, capable of fabulating alternative histories and challenging dominant narratives within dance history and cultural memory. By foregrounding documentation as a site of critical and creative intervention, Expanding Documentation asks how documentation practices can contribute to rethinking authorship, transmission, and institutional frameworks, and how they might serve as tools for systemic change within the field of dance and beyond.
 

Programme 28. April 2026

9:30 - 10:00 Arrival (STUK Reception)

10:00 - 10:20 Welcome and introduction by the organising committee (STUK Auditorium)

10:20 - 13:00 Setting the stage: on the questions, paradoxes and stakes of documenting dance (STUK Auditorium)

with Myriam Van Imschoot, Tino Sehgal, Mar* Szydłowska 

Moderated by Jonas Rutgeerts (KU Leuven / Counterpoint)

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch (STUKcafé)

14:00 - 16:00 Session A. Towards a more affective, process-oriented take on documenting dance (STUK Studio)

Anouk Llaurens, Anneleen Keppens, Mar* Szydłowska & Julie De Meester

Moderated by Sara Jansen (KU Leuven / Counterpoint, Rosas)

14:00 - 16:00 Session B. Strategies for expanding the space for documentation in the dance field (STUK Verbeeckzaal)

Moderated by Delphine Hesters (STUK)

16:30 - 17:25 Bodies at Work. Open Class of Marc Vanrunxt & 1st BA drama students of KASK (STUK Labozaal)
 

Programme 29. April 2026

9:30 - 10:00 Arrival (STUK Reception)

10:00 - 10:15 Welcome and introduction by the organising committee (STUK Soetezaal)

10:15 - 13:00 Archiving as an act of resistance, care, and reinvention (STUK Soetezaal)

Cait McKinney, Harmony Bench & Claire Lefèvre

Moderated by Hetty Blades (Falmouth University)

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch (STUKcafé)

14:00 - 16:00 Session A. Community-driven archiving (STUK Studio)

With Tabea Nixdorff, anne krul, Rok Vevar & Jasmina Založnik.

Moderated by Sevie Tsampalla (LOV2030)

14:00 - 16:00 Session B. Embracing and resisting the lens - a film programme (Cinema ZED STUK)

With Bram van Beek 

Film programme:

• Maya Deren — A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945)
• Yvonne Rainer — After Many a Summer Dies the Swan: Hybrid (2002)
• Ligia Lewis — A Plot, A Scandal (2023)
• Manon De Boer — Dissonant (2003)
• Eleanor Antin — Caught in the Act (1973)

16:00 - 17:00 Closing drink (STUKcafé)
 

18:00 - 19:30 Archive Stories: Michel Uytterhoeven in conversation with Denise Luccioni (STUK Studio)

Find the detailed programme here.