The Performing Archive

Rambert, Britain’s oldest dance company, celebrates its 90^th year in 2016. This dance company has been the source of many first, including being the first performing arts company whose in house archive has achieved the UK standard for Archives Accreditation. The archive at Rambert had been for many years a site for paper, and boxes, and paper in boxes. Now the archive is becoming animated. It can tour. It can perform. Can the archive capture more than paper, more than footage? Can an experiential archive be created and what would that look like? This paper will concern the challenges, failures and successes in curating an archive that can allow dancers and researchers to travel not only backwards through time, but also forwards.

Arike Oke: Arike Oke is the Rambert Archivist. She is the Co-Chair for the national subject specialist group, the Association of Performing Arts Collections (APAC). Arike is a board member for the Transforming Archives Skills for the Future project. She convenes the APAC Digital Preservation Working Group, and is a member of the National Archives’ Reference Group for the creation of the new UK wide archive strategy. Arike planned and managed the move of the Rambert Archive collections to their new home on London’s South Bank. She plans and writes successful funding applications for archive projects.