Danseformidling på museer i ny drakt

Abstract

In my master thesis "A dance museum" (Erlien, 2014) from the Erasmus Mundus Master program "Choreomundus - International master in Dance Knowledge, Practice and Heritage" I research and discuss dance dissemination in 10 different museums in Europe. In this article I will focus on a common method for dance dissemination in the Nordic countries, presentation of traditional dance in open-air museums. Skansen and The Museum of Romsdal have dance groups that perform staged traditional dances for tourists during the summer season. The danced repertoire has been the same for many decades, which the museums argue for being transmission and dissemination of their own old tradition of having a dance group (Erlien, 2014). I will challenge this by introduce how new museology principles may enrich museums´ dissemination of dance traditions in line with the UNESCO convention of 2003 for transmission and safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. I will illuminate this with an imagined interactive dissemination setting on a museum arena, based on transmission of the qualities and aesthetics of traditional dances in the Nordic countries.