How Tate Modern became the Musée de la Danse

Abstract

This article presents a documentation of the Musée de la Danse’s If Tate Modern was Musée de la Danse? (2015) that was created as part the AHRC-funded ‘Performance at Tate’ project (2014-6), which researched the documentation of performance in art museums, focusing especially on the history of performance at Tate between 1960 and the present day. The choice of If Tate Modern was Musée de la Danse? was made on the basis of the Musée de la Dance’s recurrent inclusion of audiences in processes of transmission, and the documentation challenges caused by the fact that the work involved ninety dancers, lasted twenty hours over a period of two days, was streamed live and was simultaneously staged across several locations at Tate Modern. During If Tate Modern was Musée de la Danse? Tate Modern in fact became the Musée de la Danse. The documentation traces the practices generated for and through this transformation