ImPulsTanz Pop-Up Archive.
Step One

Never Final! The Evolving Museum is the name of a current exhibition at mumok, dedicated to the institution’s changes under the direction of Dieter Ronte (1979 to 1989). The 1980s also are the founding decade of what today is called ImPulsTanz. Initiated in 1984 as a workshop festival under the name Internationale Tanzwochen (“International Dance Weeks”), ImPulsTanz has become Europe’s biggest festival for contemporary dance and performance, drawing around 180.000 annual visitors.

Now, at the invitation of mumok – Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, ImPulsTanz opens up its cabinets, drawers and treasure chests for the first time, presenting posters, programme books and booklets as well as – starting with b/w photographs – pictures through the ages. A “pop-up” archive, a wild and precise mixture perfectly capturing the spirit of the festival. Always with its finger on the “pulse” of current affairs – both close to the artists and to societal developments –, a history of the festival is also a history of dance and choreography since the emergence of what, in the 1980s (at least in the West), differentiated itself as “contemporary dance” from modernism and postmodernism.