The archive of the dancing body : a practice-led project to digitally record archive and preserve traditional flamenco and contemporary dance as practised by Maltese dance companies

Abstract

A practice-led research project to digitally record, for archival purposes, locally held performances of two historically different dance expressions, or genres, as practised in Malta. That of traditional flamenco (puro) and that of contemporary dance, including instances of their fusion in staged local productions. The main objectives of this research are to simulate the role of a content producer and documentarist for the performing arts. That is, to capture, store, process and finish, still and moving images, and store them in digital form as archival records. Thereafter, to devise a best practice model of how such digital objects and records should be prepared for ingestion into an open access digital archive as part of the legacy of the respective dance school or company. The model for such a microarchive is to be crafted as close as possible to the principles and recommended process flows laid out by the lingua franca for digital preservation - the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model, which is a system that is intended primarily for digital institutional repositories. Ultimately, my project has the objective of devising an entry-level archiving model that takes into consideration the resources, capability and maturity levels of a typical dance school or company operating in Malta. In defining the micro-archive model, care is taken to ensure that the digital records, created at the level of the organisation, are authenticated and packaged as digital objects suitable for ingestion into a future OAIS compliant digital archive for Maltese dance heritage.