This year’s annual symposium of the Gesellschaft für Tanzforschung (Society for Dance Research) was hosted by Vienna between September 25 and 27, 2025. The event was organized in collaboration with the University of Hildesheim. The venue provided a fitting setting for the event: the conference took place in the impressive building of the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst (University of Music and Performing Arts).
In the opening speech, the organizers emphasized that this was the most ambitious event in the society’s history to date: more than eighty researchers gave presentations, with participants coming from countries as diverse as Mexico, China, Sweden, and Greece.
The programme was structured around six main thematic sections:
- Resonance as a multisensory concept
- Resonance as a communal concept
- Postcolonial perspectives
- Ecology
- Queer theory
- Historical echoes
The presentations were held in both German and English, and their diversity reflected the current international discourses in dance studies.
The Hungarian Dance University was also represented at the symposium: two faculty members from the Department of Dance Theory presented their research. In the “Historical Echoes” section, Ilona Kovács explored the relationship between music and dance by analyzing three choreographies that interpret Saint-Saëns’s symphonic poem Danse macabre in distinct ways, shaped by the choreographers’ and performers’ artistic choices.
The Vienna symposium not only showcased the diverse approaches within dance studies, but also provided an important opportunity for Hungarian researchers to present their work in an international context.
