Profile

Professional career

• since 01/2021
  Research associate in the NFDI4Culture consortium
• since 03/2018
  Research assistant at the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of Leipzig
• 09/2015 - 03/2019
  Employee at the music publishing house Edition Peters
• 04/2015 - 08/2015
  Festival organisation "B_Tours Leipzig - Movement in Urban Space" (International Festival of Urban Tours, 2-12 July 2015)
• 02/2013 - 06/2013
  Festival assistance TANZOFFENSIVE 2013 "Mixed-Abled Dance" (1.-9.6.2013)
• 08/2009 - 12/2011
  Research assistant in the research project "Body Techniques of Work. Cultures of Knowledge and Forms of Life" at the Institute of Theatre Studies at the University of Leipzig
• 08/2007 - 07/2009
  Freelance work (teaching assignments, curator of the exhibition "mitArbeit. Lebensrhythmen im Wandel", collaboration on the volume "Körperwissen als Kulturgeschichte. The Archives Internationalesde la danse", ed. by Inge Baxmann)
• 01/2006 - 07/2007
  Management and scientific assistance Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V.

Education

• 08/2009 - 06/2015
  Doctorate at the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of LeipzigTitle: "PROJEKTionsfläche SYNÄSTHESIE. A figure of desire and thought between art, media and science" (predicate: opus eximium)
• 09/2000 - 06/2001
  Erasmus stay abroad at the Université Paris X (Nanterre)
• 10/1996 - 09/2003
  Studies in Theatre Studies, Psychology and General and Comparative Literature

Forschungsschwerpunkte:

• Tanz und Tanzforschung in der DDR
• Forschungsdaten und Forschungsdatenmanagement in Tanz- und Theaterwissenschaft
• Die Institutionalisierung der Freien Szene in Deutschland seit den 1990er Jahren
• Inklusion in Tanz- und Theaterprojekten
• Theater-, Tanz- und Kulturgeschichte der Moderne
• Verknüpfungen von Bewegungs- und Wissenskulturen
• Schnittstellen zwischen den Künsten, Medien und Wissenschaften

• TANZFORSCHUNG IN DER DDR - KURT PETERMANN UND DAS TANZARCHIV

  Gruß, Melanie

  Duration: 03/2019 – 02/2022

  Involved organisational units of Leipzig University: Institut für Theaterwissenschaft
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more projects

• Gruß, M.

  Synästhesie als Diskurs. Sehnsuchts- und Denkfigur zwischen Kunst, Medien und Wissenschaft

  Bielefeld: Transcript. 2017.

  ISBN: 978-3-8376-3489-1
  show details
• Gruß, M.

  (Re)Produzierte Bewegung. Techniken der Archivierung von Tanz bei Kurt Petermann (1930–1984)

  In: Dreckmann, K.; Butte, M.; Vomberg, E. (Eds.)

  Technologien des Performativen . Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. 2020. pp. 115–126.

  DOI: DOI: 10.14361/9783839453797-009
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• Gruß, M.; Wehren, M.; Amende, O.

  Messingkauf. Lektüren und Erprobungen

  In: Braun, M.; Heeg, G.; Stegmann, V.; Wessendorf, M. (Eds.)

  Brecht Jahrbuch-46. New York: Camden House. 2021. pp. 263–277.

  DOI: 10.2307/j.ctv1hbf25s
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• Gruß, M.

  Sozialistische Tanzbild-Produktion - Umdeutung und Instrumentalisierung von Tanz und Fotografie in der DDR

  In: Wortelkamp, I. (Ed.)

  Tanz in Bildern. Plurale Konstellationen der Fotografie. Bielefeld: Transcript. 2022. pp. 123–146.

  DOI: 10.14361/9783839464625-007
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• Darian, V.; Sodhi, V.; Haß, A.; Gruß, M.

  Kooperation Macht Arbeit

  In: Schneider, W. (Ed.)

  Transformationen der Theaterlandschaft. Zur Fördersituation der Freien Darstellenden Künste in Deutschland. Bielefeld: Transcript. 2022. pp. 52–67.

  DOI: 10.14361/9783839463215-005
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more publications

• DANCE DIGITAL: PROJECT AND WRITING WORKSHOP

  In addition to the lecture "Dance digital: Interrelationships between dance and media history", the seminar offers Master's students the opportunity to test and contribute themselves along the interfaces between dance and media technologies with a view to the concrete implementation of an online platform "Dance digital" as part of the project of the same name jointly supported by the Association of German Dance Archives (VDT) and the Dachverband Tanz.

• THE INSTITUTIONALISATION OF THE INDEPENDENT SCENE. OF PRODUCTION HOUSES, NETWORKS AND MODELS OF COOPERATION

  Starting from the establishment and shaping of the independent scene in Europe and Germany since the 1960s, the seminar examines current production and working methods in the field of the independent performing arts. In addition to the historical reappraisal, the focus is on theatrical aesthetic approaches, questions of artistic self-organisation, cultural policy strategies and developments in the funding landscapes in their interplay.

• BETWEEN PRESERVATION AND STAGING: FOLK DANCE DOCUMENTATION IN THE GDR.

  In the 1950s, the GDR tried to install a new folk culture of the workers' and peasants' state. In the process, folkloristic forms that were close to the people were used. If the founding of the Dance Archive in 1957, pushed for by Kurt Petermann, is exemplary of these tendencies, so are his efforts to document folk dance on film. Extensive film material on folk dance in the GDR exists, which will be viewed and analysed in the seminar.

• THE DIFFERENTLY ABLED BODY. OF FREAK SHOWS, INCLUSION AND ART

  Since around the 1990s, parallel to a social rethinking of "disability", there has been an increase in dance and theatre projects in which actors/dancers with and without disabilities perform together on stage.

  In cultural history, the "disabled" body occupies a special position, as it always marks a deviation from standardised and idealised images of the body. These categorisations need to be questioned from a historical-anthropological perspective.

• DANCE BOOKS AND DANCE TREATISES. APPROACH TO A CULTURAL HISTORY OF MOVEMENT

  By reading selected texts from the history of dance, fundamental questions will be asked about the mediality and historicity of movement. Since around the 15th century, dance books and dance treatises have been written in the European cultural area, such as Taubert's "Rechtschaffener Tantzmeister" (1717) or Noverre's "Briefe über die Tanzkunst und die Ballette" (1760), each of which reveals a specific understanding of movement and its relationship to dominant discourses of knowledge.

• MEDIA EXPERIMENTS AT THE BAUHAUS

  In the Bauhaus Year 2019, the seminar will work on the innovative potential of the Bauhaus in the context of specific developments of modernity, starting with the overall concept of the Bauhaus and the artists who worked there. Founded in Weimar in 1919, the Bauhaus was not only a new kind of educational institution, but also designed new forms of living, working and life in the sense of a social utopia. The boundaries between the arts, materials and media became fluid.

• SYNESTHESIA. FIGURE OF LONGING AND THINKING BETWEEN ART, MEDIA AND SCIENCE

  The emergence of the phenomenon of synaesthesia, also known as colour hearing, in the physiology of the 19th century is an expression of an elementary re-evaluation of man and his perception. As a result, the term continues to move in the field of tension between art, media and science and is attributed in the most diverse ways. Theatre, dance and film have proven to be particularly suitable instruments for provoking and simulating this special perceptual experience.

• KURT PETERMANN AND THE DANCE ARCHIVE. DANCE RESEARCH IN THE GDR

  Founded in 1957 by Dr Kurt Petermann as a collection of traditional folklore, the Tanzarchiv expanded into a documentation centre for all areas of dance. In 1975 the institution was affiliated to the Academy of Arts of the GDR and in 1993 it was handed over to the Tanzarchiv Leipzig e.V. association. Based on research in archive holdings, the seminar will take a closer look at Petermann's work and trace his role in the development of dance research in the GDR.

• BRECHT'S THEORY FRAGMENT "DER MESSINGKAUF": READINGS AND TRIALS

  Brecht's fragment invites us to attend a three-night discussion about theatre in the scientific age. In the back and forth of arguments, in monologues, debates and surprising replications, a theatre of theory develops that is as productive as it is irritating in resisting discursive closure. The seminar follows the different traces and layers of the text and, together with the director Olav Amende, puts it into a scenic situation.

• THE DISABLED BODY - SS 2013

  Übung im BA-Studeniengang

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  Übung im BA-Studeniengang gemeinsam mit Sebastian Göschel

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  Übung und Seminar im BA-Studiengang

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  Seminar im BA-Studiengang

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  Seminar im BA-Studiengang

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  Blockseminar im BA-Studiengang gemeinsam mit Sebastian Gießmann

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  Seminar im BA-Studiengang