ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to chart and theorize the challenges faced by local independent dance communities when it comes to realizing their archival dreams. It explores how dance archives have been dreamt of as well as actually emerging in the city of Gothenburg, and how they are understood and used by the communities as well as by scholars investigating independent dance. The chapter examines a big archival dream, one that contains both harsh failure and a strong manifestation of community engagement for local dance and its histories. From the 1990s and onwards the understanding of what an archive is and what it does has undergone considerable change, a process encompassing different world views and practices pertaining to diverging traditions and contexts across the globe. The chapter concludes with arguments for a methodologically conscious, digitally engaged participatory approach to dance archiving and archival research as a way of further augmenting the potentially productive role of dreaming big dreams.
