Starting from Dachverband Tanz Deutschland (DTD), the working group Tanzförderung Stadt-Land-Bund was founded in 2013. Since then, the dialogue on the development of dance in Germany has been concretised in regular working meetings. The goals of the exchange are to analyse the current situation and to work out the concrete need for funding as well as to expand dance funding.
With Tanzplan Deutschland (2005 to 2010), an initiative of the Federal Cultural Foundation (KSB), other KSB funding programmes as well as the founding of the Federal Youth Ballet (2012, financed with funds from the German Bundestag), the federal government sent clear signals for dance funding from federal funds. It was therefore the goal of the cultural policy actors in dance to transform the selective commitment of the federal government into a systematic funding structure. For this reason, the DTD sought to connect with partner institutions that were strong in cultural policy in an initiative group for dance funding. This initially included Tanzfonds / DIEHL+RITTER gUG (now Bureau Ritter gUG), Tanzbüro Berlin, K3 Zentrum für Choreographie / Tanzplan Hamburg and Tanzszene Baden-Württemberg.
In spring 2013, the working group Tanzförderung Stadt-Land-Bund was founded, which connects the specialist departments of the cultural offices and state ministries as well as the federal institutions with each other. This is where the development of a concept for the cooperative promotion of dance began – the “Tanzförderung Stadt-Land-Bund”. Guidelines for the concept were developed in regular meetings: Visibility and sustainability of project funding, exchange formats, strengthening dance knowledge and dance heritage as well as competence centres and networks in dance. In October 2014, a working group of representatives of the German Association of Cities and the Conference of Ministers of Culture adopted this concept. After discussions in the WG Culture and Media of the coalition factions in the federal government, initiatives of the Conference of Ministers of Culture and the German Association of Cities and Towns and cultural policy symposia of the DTD, the funding programme Tanzpakt Stadt-Land-Bund (Dance Pact City-Country-Federation) was launched in November 2016, funded by the German Bundestag. TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund is implemented in cooperative sponsorship by DTD and Bureau Ritter and enables the match-funding of funds from municipalities and federal states for the substantial promotion of artistic and production structures as “promotion for excellence”.
In the years up to 2019, systematic dance funding had developed at the BKM. Production and project funding from the Federal Cultural Foundation and the Performing Arts Fund were supplemented by structural funding through Tanzpakt, the promotion of national and international exchange (NPN Guest Performance Funding Dance and Dance International, NPN Co-production Funding, Dance Platform Germany as well as an export funding - Focus on Dance), the promotion of the Federal Youth Ballet and the Dance On Ensemble through to the promotion of dance heritage, with an initial allocation of funds to the German Dance Film Institute Bremen and support for the Pina Bausch Foundation.
At the beginning of the Corona crisis, DTD, DIEHL+RITTER gUG (now Bureau Ritter gUG) and NPN / JointAdventures, (as the three institutions that had already developed funding models with the BKM in the dance sector), took the initiative for a three-part aid programme for dance with a total volume of 70 million euros, which could be implemented as one of the first measures of NEUSTART KULTUR. Based on these experiences and with the aim of stabilising the successful dance promotion in cooperation between the federal government, the federal states and the municipalities, the Dance Promotion Initiative Group introduced the concept "Cooperative Federal Dance Promotion" to the coalition negotiations in autumn 2021. The concept provides for further strengthening of the federal and state initiatives TANZPAKT and the National Performance Network as well as the bundling of initiatives for scholarship-like support of dance professionals, for integrative projects of dance schools, digitisation projects of archives and ensembles as well as projects in the field of cultural and creative industries.
Parallel to this, in 2021, eight of the fifteen pilot projects from the 1st and 2nd rounds of calls for proposals could continue to be funded with around 1.35 million euros until 2025. Through the 3rd round of calls for proposals with 2.5 million euros, which also took place in 2021, 13 new projects from Bad Oldesloe to Heidelberg strengthen the dialogue between dance art and cultural policy. At the same time, a new appreciation for essential qualities of artistic work in dance has emerged, e.g. for education, inclusion and social dialogue.
Since the launch of TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund, 82 projects have been conceived and applied for nationwide, which structurally develop dance in cities, states, regions and in some cases across federal states.