The organisation has a tradition that dates back to the early 1980s. It was and is one of the flagships and co-creators of Freiburg's cultural scene. Its roots lie in the postmodern movement.

Starting as "Schwarzmarkt e.V.," the organization was founded in 1979 by eleven friends and flatmates, and initially acted as a kind of alternative education center and left-wing sociocultural center. At the same time, Theater im Marienbad and Vorderhaus Freiburg were formed. For the pioneers Bernd Ka, Lilo Stahl and Wolfgang Graf, Schwarzmarkt meant doing something that did not exist anywhere else. For dance, this meant breaking with a conservative understanding of dance and dismantling traditional forms, aesthetics and hierarchies. They pursued a holistic approach that included martial arts, the Feldenkrais method and bioenergetics. In addition, there were also simple life-support courses, such as "Car Repair for Women" or "Seeing without Glasses".

It was not until 1984 that the organisation bewegungs-art freiburg e.V. emerged from Schwarzmarkt e.V.- accompanied by the first institutional support from the city of Freiburg.
Alongside Tanzfabrik Berlin and the SNDO Amsterdam, bewegungs-art quickly became one of the few European training centers for New Dance - consistently brought forward over the years by Bernd Ka, Lilo Stahl and Wolfgang Graf and developed further thanks to the initial spark of Laurie Booth with his revolutionary influence on dance. Many important dancers of the then young New Dance movement such as Katie Duck, Kirstie Simson, Pauline de Groot, Julyen Hamilton, Mark Tompkins, Sarah Shelton Mann, later also G. Hoffmann Soto and Anzu Furukawa came to Freiburg as teachers.
In the former studio on the Guntramstrasse, they took turns teaching the characteristic styles of "New Dance" which combines dance movement with Asian martial arts and contact improvisation. As early as 1984, the first Freiburg New Dance Days took place, which were further developed in 1996 under the direction of Karin Hönes and Wolfgang Graf as 'Tanztage'. They became a crowd puller and led to the International Dance Festival Freiburg, which later became today's Freiburg Festival through a cooperation with Theater Freiburg and Theater Marienbad.

Under the leadership of Lilo Stahl and Bernd Ka, a dance education was established in which New Dance was taught from 1989 to 2009 in three different formants - the basic project, the main project and performance projects – at this point in the studio at E-WERK.
From 2006 to 2018, the training was state-approved and implemented as a two-year full-time study program - TIP - School for Dance, Improvisation and Performance – in new studios at Lörracherstraße 45.

Numerous guest teachers enriched the trainings over the years: Renate Wehner, Marion Dieterle, Beatrice Burkhart, Harald Kimmig, Angelika Ächter, Brigitte Jagg, Adrian Russi, Bettina Helmrich, Günter Klingler, Oliver Lange, Katie Duck, Alessandro Certini, Charlotte Zerbey, David Zambrano, Hideto Heshiki, Yael Flexer, Juha Pekka Marsalo, Maya Carroll and many more.

Since 2000, Angelika Ächter, Brigitte Jagg, Sabine Noll and later Oliver Lange have been in charge of developing and expanding the program for non-professional dancers interested in taking evening dance classes as well as the area of cultural education. Various stage formats were tested and further developed in showings.

In 2017, bewegungs-art embarked on a major new project: the Cooperative Dance Development Concept Freiburg was developed together with the Labormanifest and the Freiburg Cultural Office, it was applied for by the Cultural Office in cooperation with E-WERK Freiburg, and was funded by TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund (2018- 2021). From this the tanznetz|freiburg was launched with eleven new members in the initiative group. This successful large-scale project resulted in a second TANZPAKT Stadt-Land-Bund grant and the independent corporation Tanznetz Freiburg gUG. bewegungs-art is now a shareholder of it together with E-WERK Freiburg (read more under NETZWERK).

Since the beginning of 2022, bewegungs-art has been undergoing another major change. The former founding and management team has retired from their leadership roles and the board of directors, passing the association and its fields of activity on to the new generation.
The new team has given itself the mission of integrating new impulses respectfully into the achievements of more than 40 years of the organization‘s history, to drive this conglomeration forward and continue to pass it on: To dare, to risk, to be open and to move forward courageously.