Dancing About Architecture

Movement in the Context of Designed Spaces

Overview

Dancers are often said to have an intrinsic knowledge of space. But dancing in open studios or on bare or set-veneered stages, dancers have little opportunity to push their exploration of how they can interact with and be inspired by the structures that surround them.

Dancing About Architecture: Movement in the Context of Designed Spaces, studies how dance and architecture’s shared points of inspiration- like lines, shapes, texture, and energy flow- can be utilized to create choreography that collaborates with and is truly shaped by its architectural surroundings. The project examines how the specificity of an architectural context can affect dancers’ performance and an audience’s experience of the choreography and architecture, as compared to how site-specific dances are often only broadly inspired by their surroundings.

Process

Analyze architecture (shapes, structure, light, materials, color, energy flow, etc.) via architectural drawings, images, and videos.

Plan Source: Fehling + Gogel

Image Source: Institut für Hygiene und Mikrobiologie by Gunnar Klack

Line analysis.

2. Choreograph analysis-based movement phrases.

3. Film choreography with dancers on site, discussing the specific architectural influences for each movement phrase.

Dancing About Architecture PART I

4. To examine the effect of the architectural context on the dancers, recreate the choreography in a neutral space with dancers who have not been informed of the original inspiration.

Dancing About Architecture PART II

Institute for
Hygiene and Microbiology
Part II

Paul Gerhardt Kirche-Schöneberg

Part II

IKMZ Library