This document discusses the shared qualities and concerns of dance and architecture. It notes that dance is architecture in motion, with the human body producing an intangible kinesphere of potential movement like an icosahedron. Both dance and architecture are concerned with practices of space - for dancers, choreography constructs spatial dimensions through gesture, while architects construct habitation through emerging forms. The document examines how choreographic elements like algorithms, objects and constructions are analogous to architectural design processes.

1. Dance is Architecture
in Motion.
About the shared vocabulary and concerns of seemingly
opposite art forms.

2. • Wk1: choreographic algorithm
• Wk2: choreographic object
• Wk3: choreographic construction

3. Dance is architecture in motion.

5. Kinesphere — the total volume of a body’s potential movement, the
intangible space the moving human body produces. It is best described by
the geometrical form of an icosahedron and its centre is the Solar Plexus,
the pivotal point for any movement.

6. “Movement is, so to speak, living
architecture – living in the sense
of changing emplacements as well
as changing cohesion.
The architecture is created by
human movements and is made up
of pathways tracing shapes in
space.“ (Rudolf Laban, Choreutics)

8. "As an architect I sit in front of my
computer, I click through
the different menus of the CD and
I get overwhelmed by a glaring
similarity to the interface of my
CAAD program." (Britta Callsen 1995)

10. “With the CAAD program I construct a
building with lines, polygons, circles which
are basic geometric figures. I click the
command ‘line’ to define two points and I
draw a line between them.
In order to view it in the right position I
take the line and turn, twist, flip it in the
virtual space. It is the same operation
Forsythe demonstrates on his CD when
he describes the relationship between
parts of the body in motion.” (Britta Callsen)

11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0bVWwmCiYY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6X29OjcBHG8

12. “Dance and Architecture have much in common.
Both are concerned with practices of space. For
a dancer the act of choreography as a writing of
place occurs through the unfolding of spatial
dimensions through gesture and embodied
movement. For the architect space is the
medium through which form emerges and
habitation is constructed. For both, the first
space we experience is the space of the
body.” (Carol Brown, choreographer)

13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzQazjw-4jI&feature=player_embedded#

17. “Space lays down the law because it implies a
certain order [...] Space commands bodies,
prescribing or proscribing gestures, routes
and distances to be covered.”
(Henry Lefebvre, The Production of Space)

18. 4-dimensional 3-dimensional

19. Stasis Ecstasy (ex-stasis)
from Greek στάσις from Greek έκ-στασις
"a standing still" "to be or stand outside
oneself, a removal to
elsewhere”
referring to
referring to dance, the
architecture, the
fugitive, ephemeral movement,
immovable building,
the dynamic
the static

21. functional architectural elements
at rest put into relation
and action

23. http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/content.html

30. choreographic algorithm -
a set of well-defined instructions for moving

31. choreographic object -
a manifestation of choreographic information;
an alternative site to the dancing body where
choreographic ideas can reside

32. choreographic construction -
the structure or the creation of a kinetic event

33. 1. Design a 5 min’ choreographic
construction for 5 dancers based
on the architect’s drawings.

34. 2. Form groups of 5 dancers and
choose a choreographic
construction, which none of you
has designed and stage it.

35. • Any choreographic piece is an
architectural structure or construction.
• Any dancer is a body of geometric
forms or architectural elements.
• Both can complement each other.