Initial Thoughts

Take a performance genre.

[DANCE]

_Contemporary dance.

Contemporary dance is a style of dance, which emerged in the 20th century as an outgrowth of modern dance and other 20th century dance techniques. There is no defined movement but rather a compositional philosophy to be original and progressive in performance and research, searching for the ease of using the body's natural lines and energy, allowing a greater range and fluidity of movement than conventional dance techniques.

_Site-specific dance.

The first difference between site and traditional dance is the relationship between the choreographer’s inspiration for the piece and the performance venue. The physical natural and architectural surroundings as well as the broader past, present, or future contexts of the space inevitably influence the choreographer. Similarly, choreographer and scholar, Melanie Kloetzel, writes that “by diving into the past we may allow voices silenced or erased by various spatial configurations to leap out and be heard, providing new insights to inform our site-specific endeavours”. A choreographer creates movement depending on her interpretation of and interactions with the space. The outcome of this relationship is the performance of the dance in the space itself instead of a performance on a stage.

Consider the relationship between performers and audience/spectators/participants.

Taking her work out of the theatre space enables her to challenge the perspective of the spectators whilst pushing the dancers, as well as her own choreographic abilities to new limits. Each time a site-specific piece is performed in a new space; there is a process of rediscovery, trying to bring together performer and audience in situations of contact, challenge and intimacy. So, taking dance outside the traditional theatre space into a public arena, gives dancers the opportunity, and challenges them, to change the normal function of a space.

Passer-bys who stumble across the piece also become audience members. A characteristic that separates traditional from site-specific dance is the difference in roles undertaken by the audience where the audience members become ‘participant observers.’ Because the dance is performed in an unconventional space, the audience members also assume untraditional roles as viewers and/or actors.

This direct interaction formed with the public encourages the audience to physically experience the site along with the dancers. When dance moves out into public spaces, “the spectators [are forced to] think more deeply about their relationship to public space”. Seeing how the space can be manipulated makes the audience questions their previous perceptions of the uses of the site; the choreographer has “de-familiarize[d] the site” (LeFevre). For example, a bridge is for walking across and traditionally not thought of as a place to watch a dance and especially not a place to participate in a dance. LeFevre further explains that by “moving the bodies of the performers and audience through the space,” choreographers  “re-animate space” and “recontextualize the site”. This restructuring of space is political because the choreographer is altering the audience’s perception of the place’s context. As the audience member experiences the dance, they become more aware of their role in the site, creating a strength and understanding of the community.

What are the spatial dynamics and how do they inform structure, materiality and the immaterial (eg. sound, light, atmosphere etc).

_Architects now speak of their designs and buildings in movement and dance terms.

Dance and architecture lay claim to a shared vocabulary and atmosphere likely because they also share something immediately apparent – space. It is vital to explore the relationship between the moving body and the city’s unique architecture and cityscape. For a dancer, the act of choreography occurs through the unfolding of spaces by means of gesture and embodied movement, whereas for an architect, space is the medium through which form emerges and habitation is constructed. For both, the first space of experience is the space of the body.

_Creating connections with the inside and outside of St Anna’s Church, including the Prague Crossroads and the surrounding courtyards. Allowing the audience to form a relationship and connection to the site, involving the community to experience the past and the present of the site.

Utilizing levels, stairs and ramps; displaying a genius for enlarging limited space, increasing the number and quality of perceptual events engaged along the way. The time of one’s movement is thereby slowed down, infused with moments, and thickened in density. There is not one space but many spaces, simultaneously intersecting each other, just as there is not one dance and one architecture but a plurality of differently conceived dancerly and architectural attempts.

_Using light; attracting the community through an elevated beacon, and then gradually draw visitors through the building by a series of luminous multi-axial elements.

Choreography of light for the moving eye; provides what is perhaps the deepest felt encounter with light known to people: the loss and then recovery of light in darkness. Due to its power to seduce and attract, light has always played a pivotal role in successions of space that are rewarding and memorable. Fluidly evolving light and space that can only be experienced as people pass through them, encountering the before and after, as well as the present.

Tadao Ando’s architecture flows seamlessly out of paths in either landscape or city, light is deployed as a transitional device to calm eye and mind as it slowly withdraws from the outer world, and, conversely, to carve away critical thresholds by leaking through joints where volumes intersect. Ando describes his intent as an ‘unfolding of space’ with a ‘sense of discovery’, where components form ‘sequences of architectural spaces of varying mood’. Each if Ando’s buildings are shaped around a unique choreography of light and movement, and is intensified psychologically by a sense of returning to our origins.

What is the role of technology and systems?

_Using dance and digital projection to animate a public space; the walls themselves became part of the performance with the movement of the projections working together with movement of the dance.

_Using natural and artificial light to activate the space and the dance. Light is used to enhance the space, working with the notion of inside/outside and its inversion.

How are the senses engaged and experience shaped?

_Choreographers and architects often say that dance and architecture share the same concern, and the shared concern is space; dancing bodies and the architectural built environment manipulate space.

“In this space choreography was not just about what one does with bodies. Choreography, light, screens, building – they were all equally important” (Anon.).

_The time, the place, the socio-cultural setting, the dancers, the audience – all are factors which influence the making and performing of dance.

Giving it a feeling of ‘letting the outside in and the inside out’. Using the variety of levels upon which sequential light works that is most impressive in the buildings – the spectator follows an itinerary and the scenes unfold in a wide variety of forms.

_Dance as communal; When the audience participates, together it is in a position to strengthen communities experience even more of the site and the act of dancing.  Following the dancers and moving within the environment with the dancers entices the experience of feeling physically and emotionally invested in the piece.

People who watch a site-specific rehearsal or a performance create a community.  A community is “a unified body of individuals … [an] interacting population of various kinds of individuals in a common location”.

Through this participatory process, the audience is actively connecting themselves to the site in a more complete way than merely observing the beauty of the site. By moving through a site, the audience not only becomes aware of the physical space but also the contextual elements of the place. Thus, site-specific dance is “relevant” and “meaningful”.

Blackfish Academy & Theatre Company. (2006). What is contemporary dance? Retrieved September 4, 2010, from http://www.blackfishacademy.com/dance.htm

Brown, C. & Ramsgard Thomsen, M. (2008). Dancing-Drawing Fields of Presence in SeaUnSea. In D. Hannah & O. Harslof (Eds.), Performance Design (229-248). Copenhagen: Museum Tuschulanum Press.

Engh, R. (2007). The audience completes the piece: Site-specific dance choreographers as unalienating laborers. Retrieved August 30, 2010, from http://www.allacademic.com//meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/4/0/0/6/pages240068/p240068-1.php

LeFevre, C. (2005). Site-specific dance, de-familiarizing and the transformation of place and community. Pp. 148-153 in Congress on Research in Dance:  Spring 2005 Conference. Florida State University: Tallahassee, Florida: Dance and Community. New York, NY: The Print Center, Inc.

Plummer, H. (2009). The architecture of natural light. London: Thames & Hudson.

PRASADA, De Montfort University and the Centre for Dance Research, Roehampton University. (2006). Dance, architecture, spatiality: Dance – space – architecture. Retrieved August 16, 2010, from http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/49/75)

Smith, S. E. (2010).  What is contemporary dance? Retrieved September 4, 2010, from http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-contemporary-dance.htm