People move through space and the surrounding environment highly influence their way of moving.

Living in a city like London may produce a quite fast and frantic way of moving. Living in a small town you probably end up walking slowlier and in a more realxed way.

This is certainly due also to what you do where but architecture does shape in a way or another, our sense of space, our perception of our movement in that given space, be it a medieval church you pass in front of to go to work or a skyscraper you admire from the window of your office.

In dance this isssue get magnified as dancers do possess a sharper perception of space. How does an art based on movement relate to architecture and in particular to the architecture of a city?

At the the Biennale held in Venice the dance section is dedicated to this topic in different manners. Click for the English version on top of the page left.

www.labiennale.org

<small>[ 06 May 2003, 09:57 PM: Message edited by: salzberg ]</small>

Thanks for the link Rosella. There was an afternoon seminar on this theme as part of Dance Umbrella last year. Here is the link to the topic, Watch This Space.

Thanks a lot Stuart! I feel this subject is quite stimulating....

At a recent conference on Dance Reconstruction dancer and garden scholar Enrica Rizzarri delivered a paper on "The Garden, the Scene, the Dance at the Court of Sun King" by . She pointed out that the complicated patterns designed for gardens under the absolutistic reign of King Sun of France, namely Louis XIV, resembled the choreographic patterns the 'Maitres à dancer'(= dance masters) created for the dances.

The curvaceuos lines, the geometry of the patterns, the symmetry of the baroque 'parterres de broderie'(= embroidery floors) that characterised the gardens can be found in the choreographic transcriptions of some of the dances of the time....exciting, no?

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

Square-column

there is a small square with a high and thin column in the middle...this could be the imaginary stage for a solo...

a dancer dressed in the same colour of the square, a bricky like light brown, the costume is relevant but let us move on to the exploration of movements....

I suggest for the audience to be on the roof of the buildings surrounding the suqare (that is the advantadge of an imagianry piece), all around it....

the dancer will start laying face down next to the column....she (I imagine a female dancer as I am a woman and it is easy for me to create steps resembling my own gender-based perception of space) rolls away from the column and stops facing up, arms open to form a cross with the rest of her body...

at this stage she goes to a standing position via a pushing of the pelvis.... she starts walking around the column, then faster she begins to run, faster, faster...her costume may be devised to create a special effect here....

she runs away from the centre, goes to one side of the square and begins to run around another imaginary focus point, then zig-zagging through the square she ends up climbing the walls until she reaches the roof and continues dancing among the shocked and scared audience (it is important for the audience to be scared, is it not?)

nb-a more articulated sets of steps should be devised for this piece, this represents the mere skeleton...