11/12/2017

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Contents

 

1) Introduction                                                       

2a) The Bauhaus Theatre/Stage workshop

2b) Oskar Schlemmer

2c) The Triadic Ballet (1922) 

3) My experience in Mirrored, me? (2016) in line with what I have learnt from Oskar Schlemmer

4) Conclusion

5) Bibliography

 

 

Introduction

 

This essay examines the ways in which the disciplines of dance and architecture converge in producing overlapping knowledge, focusing on the Bauhaus Theatre and Oskar Schlemmer’s perspectives, as well as on my own experience as a dancer. This essay will entail research which aims to answer the following main question:

How are dancers and choreographers influenced by the space around them and how might a set designer or architect be inspired and informed by dance?

It seems timely to explore the interdisciplinary epistemology, which to some extent appears to contradict the common conception expressed in literature about the process of how architecture and design influence movement, as opposed to dance influencing its surrounding elements. This overlapping relationship will be explored in a similar vein to Briginshaw’s suggestion, namely analysing “(…) the ways in which the physical spaces (…) can be seen to be constructed in part by the dances, and in turn can contribute to constructions of the dancing subjects” (2001, p.33).

In other words, this essay will attempt to develop an argument enlightening the crossed heuristic value of producing architectural knowledge through dance, as well as producing dance knowledge through architecture. This intentionality will draw upon research into both views by analysing how “(…) the intersections of architecture and dance through the concepts of movement, space and experience (…)” (Merriman, 2010, p. 432) may work operate the creation process in the visual arts world, since “(…) the problem of architectural space can barely be understood without recognising the issue of embodiment” (Ersoy, 2011, p.124). Or else, formulating this conception upside down and using Safak Uysal and Markus Wilsing harsh terms, “Body, even at its most still form, is the most violent against the acclamations of architectural space formulated in terms of a ‘search for the order in the environment’”. Pursuing, these authors add this concluding remark: “However violently, the presence of the human being is the fundamental input for the architectural practice since it is an art of creating spaces to enhance the living conditions of the human being” (2000, p. 387).

The essay will explore the actual process of how architects may be able to access information for their own work through that of dancers, how that influences the dancers’ and choreographers’ responses, seeing that “(…) the kernels of dance and architecture correlations lie under the evolving notion of ‘question of space’” (Ersoy, 2011, p.125). This relationship will be analysed through the way it was approached by the Bauhaus theatre/stage workshop and the school’s different aims and objects of study.

This exploration will also specifically concentrate on Oskar Schlemmer and his artistic quality of interpreting space and the body and their mutual effect on each other, as well as his views on the human perception and its biological realities. Additionally, I will investigate the interdisciplinary methodologies used by Schlemmer while choreographing and their connections to his own interdisciplinary background through the examination of The Triadic Ballet (1922), one of Schlemmer’s dance productions.

As I first came across this issue by recognising how architects might be inspired by dance and base their productions on it, I will seek to root this argument in my own experience as a dancer; taking an area of knowledge (i.e. architecture) that is not normally directly associated with dance, but which is in fact deeply related to it. It seems highly pertinent to use dance as “(…) a resource of phenomenology and a practical tool for embodied learning” (Ersoy, 2011, p.125) once one acknowledges that “(…) dance is one of the most creative channels for understanding human body and the nature of kinesics” (ibid).  In other words, I will stress the ways in which architecture may be informed by dance, which has been the main motivation for the choice of the theme of this essay for the module Ways of Knowing. This is another way of knowing about architecture, which is worth investigating in depth.

Thus, the essay will consider its main question which initially emerged from a piece I was involved with called Mirrored, me? (2016), through the exploration and explanation of this work’s creation process. The story of this piece was inspired by one of Edgar Allan Poe’s plays William Wilson (1839), and it was choreographed by Anastasia Papaeleftheriadou and performed by Bianca Ranieri and myself. The set design was created by Kyveli Anastassiadi (2014), who is part of VIPA (Viral Institute of Viral Architecture) and the sound landscape was created and performed by Albert E. Dean. 

One of the ways I have analysed my experience in this piece is by informally but systematically interviewing Kyveli; collected information and reflections from her point of view as both an architect and a former dancer. I believe this is exactly the kind of perspective that has helped me attempt to unravel the complex relationship between the two disciplines. In parallel with Evelyn Gavrilou’s considerations of dance and architecture in her paper (2003), in Mirrored, me? we intended to convey “(…) a richer understanding of the body to bear upon our descriptions of spatial experience and upon our treatment of such experience as an end of design formulation” (2003, p.1).

 

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The Bauhaus Theatre/Stage Workshop

 

The stage (…) is above all an architectonic-spatial organism where all things happening to it and within it exist in a spatially conditioned relationship (Schlemmer, 1960, p. 81).

 

This quotation about the Bauhaus stage serves to introduce how the stage has an intertwined relationship with everything that happens within it, an idea that will be further developed throughout this text.  The Bauhaus stage workshop was founded by Walter Gropius in 1921, which was led by Oskar Schlemmer. Schlemmer actually originally started heading as a sculpture workshop, which afterwards developed into the Bauhaus stage workshop (Gropius, 1960, p.7).

 

Similarly to Schlemmer, many of the teachers at the Bauhaus school were primarily visual artists, who would eventually fuse different arts, such as dance, in Schlemmer’s case. Due to this dominance of visual artists at the Bauhaus, one could be led to see the school as an art college; nonetheless, as Blume and Duhm notice, “(…) the training of artists was never the declared aim of the Bauhaus. The Bauhaus was first and foremost a place for interdisciplinary creative thinking and research (…)” (2008, p. 41). This interdisciplinary way of working led as well into an embodied way of thinking. Actually, Gropius believed that “No longer can anything exist in isolation. We perceive every form as the embodiment of an idea, every piece of work as a manifestation of our innermost selves” (1975, p.20).

As a result from all of the Bauhaus aims, the Bauhaus school was considered very different from most other art schools. The fundamental difference at the Bauhaus school was that, instead of teaching their students about existing forms produced by artists from the past, “(…) the Bauhaus emphasized the method of creative approach” (Bayer, Gropius, Gropius, 1975, p.40).

Concerning particularly the Bauhaus Theatre, Gropius had a specific conception; as Blume and Duhm stress, his “(…) design of a Total Theatre presented an arena with a flexibly organised relation to stage and audience area and allowed new possibilities of using light and sound technics, also film and slide projection” (2008, p.31). This kind of relationship between stage and audience in theatre was “(…) greatly inspired by popular entertainment venues (…)” (ibid) and it “(…) aimed to enable new ‘action in space’ (…)” (ibid), overwhelming the spectators’ senses.

 

This type of relationship was applied at the Bauhaus Theatre, in fact, Schlemmer was very loyal to Gropius’ vision on how architecture harmonises all the arts and he understood theatre as a synthesis of the body and the space. Indeed, the Bauhaus stage was considered to be “(…) less a theatre workshop than an experimental space laboratory (…)” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.57). Thus, to better understand the Bauhaus stage workshop, one must also be aware of the general aims and objects of study of the Bauhaus institution, since those will fuse with the specific characteristics of the Bauhaus theatre.

 

The Bauhaus’ new conceptions of form were “(…) liberated from traditions and set patterns (…)” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p. 41). Precisely, the main ambition at the Bauhaus was to attain a “(…) new awareness of form, which was to be developed based on the consistent and precise research of aesthetic principles” (ibid). Blume and Duhm highlight how this new way of understanding space, led to a highly demanding pressure on students, who were asked to develop a radical questioning of form, as a central intellectual challenge for the students at the Bauhaus school, including the notion of its unclear characteristics, as these authors notice:

 

Besides the necessary practical and theoretical specialist knowledge, what the Bauhaus person had to learn most of all was: that form is not self-evident and something really new only emerges if he or she has previously investigated as many factors as possible of each creative problem (…) (ibid).

 

Another intention was “(…) to find a new and powerful working correlation of all the processes of artistic creation to culminate (…) in a new cultural equilibrium of (…) environment” (Gropius, 1960, p.7). It is adequate to mention this idea when thinking about the stage workshop and how the people working there intended to associate all their various artistic conceptions (e.g.: architecture, painting, sculpture, industrial design) into a new and balanced interdisciplinary atmosphere (Gropius, 1960, p.7). Indeed, “(…) the concept of Bau itself (…)” (Schlemmer, 1960, p. 81) means that “(…) the stage is an orchestral complex which comes about only through the cooperation of many different forces” (ibid); this kind of cooperation required “(…) a demand for a new and powerful working correlation of all the processes of creation” (Gropius, 1975, p.28).

In fact, this interdisciplinary attitude was common not only at the stage workshop but in the whole school, connecting the arts with design and architecture. Moreover, the Bauhaus school “(…) attempted to discover ‘laws’ in art that could be related to design and architecture, and its fundamental aim was to establish a universal language of form (…)” (Naylor, 1985, p.9). This interdisciplinary atmosphere was not only felt in the school’s philosophies but Gropius believed that the building itself “(…) was a ‘statement of intent’, and it demonstrated (…)  the variety and clarity as well as the unity of the activities that went inside it” (Naylor, 1985, p.132).

 

In fact, this interdisciplinary approach was applied on the roots of the Bauhaus stage, while being grounded on the industrial and mechanical aesthetics through geometric creations, proportions and rhythms; the following observations of Blume and Duhm clarify the Bauhaus approach, bringing together body, movements and space, assisted an ambitious and holistic aesthetic goal, once it

 

 (…) aimed to construct abstract compositions, in which body, movements and spaces might be combined into an aesthetically ordered whole, into a Gesamtkunstwerk – a total work of art (2008, p. 203).

 

Altogether, the main subjects of study at the stage workshop were the human perception and its biological realities, as well as, the phenomenon of form and space (cf. Gropius, 1960, p.7). Consequently, “(…) in both stage work and architecture, artists and students had to seek the basic laws of the relationship between man and space (…)” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p. 45). These subjects seem to perfectly lead into the production of dance works, which was what happened with Schlemmer, who created various dance pieces at the Bauhaus theatre. Therefore, Schlemmer´s conceptions will be succinctly analysed in next chapter, once they seem to clarify how dance may be a way of knowing architectural problematics.   

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Oskar Schlemmer

 

Nowadays, the Bauhaus stage is known as “(…) a major project in the context of modern theatre” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.35). Both, Schlemmer’s conceptions concerning a ‘type stage’ and costume dance “(…) are regarded as major, avant-garde theatre projects” (ibid). Besides, his ‘mechanical stage’ was a core idea which led to the design of a stage space equipped with a sophisticated “(…) technical and kinetic apparatus and mostly dispensing with human actors – a trend resulting (…) from the dominance of visual designers at the Bauhaus” (ibid).

 

In fact, Schlemmer started his career as a visual artist and this is perceptible in his work. As a former visual artist, he was continuously influenced by his initial way of expression; as Blume and Duhm stress, his “(…) art figures were painterly, sculptural and dancing images of human beings, balanced on the border between nature and artefact” (2008, p.53); simultaneously, his work has been described by Birringer as “(…) ’performative’ architecture” (2012, p.8). Besides, his interpretation and concern with space emerged during the transition from working as a painter, sculptor and designer to choreographing, which led to the exploration of form, movement, sound and colour in an interdisciplinary way (Birringer,2012, pp.4,5).

 

Schlemmer’s main artistic characteristic was the way he interpreted space and how he experienced it with the whole body, not merely through his vision, which was consistent with the Bauhaus theatre vision of regaining “(…) primordial joy of all senses, instead of mere esthetic pleasure” (Gropius, 1975, p.21), as well as, with the idea that “experiencing architecture is not limited to just visual interpretation and in order for an architectural space to be fully understood and appreciated, one must engage with it” (Harris, 2014, p. 1).  Schlemmer considered that what regulates movement is the human figure’s engagement with space introducing an amazing conception of a fusion of the body with the space, i.e., in Ersoy’s words, “(…) the notion of the merging of human body with the space it occupied” (2011, p.125). According to Blume and Duhm, the core stone, indeed the “essential element” of Schlemmer’s work was the human figure (2008, p.53); even though, these authors stress that, “(…) in real practice the stage work of the Bauhaus manifested the ‘element’ of human being almost exclusively as an artistically denaturalised and geometrically abstract artificial figure” (ibid).

 

Not surprisingly, these trends led him to conceive “(…) dancers and actors into moving architecture” (Gropius, 1960, p.9). Simultaneously, he perceived the actor or the dancer “as the person acting by means of his figure” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.53); this conception was accentuated once humans on stage were “(…) abstracted by costume and mask into an artificial figure without voice or individuality” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.53). In his work, Schlemmer developed various times this idea, which he named “(…) the transfiguration of the human form” (Schlemmer, 1960, p. 17). Besides, his geometric costumes and sets were the result of “(…) the increasing role of technology in the living environment in an industrial age, addressing the adaptation of the human being to the logics and rhythms of the ‘machine age’” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.53). Consequently, Schlemmer thought about space and the body and how that space affects the body and its movement, creating works considered to be “(…) design-in-motion (…)” (Birringer, 2012, p.14).

 

Moreover, Schlemmer combined “(…) the ‘action stage of a bodily-mimetic event’ [especially dance] with the spectacle stage of an optical event” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.53). He adapted the dancers’ bodies by getting them to wear costumes and props with geometric shapes which blocked movement to draw attention to the costumes’ construction and its materials (cf. Birringer, 2012, pp.5, 6) culminating in a “(…) geometric-figural poetry in motion (…)” (ibid, p.14). The way he created costumes “simultaneously aimed to challenge the dancers to attain a new intensity of movement” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p. 55). This method also enabled the dancers to improvise on stage while exploring their costumes’ expressiveness, indeed, Schlemmer stimulated them to do so (ibid). This shows how Schlemmer intertwined design and dance, establishing a two-sided relationship, since the design physically obstructed movement and the movement led into the design’s creation, and therefore into affective activities.

 

Besides, this idea evokes the following Valerie Briginshaw comments on a choreography of William Forsythe:

 

 There are parallels in dance and architecture which reveal the pervasive ways in which ideas about experiencing space and the visualization of space shape thought and affect subjectivity. Dance and architecture as spatial texts structure ways of seeing the world. Dances and architecture can be seen to organize space (Briginshaw, 2001, p.240).

 

Understandably, in addition to his conception of the human figure, Schlemmer relied on dance as the privileged way of discovering and knowing the relationship between body in motion and space organisation; as Blume and Duhm highlight, he “(…) avoided what he judged to be an over-hasty integration of the new media for new narratives. He deliberately dispensed with language and concentrated on dance” (2008, p. 25). Schlemmer also thought constantly about the human figure relating it to mechanization, industry and technology, which was an area being incredibly developed at the time. More specifically,

His vision was that, as a man-made world, the industrialised, technology-based and mechanised environment was hiding another dimensional depth, which (…) might be the basis of a renewed metaphysical concept of man or ideal man (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.27).

On the grounds, Schlemmer considered indispensable to acknowledge

The modern social situation for the time being as the condition for artistic creativity and transpose the fascination for the new artificiality of the industrially modernised world into new forms through the rhythmic-dynamic handling of the stage space (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p. 27).

Even though while analysing Schlemmer’s ideologies and work one might see him as a man ahead of his time, his students at the Bauhaus school felt his ideas for the stage condescending at times. This was due to Schlemmer’s rejection to his students’ emphasis on the mechanical theatre. The students allowed him to direct them into the path he wished unwillingly, they “(…) often worked on their own projects regardless of the curriculum and without a supervisor (…)” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.35). The students’ independency “(…) was one of the Bauhaus characteristics and applied quite especially to the stage” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.35). At the same time, “He strove to heal the inner chaos and conflict of modern man with a counter-plan, in which, mind and material would combine in harmonious forms” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.53).

 

Additionally, Schlemmer “(…) paid tribute to the human being in his and her bodily presence, but also in their spiritual dimension” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.183). His work was not a “(…) radical abolition and obsolescence of the human element on stage through machines, apparatus and media (…)” (ibid), neither “(…) a fixation on the human body as a boundary against performing modes based on media and technical props” (ibid). Schlemmer constantly evoked this duality in his works, which links with the duality explored throughout this essay in between movement/the body and architecture, as well as, “(…) the idea of conceiving the human body as a source of form and recognising that merging with the space it occupies is a form of embodiment” (Ersoy, 2011, p.126).

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The Triadic Ballet (1922)

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The Triadic Ballet (1922) is one of Oskar Schlemmer’s dance pieces created at the stage workshop at the Bauhaus school, which Martin Conrads considers regards as an example “(…) of the aesthetics of a new stage understanding (…)” (2015); this piece fused the material and mechanical (architecture and costume/set design) with the biological and organic (the dancers/body and movement) mixing humans and machines, and finally, offering the concept of human beings as machines on stage. Blume and Duhm state that, according to Schlemmer, the “(…) mechanization, if driven to its extremes would lead to the recognition of what could not be mechanised” (2008, p.179). Precisely, in his opinion “(…) the human being transformed into the form of a puppet was not trivial, but a deeply metaphysical being” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p. 55).

 

The Triadic Ballet physicalizes all the ideas that characterise Schlemmer’s dance works. This piece has three acts. It starts with a caricature act alongside a lemon-yellow stage set.  The second act has a pink stage set and the dancing is celebratory. To finalize, the third act has a black stage set, creating an enigmatic and fantastic atmosphere. The whole piece is composed by twelve dance scenes danced by two male dancers and one female, and the dancers wear eighteen different costumes throughout (cf. Bayer, Gropius and Gropius, 1975, p. 63).

 

As it has been mentioned on the essay’s section about Oskar Schlemmer, he constantly related the human figure to mechanization, and that was visible in The Triadic Ballet’s costumes, which comprised padded tights on one side of the body, stiff papier-maché shapes with metallic exteriors (cf. Bayer, Gropius and Gropius, 1975, p. 63). The padded and rigid costumes were created not solely with a visual aesthetic goal, but also to challenge the dancers to experiment with their movement intensity (cf. Blume and Duhm, 2008, p. 55). In addition, Schlemmer created the conditions for dancers’ expression, once he   

 

(…) always placed great value on encouraging his dancers to act and improvise on stage in order to explore new expressive potential in their management of the costumes and materials he had design (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p. 55).

 

Blume and Duhm remark that, at times, this experimentation that dancers investigated became “(…) physically very strenuous, making extraordinary demands on their muscle power” (2008, p.181). Dancers would have to adjust how gravity was felt in their bodies once they had those costumes on, which affected their pace, for instance, transforming simple movements into physical challenges (cf. ibid). In truth, these costumes transformed the human figure “(…) into a three-dimensional, acting puppet and embodied the artificial figure propagated by Schlemmer” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, p.179), which interconnected the relation between abstract space and the dancers’ body.

 

Blume and Duhm warn that it is not known exactly how these experiences in the way of making and using costumes directed the way the human body was approached in performance in general; nonetheless, these authors emphasise that Schlemmer’s work is definitely considered “(…) a new figural theatre or costume ballet (…) In a kind of terpsichorean constructivism (…)” (2008, p. 55). Consequently, the choreography Schlemmer created for The Triadic Ballet was characterized by its exceptionality, “(…) the uniqueness of each geometrically conceived costume” (Blume and Duhm, 2008, pp.55 and 57), as well as by the “(…) ‘metaphysical forms of expression’ discovered in the human body (…)” (ibid) allowing the production of “(…) symbolic compositions, which lead to ‘dematerialisation’” (ibid).

 

Nevertheless, these same metaphysical forms of expression and Schlemmer’s aim of ‘dematerialization’ appear to conduct to an abstraction and a devaluation of the body, attaining an excess level in The Triadic Ballet, as Safak Uysal and Markus Wilsing ironically denounce:

 

Within this totalitarian view, the body is pictured as incapable of meeting the demands of the conceptual construct. The physical and natural limitations of the human form are suspended and/or replaced with new means of expression in order to be able to adapt to the laws of the primate-space (2000, p. 392).

 

Despite these contradictions which appear clearly in the Triadic Ballet, this piece seems to be a core stone of the problematic relationship between architecture and dance.

 

In the next section, I will describe and analyse my own experience in a collaborative work with an architect which seemingly diverges from Schlemmer’s conception about this relationship: in my experience, dancers and architect were partners in a silent dialogue, as well as in an explicit and conceptualised one.

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My experience in Mirrored, me? (2016) in line with what I have learnt from Oskar Schlemmer

 

As mentioned in the introduction of this essay, Mirrored, me? (2016) was a collaboration work I was involved with, where a choreographer (Anastasia Papaeleftheriadou), two dancers (Bianca Ranieri and I), an architect (Kyveli Anastassiadi) and a musician (Albert E. Dean) came together to create a piece based on Edgar Allan Poe’s play William Wilson (1839). The main concept we explored built from the play was the self and its double. This central notion was explored through the use of reflection from one of the set design pieces which was part of an installation, eventually becoming an architectural metaphor, highlighting the space’s elements to address the main story line about the boundaries we draw within ourselves.

The atmosphere in the studio while producing the piece was open and there were no signs of hierarchy, giving everyone the chance of expressing our thoughts and desires. One of the key moments in the creation was when Kyveli, the architect who was going to make the set design, came to the studio and guided a workshop with the two dancers, Bianca and myself.

We had been asked to bring a personal object that day and to begin with Kyveli asked us to create movement describing the object in space. Following that task, we were asked to play around with direction and to think where in space, we wanted that sequence of movements to happen. Succeeding, she asked us to draw on paper what we had just created in space. This drawing would then have become a sketch of what we would have to build in the studio space using tape, rope and plastic sheets. Evelyn Gavrilou suggestively expresses this kind of transference from movement, to paper into a set design as a “(…) representation [that] can be perceived as a pattern of 3-D extrusions and elaborations of lines that would otherwise merely mark the trace of movement on the floor” (2003, p.11).

In a parallel vein, Marissa Ameer Levash notices that movement is discussed in architecture and dance “(…) through space, form making, human/spatial relationships (…)” (2015, p.ii); Levash stresses the ways how this relationship between dance and architecture arises from “(…) their overlapping spatial implications” (2015, p.1). This may help to clarify how the method Kyveli suggested during that workshop was so effective, finding similarities in the way movement and space are understood in both dance and architecture, allowing the creation of insightful human-spatial relationships through the use of the two complementary areas. According to Levash, their common ground is that “Both professions design space (…)” (2015, p.3), what differs them is that they use “(…) different mediums, the body and building” (ibid); despite (and perhaps because of) these differences, these visibly interacting oppositions, our experience strikingly suggested that both influence and inform each other in an inextricable manner.

Besides, during the creation process, as well as the performance situation, the dancers were encouraged to improvise while interacting with any of the installation’s elements. This space for randomness and intuition gave a sense of authenticity to this experience, making it particularly striking for the participants.

Recently, during the research process for the production of this paper I became aware of and really grasped the following core concept that we explored during the workshop i.e., the Notational Drawing. This concept has been developed by Kyveli Anastasiadi (2014) and it will be analysed further on in this section. 

Kyveli conceives Notational Drawing as a way to “(…) describe architecture in terms of movement rather than form, using the body as a tool of cognition, drawing and sculpting” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 7); this idea was actually applied by herself in the workshop that initiated the creation process of the piece.  In fact, Notational Drawing is an alternative way of sketching, resultant from the “thinking body” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 7), where, instead of an external representation, as usually happens in two dimensional architectural plans for instance, we dealt with a three-dimensional representation. The objects resultant from the Notational Drawing process were conceived as “(…) spaces rather than forms, as they are results of exhaustive data acquisition from the performer in motion” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 7). This implies a similarity (one could say a homology) between choreographing and doing Notational Drawing, as Kyveli puts it, “(…) a process for making a design that is analogous to a process of making a choreography, bridging the world of architecture with the world of performance” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 7).

This workshop started the collaborative process in between dance and architecture in this piece, which creation have undergone several changes from its starting point until the final result; this creation in progress was supported by the initial stimulus which had set the tone for the rest of the creative work. This was the first time I had been through an embodied learning which gave me access to the awareness of how dance may influence architecture. On the contrary, in what concerns the inverse influences (i.e., architecture / dance), it is undeniably that all along my practice as a dancer, I had been progressively aware of the way architecture influences how I move, conscious of my preference for certain studios to others, sentient of the floor being hard or sprung, I would use my body differently, or even if the dancing would be happening in a specifically dance orientated building or in a public area or just in a building where dance does not usually happen. For instance, when I performed the piece A line is (2017) choreographed by Julie Cunningham at the V&A museum, I became aware of several rules that we had to follow when dancing in a museum. One of those rules prevented us to be closer than one meter to any object, which manipulated the way we moved and choreographed the piece. This experience coincides with what Gavrilou states as follows,

 While dance realises some of the patterns of movement that are potentially implied by empty space, architecture restricts potential movement through the imposition of boundaries and the creation of spatial structure (2003, p.2).

Levash stresses the three intertwined sides of the relationship that links architecture, dance and aesthetic quality: “(…) architecture provides aesthetic quality for human habitation (…) [as] dance provides an aesthetic quality to human movement” (2015, p.4). This kind of overlapping interchange allows one to conceive the body “(…) as an extension of space and space as an extension of the body” (Anastasiadi, 2017 b). This way of thinking has a philosophical implication, since “(…) we do influence space just with our presence, there is a different atmosphere” (ibid). Besides our body affecting space, the way we use it also influences what is around us, for instance, “(…)  if we rush or if we move gently makes a massive difference in the quality of space we are building around us” (ibid), and once again this interchange works both ways, our presence and the way we move also affects how space feels.

Since this experience, I have been frequently wondering about what kind of sensitive intelligence can shed light on these reciprocal relations between the body in intentionally aesthetic motion and the equally intentional organization of space. In other words, how can one be motivated to study in depth the relationship between movement and architecture?

Therefore, recently, throughout the process of writing this essay, during an interview with Kyveli, I asked her if she could explain her initial impulse to explore this fluid and interchangeable relationship between dance and architecture. She started elucidating my question by stating that it was an intuitive idea resulting from an understanding that architecture is not only about buildings. Pursuing, she claimed that architecture

(…) cannot be about a static form because it has to be and it is about people. It is about how people move and interact with space. It’s about relationships. It is about so many things beyond what we actually see as a final result, there is so much in the process of architecture and somehow it felt like the universities wanted to make it about a form, or about a style, or about a drawing, but there is more (Anastasiadi, 2017 b).

Kyveli’s view on architecture education and the avoidance of solely learning about styles and form seems to evoke the way Gropius envisioned teaching at the Bauhaus when he argued that,

 

Practical and theoretical studies are carried on simultaneously in order to release the creative powers of the student, to help him grasp the physical nature of materials and the basic laws of design. Concentration on any particular stylistic movement is studiously avoided (Gropius, 1975, p.24).

I have also asked Kyveli about her experience as a dancer and how that also led her to think about this crossed relationship. Kyveli explained that she had tried many different dance styles but she felt that “there was something very structured, less intuitive” (Anastasiadi, 2017 b) which she did not like, so she ended up assuming that dance was not suitable for her. She felt that “(…) it was about form again, like architecture is about form but ballet is about form as well, so it was the same consciousness and slowly (…) [she] (…) moved to movement, rather than dance” (ibid).

It is curious that Birringer noticed that Schlemmer had a similar hesitancy towards dance, “(…) a term Schlemmer only used for lack of a better word” (2012, p.8); this is not surprising when one thinks about the way he conceived dance, i.e., as a simple medium which allowed him to explore space fluidly requiring, Birringer adds, “(…) what we today call embodiment, a real body extended into living spatiality” (ibid).   

This way of exploring space fluidly and away from form was what made Kyveli think that she was interested in the relationship between movement and architecture, rather than dance and architecture. In the same vain, Kyveli found something else interesting in dance when experimenting with improvisation. She experienced how dance may be intuitive and about relationships and how these aspects may and should be present in architecture.

During the creation of Mirrored, me?, I became aware of how the relationship between space and body is definitely intertwined and is hardly separated from one another. Nevertheless, I think that this awareness did not sprang simply through a process merely intuitive, once it included a conceptual movement, i.e., a reflective work.

 

Thus, and at the last instance, what is perhaps worth to stress is the fact that these considerations led me to speculate that once I started working with Kyveli, I had been constructing ways of knowing about how to organize and recreate space organization through dance, my body in motion and my insightful work. Nearly simultaneously, I have been progressively understanding by means of a reflective work about the meaning of the conceptual expression “Design Through Performance” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 9); with my mind, as well as I have been grasping with my body the meaning of a broader and somewhat fuzzy but deep awareness of being and crossing the space, nearly designing; this two sided but intertwined awareness of the conceptual expression of a set design trough performance and dance.  Seemingly, this twofold awareness is a result of both my immersion in the process of creating the set piece for Mirrored, me?, and my subsequent reflective work, including significantly the production of this essay.  

 

This has been a two-sided process, despite in some ways being a simultaneous one: on the one hand, the reflection about the concept which “(…) borrows key techniques from the world of dance in order to synthesise a way of making a design” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 9) and on the other, how a relevant and integrated installation was achieved through the work in between the architect and the dancers. The dancers were given information and a task from the architect, “(…) to describe the site, in its absence, with movement” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 9) which was the dancers’ stimuli. By describing design through movement “(…) into an architectural object or space (…)” (ibid, p. 41), the result would not be a “(…) final fixed form” (ibid). Actually, according to this perspective, a fixed form “(…) is an inadequate means of representation as it portrays architecture as a form rather than a movement” (ibid).

 

Following this conception, one can easily conceive that it is this rigid and fixed form that happens when movement is not taken in consideration while planning an architectural space or object. That is what happens when the initial drawing is two dimensional, instead of three dimensional. As Anastasiadi puts it,

 

What the 2D architectural drawing lacks, is the fact that it does not encompass any corporeal properties that define 3D space and a final 3D construct. Rather, it is characterized by obliqueness, abstraction and its illusory idea of depth. Its lines are bodiless pieces, o offering just a trickery of space and perspective (2014, p. 43).

This way of critically approaching an architectural drawing contains the answers to questions such as, “(…) how would architecture look like if it was described in movement rather than on paper?” (Anastasiadi, 2017 a) and “(…) how would dance look like if it was sketched, drawn, constructed and what kind of materials would you use to draw in space?” (ibid). Kyveli senses that in architecture there is a lack of corporeal involvement; in a similar vein, Briginshaw stresses the fact that “In dance, bodily involvement is taken for granted and rarely singled out for discussion” (2001, p.254). Nonetheless, pursuing, this author recognises that “(…) a physical and sensual experience of the world in an obvious sense brings closeness and proximity rather than distance and separation” (ibid).

Kyveli Anastasiadi highlights that the underlying conceptions of 2D drawings are in plain opposition to the way how Schlemmer viewed the human figure’s stance in space,

In architectural 2D drawings, the human figure appears only as an illustration, hardly associated with the architectonic body as a space that exists beyond its image, form and monumentality; tracing a life but not exactly associating pragmatically with it (2014, p. 43).

Kyveli realised there could be other ways of approaching architecture, space and the body by studying the interdisciplinary way of doing things and thinking, inspired by the Bauhaus school, and by acknowledging the core principle stated by Birringer as follows: “(…) there can be no space experience without body (…)” (2012, p.8). Seemingly, Kyveli’s idea of the way architects sketch in a two-dimensional medium affects the result which is removed from the three-dimensional reality, is somehow, an extension of Gropius idea according to which, art schools separated arts and craftsmanship, the “(…)  l’art pour l’art attitude (…) [which is] (…) so far removed from life” (Gropius, 1975, p.21).

Furthermore, Kyveli questioned challengingly: “(…) architects make buildings, but how do they make them? Behind a screen, clicking” (Anastasiadi, 2017 b). This process will affect the result, so she is not surprised by buildings “(…) that are very cold, because they haven’t been made by someone or through someone that is actually understanding space with their bodies” (ibid). She concluded these critical comments enouncing this sensible principle: “If we think only through the mind… the mind can only provide as much as it can, but if we think with the whole body, then relationships change. The thinking body” (ibid). Paraphrasing Levash, it seems that when architects allow the body and its context influence their work, a dynamic demonstration of the responsive relationship between movement, the body and space becomes visible (cf. 2015, p.79).

In what concerns this relationship between movement, body and space, the process of creating Mirrored, me? was the reversed equation of how Schlemmer started his pieces. Schlemmer understood the human body and space not solely through his vision but through his whole body, physically, which explains how and why he started generating dance; accordingly, while Schlemmer started by translating architecture and design into movement, we started by translating dance into a shape and seeing what that looked like, and then we built those shapes to see what they looked like spatially and how that would inform the choreography. Even though these are reversed processes, they are very similar in that they are rooted on the same concept. This is particularly relevant because it goes in hand with the main question raised in this essay, once these are processes and relationships that do not work one way, but, on the contrary, they are interchangeable requiring an interdisciplinary approach. This kind of intellectual atmosphere was common at the Bauhaus theatre/stage workshop and in between the members of Mirrored, me?, by applying the same concept in different manners.

 

By way of conclusion, it is worthy to reflect upon how the conceptual expression physical thinking can be applied in architecture and dance, and how it can be developed in both disciplines. As it has been established throughout this essay, the relationship between dance and architecture is an interlinked and interdisciplinary one, similar to the Bauhaus stage workshop’s ideals, which means that “Our relationship with objects is neither distant nor abstract, as objects relate to our body as well as to the way we live, provoking a specific way of behaving” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 43).

 

As Anastasiadi refers, this relationship between the body and the object is also a complex and intertwined one: “(…) our relationship to space is not one of a merely disembodied subject to a distant object but rather that of a ‘being’ that exists in space mediated by our thought” (2014, p. 49). It is the case that, this applied method of combination and absorption of concepts is accurately designated by the conceptual expression mentioned above: physical thinking.

 

Physical thinking introduces “The intelligence of the body” (Anastasiadi, 2017 b), rising questions such as “How do I use my body as a thinking, measuring and sculpting tool to then produce?”; this is an antagonistic position of the usual intellectual movement, i.e., “(…) looking at something and sketching on paper, which is a two-dimensional medium (…)” (ibid). According to this conception of physical thinking, the body acquires a specific position and high status, once indeed “Through physical thinking the body is seen as a cognitive, drawing, sculpting and measuring tool (…)” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 55); in addition, “(…) it perceives space through a form of conscious dialogue, while ‘thinking’ in a way that is integral to a manner of physical performance” (Anastasiadi, 2014, p. 55

 

All of these concepts have been applied during the creation and performance of Mirrored, me?, even if sometimes, as a dancer I was not completely aware that they were present. This is something that has been interesting to notice. Even though the dancers were not always aware of the cognitive process that the architect was going through, they were still part of that process, influencing it, and physically thought in order to achieve the result design piece. 

 

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Conclusion

 

This project has been a way of researching and understanding the way dance informs architecture, and it may be considered a resource in multiple disciplines, as Zehra Ersoy points out:

From the sphere of interest of architectural design pedagogy, dance can be a resource of phenomenology and a practical tool for embodied learning (2011, p.125).

Pursuing, Erzoy stresses the different but convergent ways in which dance and architecture have to deal with subjects in motion through space:

If the aim is to enhance a subjective consciousness, both architecture and dance focus on subjects in space, one focuses on the embodiments of the perceiver/user whereas the other on the dancer (ibid).  

Moreover, “Embodiment in architecture can be defined as a seamless integration of the physical body into architectural space” (Harris, 2014, p. 18).  This architectural embodiment “(…)  is the result of an integration of body and mind since the form of the human body largely determines the nature of the mind and the properties of the body shape all aspects of perception” (ibid). This view denies the dualistic way of thinking about the mind and the body, enhancing the need of an embodied knowledge in order to produce architectural objects through “(…) an embodied understanding of space (…)” (Ersoy, 2011, p.124).  

 The development of this essay has increased my awareness about the way dance affects architecture, and vice versa, as it has been discussed throughout the essay, once these relationships cannot be completely separated from each other. On the contrary, these relationships are intertwined, which immediately connects to the interdisciplinary (or even transdisciplinary) approach and ideas explored at the Bauhaus stage workshop. More concretely,

(…) choreographies can be read as sequences of momentarily crystallized visual frames linked by flows of movement. Settings can similarly be imagined as spatial syntheses of visual frames into patterns that correspond to habitual spatial behaviors (Gavrilou, 2003, p.8).

Continuing on this research of the relationship between dance and architecture, the way the Bauhaus stage workshop tackled this association has been developed in the text. While researching about the Bauhaus, it became evident that this idea has been widely explored during the beginning of the twentieth century, which gave me confidence by making me see that it is possible to create work considering both disciplines as equals, and as Kyveli ensured me during the interview, “(…) sometimes we need to have the reference to prove something that we feel inside” (Anastasiadi, 2017 b). Talking and reflecting with Kyveli has been specifically relevant since the main essay question has actually been something that interested her since finishing her masters in 2014. Indeed she “(…) felt that architecture is very rigid in its making and this is why buildings feel stale and unwelcoming” (Anastasiadi, 2017 a). In fact, Kyveli realised that “Architects do not use their bodies to make a drawing or a sketch and that is reflected in the result. Instead dancers do use their bodies but they do not necessarily build something tangible” (Anastasiadi, 2017 a).

 

This overlapping relationship that may occur between dancers and choreographers develops different ways of approaching both subjects. In fact, while researching to write this paper, I came across a text by Peter Merriman (2010) about Anna and Lawrence Halprin’s research on the relationship of dance and architecture; Anna is a dancer and Lawrence an architect. This was a very happy discovery, since they studied with former Bauhaus professors and shared many ideas that were considered on the section Bauhaus theatre/stage workshop of this essay. Similarly to the ideals formed at the Bauhaus school, Anna and Lawrence’s philosophical approaches on how to create in the arts emphasised the principles of working in an interdisciplinary way.  Equally, both of them highlighted the form-function concept in architecture, over merely visual aesthetics, which goes in hand with the main essay question. They considered that

 Avant-garde dancers not only consumed but produced and shaped architectural environments, while architects themselves actively engaged with choreographic vocabularies, theories of practice, and ideas from performance and dance in attempting to understand how people inhabit buildings, landscapes and architectural environments (Merriman, 2010, p. 431).

Researching about the Bauhaus theatre and stage workshop, specifically on Schlemmer’s work, brought even more into evidence how much this institution was so well directed and how advanced their way of thinking was. At the same time, it has been interesting to find what has been learnt related to the main essay question through reflecting on my past experience during the creation and performance processes of the piece Mirrored, me?. It has been enriching to deepen my understanding of how Mirrored, me? was created. Using my personal experience has been very interesting and hopefully it has facilitated a better understanding of the subject-matter of this essay - the complex interrelations between dance and architecture. This method of research also goes in line with Gropius vision about making space for personal experiences and discoveries, releasing “(…) the individual by breaking down conventional patterns of thought which will enable him to see his own potentialities and limitations” (Gropius, 1975, p.24). Simultaneously, it has been helpful to think about architecture as

(...) an art that works with and around space. While architecture has primarily been regarded as a spatial art form, one could also consider it temporal since experiencing architectural space can truly only happen over time (Harris, 2014, p. 1)

 

 

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