Through the exploration of dance notation what can we learn about the limitations of Architecture and its representation of the architectural experinc

Key points of a dissertation relating Atrchitecture and Dance - Sundal Roy

Architecture and Dance, two seemingly antithetical art forms share a number of similarities. Both are concerned with describing shapes in space. Both are defined through the direct experience of the body.

• Architecture exists wholly in any given moment; a dance peice in its entirety only last in the memory and imagination.




• Both are experienced through passage of time and journey




• Dance 'almost invisible', archietcture is 'almost permenant'.




• So if we cannot perceive it except through the passage of time, do we know that the rest of it actually exists? Dance only exists when it is danced. After time, it is no longer perceived , therefore no longer exists. Yet, there is no way we can know if architecture really exists when we can no longer see it.




• Architectural representation denotes the passage of time, depth and perception: we rely on our memory and experience to animate the representation




• The nature of a space is defined by its boundaries, the objects that are placed within it. In this way, architecture is able to define space, by drawing attention to a version or versions of any of the infinite possibilities of the structurability of space.
  Yet it is when these boundaries are removed, when we consider chora as an informe, or formless space that it becomes difficult to define




• ‘A dance sketches out a possible structure of space within an infinite set of possibilities. The dance is an exploration – a celebration perhaps – of the infinite structurability of space.’




• It is dance’s evanescence that highlights the possibilities of the space. Through the passage of time, bodies in space eliminate the spatial structures in which they find themselves- they describe the space in which they are no longer found, but once were. Once danced, these possibilities exist only in our memories.




• Architects have long struggled with the constraints of representing that which exists in three dimensions into two dimensions. This is a challenge enough without having to consider the fourth dimension- time.




• 

Above: baroque dance notation indicating each step. What is not notated, and how would you notate this any way, is the movement between each step. The expression, the impulse are not accounted for.

• Any type of preffesional notation in dance, architecture and music requires pre-requisite knowledge of notation; how to read adn understand it.



• Notating danace with music locates the peice in time and space (Using Labanotation as below)

• As many architects ‘invent their own individual drawing approaches…from the most personal, to the most conventional’, so too have choreographers and dancers broken free of the esotericism of such systems and many resort to their own methods of representation for the purpose of depositing their ideas.
  


• Many of these systems are ‘varied in nature’15, as for different individuals they serve different functions. Consequently, the viewpoints vary from planimetric diagrams or centrifugal drawings to frontal sequences of vignettes of stick figures, which place a hierarchy on certain moments in time.

• Above is an example of a planimetric drawing by the choreographer Trisha Brown. The full potential of this method as system of notation has not been exploited in this drawing, partly due to the lack of architectural context. The reason for this, as with all drawings, can be found in the purpose of the drawing. Trisha Brown’s drawings are not intended for the replication, restaging or even archiving her choreographies, let alone the representation of an experience

So how does dance relate to architecture?

• As both dance and architecture are experienced through the body’s own senses, of which the most information, for the average person, is relayed through sight, a visual representation is the obvious choice. As we have seen, it is the purpose of the particular system of representation, be it architectural or with reference to dance, that determines its success. Personal repositories to be used by the individual choreographer as short-term memory triggers do not need to communicate all layers of information. It is sufficient, and even preferable to use reference points, such as figurative representations of the body, words or other symbolic diagrams which may be esoteric to the author. Each one of these has an association in the memory of the choreographer and are intended to trigger the necessary memories in order for the choreographer to recreate the intermediary phrases
• Architectural representation, like choreography, makes assumptions about the understanding the reader has of its subject. It relies on the reader to imagine their own versions of the possibilities of the space they are comprehending
• Where dance freezes the sequence of events, allowing the reader to understand the entire piece that unfolds over time, at their own pace, architectural representation privileges the “completed” architectural object, as if, once resolved, it is fixed in time. There is little recognition of the transition from building to architecture once it becomes occupied
• Notation in any form emulates the objective, how do we encounter the subjective?
• Movement, and therefore dance, is different in one space to another. Likewise, the ‘logical reduction of architectural thought to what can be shown’38, in terms of orthographic drawings, reduce architecture to a singular, completed object. They fail to acknowledge that the architectural object cannot exist without the three interdependent layers of movement, event and programme .

Some interesting correlation between architectuire and dance, mainly encompassing notation and the passage of time. Interesting initial ideas of how we (as architects) may be able to objectify, to some degree, the notion of dance. If any one wants further information i have it.