Terpsichore and the architects: 'I have a deep sense of my body's architecture … the skeleton', said choreographer Trisha Brown in her prelude to the Royal Academy Forum which brought the worlds of dance and architecture together. In these pages Jeremy Melvin summarizes contributions, from a classicist, two architects, three choreographers and artist David Ward

DW How might this change the spatial relationship between audience and performers?

SD The effect I want is different to the proscenium arch, but the proscenium arch developed because the spectacle of a group of people on stage was fascinating. The proscenium arch established a relationship between performers and audience that allowed a grand scale. Film too offers an enormous spectacle, but also gives detail, which a proscenium cannot give.

I want dancers to move grandly in a spatial sense, but also to be close enough for the audience to see detail and decision-making, as well as the subtlety of action in moving from one side to the other: it is gorgeous and articulate, but cannot be seen through a proscenium arch. I am dying for the audience to experience the detail I love. So I want to try to join the effect of mass movement in big space with a large stage, but stay close to the audience. There is no easy answer.

DW For Plants and Ghosts you chose varied spaces with different architectural characters. Are you drawn to works that change according to the place, or is continuity of choreography at the heart of your approach?

SD As with good friends and good conversations, buildings and people need a long time to get to know each other. If a space were to influence me I would have to rehearse and perform in it for some time, so we could both soak each other up. With Plants and Ghosts we explored what the conversations would be in different volumes of space. We started in an air force hangar which housed fighter planes: I did not want that atmosphere to come into the work, but what I loved was that the building had a curved roof, thick walls, and it felt protected. Approaching by bus we had to drive three miles up the runway, before moving into a windowless space. In the end I should not have found it so fascinating and in some ways that overture ruined the experience. But at the time I thought it would be useful to have an adventure, to enter into a different imaginative space.

The most important thing is the relationship between you and what happens on stage. Where does not necessarily matter, though it is usually a large clear span space, which few places outside theatres have. Architectural requirements can be that simple.

DW You are working with the architect Sarah Wigglesworth. Are you choreographing her?

SD She is converting a Victorian school building and we want to make a large, contemporary studio on the gabled third floor. Architecturally she is able to influence the building's style increasingly towards the top. It culminates in her contemporary vision of the roof, a structure of waves that bring in light from the top. Light and acoustics are very important in dance and architecture: we have to consider how we introduce light to form and how we hear ourselves live in that form.

DW Do you draw a lot, and is it a unique kind of notation?

SD Trisha Brown has always done extraordinary drawings that are now seen in galleries.

Merce Cunningham uses computer work, so he has a graphic idea in front of him. I write garbage, and hope that it clarifies the garbage out of my body so when I go to the studio something better emerges. But dancers inform me far more than drawing. The graphic mark made by a dancer in space is the most lively way I can make a mark.