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

This made me aware of the politics of theatre space. When I go to the theatre I realize I have to engage with the hierarchy of Western theatre space, with its own conventions and rhetoric of upstage, downstage, green space, centre stage. There is a very particular power relationship. When you put a body in such a space, you are already telling a story. I find that I am not interested in centre stage any more. Before I choreograph a single movement, just by choosing where I put a dance I have already made a political choice. The wing spaces, especially that psychologically nebulous place just before entering, is where my interest lies.

ON PLANNING AND IMPROVISATION

Nikolaus Hirsch

Contemporary architecture seems to be fascinated by notions like movement, process and time. Ironically though, these conditions are inherent to dance rather than architecture, which traditionally stands for stability rather than instability. I want to discuss this relationship first in view of the logics of stability and instability, and then to show how they arose in the conversion of the Bockenheimer Tram Depot in Frankfurt into a theatre, which was a collaboration with the choreographer William Forsythe. In a particular way this project raised issues of translation between different disciplines, questions on the relationship between planning and improvisation and finally hopes and doubts on the performative potential of architecture.

A common contemporary approach to space characterizes it by flows and movements rather than solids. In this context architecture seems to be more and more anachronistic: a medium having a difficult relationship with phenomena which unfold over time, an anachronistic discipline with serious problems of adjustment. Traditionally, the essence of architectural planning lies in foreseeing and predetermining a future status. Following its etymology the 'architect' is more than a 'technikos'. He is an 'archi-tect', ie someone who deals with 'arche', a notion that oscillates between being an organizing principle and a command. Assuming that this deterministic and authoritarian approach is still part of the architectural culture, something like a positive conflict between the disciplines was programmed in the collaboration between an architect and a choreographer. Certainly, as a choreographer William Forsythe has authority and may have a certain control over the dancers, but the creative process differs significantly from architectural planning. It is more open and driven by process, and its temporal logic is quite different. Improvisation is a key notion in Bill's choreographic work and it could be seen as a problematic opposite of the determination inherent in architectural plans.

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The main concept for the theatre was to open the space as much as possible to the public realm and for public use. Part of Bill's question to us was how to provide spaces that were not determined, that invited a variety of uses and correlated movements. What our collaboration suggests is that there is more than one way of being a body. Architecture always turns us into bodies in a specific way. Hospitals, fitness studios, schools and even public space impose certain expectations on the body. We wanted to investigate what the body could become in a less defined space. To some extent we tried to find a way of suggesting different uses of the body. On top of that the idea was to provide spaces where 'Public Life', a complex programme of workshops, concerts, performances and films curated by Louise Neri, could run simultaneously in a theatre that is open from 12pm-12am.