dance aesthetics: the significance of space

Dance Aesthetics: The Significance of Space

Edited by Kaija Pepper

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTIONby Mirna Zagar 2

THE CHOREOGRAPHERS

The Geography of Conversations 3By Serge Bennathan

Redefining Expectations: The Open Spaces Project 5By Daelik

Performing the City 7By Carolyn Deby

Cabane: A Space Within the Space 9By Paul-André Fortier

THE DESIGNERS

The Body in Articulated Spaces 11By Andreas Kahre

Revealed by Light: Provincial Essays 13By James Proudfoot

THE ARCHITECTS

The Alchemy of Dance and Architecture 15By Leslie Van Duzer

A Room and the Body 16By Annabel Vaughan

Designing Scotiabank Dance Centre: Four Stories 17By Noel Best

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INTRODUCTION

Space is shared by both dance and architecture as a medium either to frame or to expressconceptual, emotional and also very concrete ideas. How do artists and architects experience,understand, consider, think, use space?

Both disciplines have through time been inter-connected and each has reflected on andexpressed specific historical, geographical, social, political and cultural references. Weobserve this connectivity across cultures and across centuries in the intricate lines of classicalIndian dance echoed in the intricate temple reliefs; in the Baroque era’s architecturalexuberance and formality, reflected in the dress and gestures of the dances of that time; or inthe influence of the Bauhaus school’s revolutionary ideas about form and function onarchitects like Walter Gropius and dance artists like Oskar Schlemmer, and later in thechoreography of Merce Cunningham, Alwin Nikolais and the Judson Dance Theater.

Dance as an abstract form carves space through movement in time; architectureconstructs the space, redirecting this dynamic to reflect more concretely social, economic andpolitical relations. The Dance Centre itself operates within a space known as ScotiabankDance Centre and defined by architects, reflecting their understanding of dance – a disciplinethat organizes space into a temporary, fleeting architecture.

We have invited some of our colleagues who have worked with us over the past decade toreflect on these relationships from the perspective of their own encounters and dialogueswith space. Within the boundaries of a word count that we provided to the writers, we areoffering you, the reader, a window into the way each of them considers space as they bringtheir respective visions to us. Through their different perspectives they bring to our ownreality a new significance, moving us from the purely visual to the performative – be it onstage, as a site-specific experience or as a new spatial construct.

Dance Aesthetics: The Significance of Space offers a glimpse into how these particularartists take their conceptual frameworks and their perceptions, and own or transpose space.

Mirna Zagar, Executive DirectorThe Dance Centre, February 2013

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THE CHOREOGRAPHERS

The Geography of ConversationsBy Serge Bennathan

When the idea of creating an imaginary dialogue between the poet Federico Garcia Lorca andhis murderer Juan Luis Trescastro came to my mind, the concept of having the audience onfour sides of the stage imposed itself right away, becoming an integral aspect of the show.The work was going to be about mystery, secrecy, jealousy and intimate thoughts, and theaudience had to be in the position not just of spectators but also of witnesses. I wanted theperformers (Billy Marchenski and Dan Wild) to have just enough space to be able to reach ahigh degree of physicality and at the same time be limited by the frame created by theaudience. The drama would be heightened by the huis-clos – the no exit situation – creating apowerful feeling of compression.

Many audience members probably knew already about the tragic life and death of GarciaLorca, who was murdered by fascists during the Spanish civil war, his body never found. Itwas important that, as they entered, the feeling of compression, the density and charge ofthe space, would suggest the drama about to unfold. Then the true journey of the audiencecould take place: not to follow a succession of events, but rather to live my proposition of whyand how it happened. To be part of the conversation.

This delimited and calculated space was set up like an archaeological dig. As the piecedeveloped, the constant waves of emotions created by the encounter of the two men – anger,fear and violence, but also calm, abandon, poetry and profaneness – had to fit inside thisgeography. As the director/choreographer, my main thought was that each member of theaudience, wherever they were seated around the performance area, would feel the action wasaddressing them directly.

With set designer Jay Gower Taylor, discussions focused on how to create a tactile andvisual bridge between a very defined period (1936) represented on stage and an audiencerooted in the present. We chose to seat the audience in old wooden chairs like those thatmight be found in churches or cafés in Spain. These chairs framing the stage had the effect

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of sending us back in time and instinctively placing us geographically in Europe.Lighting designer James Proudfoot faced a challenge as the arena staging took away the

possibility of using very much side lighting. Since the piece started on an archaeological site,we used the same kind of tripod lights osten found there, placed strategically within the stagespace and doubling as part of the set. Lights hanging from the flies were used to create theeffect of a sky. The crude white light of the tripods in contrast with the soster light abovereinforced a sense of intimacy and pressure as well as giving a beautiful sense of height,which helped relieve the extreme intensity of the piece.

The performers were confined in their space, and I wanted the audience to have the samefeeling of confinement. Anyone who wished to leave the show would have to make astatement as everyone would see them go. There would be no hiding behind the usualdistance and darkness separating audience and performers, just as there was no hiding forthe performers. Giving the audience the opportunity to show their liking or disliking of thepoint of view I was presenting on the mystery surrounding the disappearance of FedericoGarcia Lorca brought a political undertone to the viewing of the work.

During the creation of Conversations [which premiered at Scotiabank Dance Centre in2011] I was obsessed with the notion of courage, courage in the everyday life of people, andalso courage in the life of a performer or in the creation of a play, and how the essence ofcourage can be filtered to the audience. Lorca was a courageous man but fear also strangledhim. Yet his fear did not prevent him from pursuing his work and that showed me whatcourage is: courage is fear, fear that suddenly no longer influences your thoughts. You arethen, at that instant, free. Free to act. In this sense, Lorca was free.

To absorb all this, I believe the audience had to be within and almost part of the action.The decision to create a 360-degree performance space was, ultimately, about bringing theaudience into the event, close enough to feel, even to smell fear and courage. So close that ifthe desire came, you would have the real possibility to literally pull out one of theprotagonists to try and stop the unstoppable.

Serge Bennathan, recipient of the Rio Tinto Alcan Award in 2012, lives in Vancouver, where he is artisticdirector of Les Productions Figlio. Bennathan has written and illustrated five books, and the first exhibit of hispaintings took place in 2010. He is the former artistic director of Toronto’s Dancemakers (1990-2006).

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Redefining Expectations: The Open Spaces ProjectBy Daelik

When I was first thinking about The Open Spaces Project, I wanted to remove the audiencefrom the role of passive observer, but without making them feel obligated to “perform” in mywork. I was drawn to the idea of an event in which the audience was inside the performanceand could freely move around to get different vantage points.

I started with the Faris Family Studio, where we would premiere the piece in 2009, and itscapacity for being transformed into an empty box if the hydraulic seating is retracted. Earlyon I talked with my set designer, Paul Gazzola, a performance artist, carpenter and dancerstudying architecture, about my interest in taking away the seats and having the audience“roam.” We agreed we wanted to create a set that was easily moveable by the performers sothat we could constantly redefine the performance space. Paul decided to use cardboardboxes as the material because of their versatility. His first idea – to create a wall of boxes setagainst the retractable seating and then, using the hydraulic system, to push the wall into thespace – was brilliant. First because I had never seen it done and knew the audience would besurprised when they were suddenly confronted by a wall of boxes moving toward them.Second because it concretely demonstrated the concept of altering the performance space.

I wanted the set to be integral to The Open Spaces Project as a vehicle for redefiningspace, not just a gimmick. I spent a lot of rehearsal time researching with the boxes with Pauland the dancers (six altogether, including myself). We explored various possible ways in whichthe boxes could be used to redefine the space for the performers as much as for theaudience. We also explored the psychological implications of the structures: at one point, abox became a confessional when a dancer placed his head inside it, allowing him to revealintimate details about his life. By reconfiguring the wall a couple of times during the

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hour-long piece, we were able to create areas of containment that allowed the audience theintimacy of being inside the performance or to build obstacles that meant they had toobserve from a distance and at times not see the performers at all.

The idea of having spectators inside the performance space was entirely theoretical untilopening night. We had talked as a group about where we thought the audience might go, andfrom which perspective they would watch. As a choreographer I also thought about how todesign the scenes in such a way as to guide the audience to the places we wanted them togo. For example, aster the wall of boxes moved into the space the dancers went to the otherside of the wall and the audience had to follow them to see what was happening. Anothertime the dancers built the wall directly down the centre of the performance space and I hadtwo scenes occurring simultaneously. The audience could watch one or the other of thescenes, or both, depending on where they placed themselves.

On opening night we discovered the audience was very enthusiastic about their freedomto move around inside the performance and we were unprepared for moments where theirpresence blocked us from doing some of the choreography. The next day the group talkedabout how to address that obstacle, hands-on if necessary. One of the dancers chose togently bump up against the audience, herding them like a sheepdog, to move them out of hisnext performance area.

What stays in my mind even now is the memory of audience members who through theirchoice-making became a part of the performance: a woman standing directly over a danceras he writhed on the floor at her feet; groups of people anxious not to miss anything, whoremoved boxes from the wall so they could see the action on the other side; the palpablealertness of audience members unsure of what would happen next, prepared to move as theyanticipated a dancer moving toward them. None of this would have happened if I had chosento work within the traditional architecture of the theatre.

Daelik is a dancer, improviser, choreographer and teacher with a performance history of over 20 years. Hisdance works have been presented in Canada and internationally. In 2002 he formed his own company,MACHiNENOiSY Dance Society, which he co-directs with long-time collaborator Delia Brett.

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Performing the City By Carolyn Deby

I grew up in Saskatchewan. Although it has been 25 years since I lived on the prairies, mycore remains absolutely defined by those wide-open horizons, huge sky, a sense of climacticextremes, the wild storms and constant horizontal movement of wind. Retaining this almostoperatic sensibility of space and energy, I now live in one of the most populated cities in theworld: London, England. Still, my choreographic practice is engaged with trying to illuminateand reveal the city as a place of wild nature, of animal and elemental movement. We are aspecies not so long out of the woods. My contention is that we remain profoundly connectedto the myriad life forces that share this planetary space with us. And that dance – embodiedand visceral – is the ideal form with which to explore and express this.

A city makes it possible for many humans to live closely together, and confirms our abilityto ultimately control and reshape our natural environment. Evidence of death or decay iseradicated. Concrete, glass, plastic and metal seem almost impervious to mortality. But look

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closer and you realize these materials have been reshaped from the minerals, fossils androcks of the once-living past. Even wood and brick, though more obviously of natural origins,are manufactured into the orderly structures of the urban built environment. We seek toeradicate the mess, the weeds, the pests and the defecation of natural ecosystems. Thecircular order of birth, life, death and decay is replaced with either a linear illusion ofimmortality, or a sanitized sleight of disposal and replacement. We don’t grow old.

With all this in mind, I begin to choreograph by asking myself, how do we move throughand within this urban context? How or are we reshaped and affected by an urban space whichreconstitutes nature?

Urban space is also social space: a field of interlinking systems and energies – of ideageneration and mutation; transportation and movement patterns; concentrations anddispersals of activity or stillness; reciprocal impacts between site or territory and the humanpsyche/body – that shape our lived experience. By working site-specifically in the city, I bringmy work and audiences into a direct and meaningful encounter with all of these complexinteractions. The city is part of the choreography.

In Vancouver in 2008, Imbolc {in the belly} considered the human relationship to the cycleof seasons within the urban environment, taking its name and inspiration from the ancientIrish fire festival of Imbolc (pronounced “im-molk”). Over 22 performances, the piece tookaudiences of 50 people per night on a two-hour journey through performance, sound andinstallation at a sequence of downtown locations. It was essential not only to situate thework in these ordinary public and private places, but also that audiences had to travel throughand between them – reminded of their usual relationship to specific places, and makingperhaps new associations. The audience’s movement through urban space and their shistingperspective served to keep them constantly aware of their own bodily presence in the work.

The piece explored the winter city as a cluster of interior spaces gestating life: Imbolc wastraditionally celebrated in the cold darkness of mid-winter, when animals begin to give birthand the earliest hints of spring life emerge. Each interior space referenced specific ideas: thejourney between life and death and life (performers ranged in age from 10 to 85 years old);mating displays/ritual as human-animal activity; a scientific understanding of combustion onthe cellular to macro levels; fire as both metaphor and biological process. Mixing the urbanwith the elemental, the work used cell phones, video, movement, text, soil, flames andrecorded electronic music. As well, audience movement through the piece was induced by aseries of fragmentary clues and/or poetic instructions that meant they had to individuallymake decisions en route, including choices about how they travelled (walking and bySkyTrain). This decision-making, and the accidental/incidental occurrences along the way,were all important aspects of the urban choreographic space being defined by Imbolc {in thebelly}.

My current sirenscrossing project, rivercities, focuses on flows between humans andnature, especially at the point of collision between urban and wild. The consideration of spacehas widened to a global one: rivers as metaphor for the flows between all life and Earth’ssystems. Part of the continuous circulation of Earth’s water or the hydrosphere – which alsoincludes glaciers, oceans, clouds, groundwater, and the cells and circulation systems of livingthings – rivers are literally flowing through us.

Carolyn Deby is a London, England-based artist/choreographer who trained originally at Simon FraserUniversity. She makes site-specific performances under the collaborative umbrella of sirenscrossing, withprojects in both Europe and Canada. During 2011-12, Carolyn was Leverhulme Trust Artist-in-Residence atUniversity College London’s Urban Laboratory. www.sirenscrossing.com

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Cabane: A Space Within the SpaceBy Paul-André Fortier

In Cabane, the most essential element, from which everything else flows, is the shack, orcabin, itself: a basic cube, set slightly off-centre in whichever space it’s placed. The idea ofworking with the shack as a theme first came to me when I was dancing the site-specific Solo 30x30 in Nancy, France, on the roof of a shed being used as a locker room for municipalcar drivers. As I climbed up onto the roof every day in the midst of a vast parking lot, I beganto imagine how I could take this adventure to the next level, and realized that I could not goback, I could not return to a conventional stage. Like Solo 30x30, Cabane – which premiered atMontreal’s Festival TransAmériques in June 2008 – is a site-specific hybrid that fallssomewhere between performance art, theatre, dance and installation, and is designed to beperformed in different types of environments.

The actual construction of the shack was key. I had a clear image of it in my mind: Iwanted it to be hinged, with two walls that could open, a window and a trap door in the roof.It had to be sturdy and be built in such a way that we could set it up on any type of surface. Inorder that the choreography could be presented under the most basic conditions, John Munrodesigned a lighting system that would make us independent of a standard theatre set-up andallow us to play anywhere. John used overhead projectors, whose positioning on the floordetermined the amount of space needed for the set. Video projectors were also on the floor,either to show images of birds or to use as secondary lighting sources, contributing to thelow-tech space I wanted to create.

At the beginning of the duet, the theatrical space is clearly defined by the shack and thevarious projectors set on the floor. One person (Rober Racine) is seated on the roof of theshack with a megaphone. A second person (myself) comes out of the hut and begins a long

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back and forth dialogue with him. Early in the performance, a series of seemingly randomobjects make their appearance onstage. These objects, placed in very specific locations,determine the poetic architecture of the space and the acting area available to the twoprotagonists. All of the choreography and all of the interactions between the characters areorganized around these objects. The theatrical space loses its neutrality and becomes aninhabited place.

As well, as in all choreographies, the protagonists build spaces within the space, throughthe direction of their glances and gestures, and the scope of their movements. They dancebeyond the reality of the space.

In Cabane, the odd objects used in the space hold many surprises, and shisting theirfunction contributes to creating a sound architecture that adds a whole other dimension tothe piece. Metal bedsprings become a trampoline, then turn into an acoustic instrumentskillfully played by Rober, then are transformed into a harp and later, prison cell bars. Two filmtripods are used as stools, then suddenly become harmonicas. In this way, sound is also key tothe space; it is used in the acting area and resonates throughout the theatrical space.

One dimension that is osten forgotten is the contribution made by the audience to liveperformance. The audience is never neutral; ideally, viewers are invested in what they see.They add to it, interpret it, decipher it … I have never come across indifferent viewers withCabane. Everyone has a story to tell about a shack or a bed that overwrites what I haveproposed with this piece. In so doing, they add depth to what they see, and this depth createsan endless imaginative space.

As we toured Cabane to different places, we performed in some remarkable settings andeach time, the environment brought a new dimension to the show and coloured how it isviewed. I love the idea that the same show can be read differently depending on where it isperformed. When the shack is erected under a crystal chandelier in a five-star Montreal hotelballroom, it resonates differently from when it is set up in the middle of a London meatmarket or in an abandoned Marseille industrial space. Cabane’s space is inserted into anotherspace, which also has a story to tell. A new dimension is added, whereby space is added tothe space.

Paul-André Fortier has created nearly 50 choreographic works, including collaborations with leading artistsFrançoise Sullivan, Betty Goodwin, Rober Racine, Alain Thibault, Robert Morin and Malcolm Goldstein. In 2010,he was appointed Chevalier de l’ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government, and he received theGovernor General's Performing Arts Award in 2012.

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THE DESIGNERS

The Body in Articulated SpacesBy Andreas Kahre

Space – specifically articulated space – has been at the centre of my practice for the past 25years, across the spectrum of dance, theatre, installations and performance art. Byarticulated I mean space that is created or framed such that by its configuration, its dynamicsand its stated or implied context, it expresses meaning. That definition also describes themoving body, as it both constitutes and creates space. The task of the designer in dance isprimarily to help shape the tension between the space that is the body, the space the bodycreates and the space that surrounds it, each layer constituting a complete emotional andsyntactical system in its own right.

While my work with theatre and interdisciplinary companies osten involves unconventionalperformance venues whose unpredictability is critical to their function as poetic space, danceis mostly performed in black box theatres, which offer almost total control over the sensesbut are shaped by conventions that create a divided space: the trope of the fourth wall, theprivileged gaze of the audience, the ways in which gender and race are inscribed on theperforming body. The result is a paradox: many dance artists valorize the body as the vehicleof truthful expression, yet present it in an illusory, spectacular space.

Designing spaces that articulate these tensions is the challenge, especially as digitalmedia adds a dimension of interactivity that results in a new kind of augmented space. Wemake less of an effort to hide the machinery nowadays, but that does less to diminish itspower than to increase the audience’s complicity. They still see everything: the shin bustersthat light up the “invisible” architecture, the jitter in the video and the EXIT signs that nevergo away.

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Among the choreographers I have worked with, Lola MacLaughlin stands out as an artistwho was keenly aware of the potential and the pitfalls of space in relation to dance. Icollaborated with her as set designer, sound designer and dramaturge, and in the fiveprojects we created together between 1997 and 2011, we focused on designing spaces thatarticulated specific social, biological and psychological impositions that shape the movingbody. The key element was constrained space.

In Four Solos/Four Cities (1998), we created objects and animated backdrops thatsuggested both geographic locations and aspects of the self, resulting in a hybrid space –neither exterior nor interior. A section titled Berlin, for example, featured stylized tankbarricades and a series of projected letters that were synchronized with the light to evoke thesensation of subway destinations rushing by, conflating an internal and external point of viewthat the audience experienced directly while also witnessing aspects of the performer’sperceptual space.

Volio (2000) presented an essay on the tension between tasked action and non-taskedstates, set in a stylized British Columbia landscape. The physical elements represented anentropic space that contained signifiers of thermodynamic processes: Bunsen burners thatconsumed their fuel, a video screen whose slow procession of foliage “wallpaper” suggested ametronome set to plant time, a wall of rocks broken down and rebuilt over the course of thepiece. Our goal was to place a hard frame around the fragility and sostness of the bodies thatcreated at its centre a space of desire.

In Fuse (2002) we were concerned with metaphoric space, as defined by three objects: apanoramic video “window” of rolling clouds placed high on the back wall, a library ladderwhich allowed the performers to climb up and observe the view, and an object thatrepresented the life force imprisoned in a technological frame: a large, grey, hard-edgedindustrial cart that held a pair of young spruce trees, whose roots balls were suspendedabove ground. Animated by red aircrast strobe lights, it dominated and disrupted space, somuch so that public opinion, including our own stage management, rose in horror of the thing,and – citing everything from safety concerns to the logic that if it had wheels it should bemoving – caused it to be redesigned on tour into a little round tray, with handlebars and achoreographic cameo of its own, which Lola and I privately referred to as “the dance of thelawnmowers.” Space is as delicate as it is powerful, and sometimes it takes very little totransform the poetic into the ridiculous, which aster all is what combines with our spiritual,emotional and political conditions and binds us all together in human space.

Andreas Kahre is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, writer and musician who has collaborated on more than100 performance projects across Canada and internationally. As a set and sound designer, he has worked with,among others, Lola Dance, Karen Jamieson, Mascall Dance, Conrad Alexandrovich and Cheryl Prophet.www.andreaskahre.net

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Revealed by Light: Provincial Essays By James Proudfoot

The best starting point for a lighting designer is a darkened room. With that as a base thepossibility of creating a specific space for a dance to unfold exists. It helps if the room isequipped with the necessities of current theatrical practice: positions to hang lights from,many separately controlled dimmers, a variety of lighting instruments, a flexible controlconsole and a well-trained crew.

The pre-show stage picture for Provincial Essays, created by choreographer LolaMacLaughlin in 2007 and on which I collaborated as lighting designer, began with this idealdark space. As the audience entered the Faris Family Studio where the work premiered, theonly illumination was from three large, sost, white lights perched high atop mobile chromestands spread across the front of the stage, pointed toward the auditorium as people foundthe way to their seats. Eventually the dancers entered from the rear of the stage, walkedcasually to the stands, lowered the lights, and turned and rolled them into position for thefirst scene. The act of turning the lights toward the playing space directed the energy andfocus of the whole room, simultaneously creating an intense theatrical space where thechoreography could unfold and darkening the auditorium.

The lights were incandescent Rifas, used in the film industry; each one has a white squaresurface surrounded by black structure. When we chose them, Lola had already decided therewould be a white floor and projected elements that necessitated a white backdrop as well.The performance space was therefore going to comprise two large, white, rectangular formscontained within the larger black surround of the theatre itself. The squares and rectangles ofthe set and the lighting units were the work’s principal graphic forms, employed in variouslighting configurations. These linear geometrical forms gave a sense of order and purpose,contrasted in scenes in which sost, open light was used, transforming the space to poetic andwistful.

Repetition and careful variation of the lighting effects helped to clarify the design andprovide conceptual continuity. Osten, overlapping rectangular light beams formed square hotspots on the floor, ideal spaces for locating the rooted action of several of the scenes. A smallamount of re-spacing of the original choreography was all that was required to land dancers

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in the right hot spot. At times the large rolling Rifa lights were grouped to surround a scenethat used a small fraction of stage, with additional light from overhead fixtures shaped toenclose the desired playing area with a highlight on the floor.

Lola deployed a sly sense of humour in much of Provincial Essays, and it was a challengeto approach the lighting in the same spirit. Does the square of light on the floor actuallycome from the large square Rifa fixture or not? A visual pun of sorts. Do the narrow, brightgreen lines crossing the stage represent the forest space indicated by both the videoprojection and the soundtrack? These visuals were abstracted from reality, like thechoreographic material and the text spoken by the dancers.

In one scene, the physical nature of Ron Stewart’s movement, his long and straightangular arm motions, dictated a lighting with longer rectangular forms falling on the floor.The video element here – a photographic close up of venetian blinds – featured similarhorizontal and vertical lines. Capturing Ron within small areas when the movement wascontained by lighting a smaller space allowed the audience to focus on the danced details,and to recognize that the movement would not be flowing throughout the stage. When Rondid break out across the playing space, logic dictated the space also open out with moregeometric forms. For the transition from this scene, his slow motion run diagonally to thefront was lit with another dancer propelling one of the Rifa lights behind him, following histrajectory. The video texture faded as the rolling light washed away the remaining geometricelements from the floor. Another projected vista opened up behind Ron, and the light that hadbeen framing him, his position within the stage picture and his movement quality all shisted,releasing him to make his escape.

In Provincial Essays, by having dancers actively manipulate the light sources, the artifice ofthe shared experience and of the space being created under the artificial glare of spotlightswas acknowledged. Lighting so apparent, conspicuous even, can only be achieved when achoreographer is generous enough to share the stage with this applied crast.

Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, where he received his initial technical theatre training, James Proudfoothas been living in Vancouver since 1993. Largely self-taught in the realm of dance lighting, he has designedlighting for many dance and theatre companies.

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THE ARCHITECTS

The Alchemy of Dance and ArchitectureBy Leslie Van Duzer

Choreographers and architects have long shared common practices and aspirations. Bothcarve space with solid bodies; both engage movement – that of the dancer and the building’sinhabitant – to make evident the space-time continuum. Both collaborate with allied arts, and create instructions for others to follow, much like composers or conceptual artists.Academics, critics and practitioners alike have readily noted the shared territory betweendance and architecture.

But there is a mutual aspiration that merits more attention, admittedly one fewchoreographers and architects aspire to, and fewer still achieve. It is the ambition of creatinga work of art that transcends the facts of its physical presence. Architect Louis Kahn wrote:“A great building must begin with the immeasurable, must go through measurable meanswhen it is being designed and in the end must be unmeasurable.” The architect first imaginesthe desired effect in their mind’s eye, and then uses the tools of their trade to precisely crasta work that ultimately defies its very presence. Le Corbusier called the magical residue of anarchitecture transcended: “ineffable space.”

In dance, as in architecture, the desire to get beyond the facts is a recurring theme. AsBauhaus director Mies van der Rohe moved toward an architecture of “almost nothing,”painter and dance teacher Oskar Schlemmer described his Triadic Ballet as “heading towardsdematerialization.” Merce Cunningham defined dance as “an art in space and time” and wenton to say “the object of the dancer is to obliterate that.” This striving to obliterate space andtime and to dissolve all that is material in dance and architecture, as if bodies and brickswere a burden, too finite, too familiar and far too weighty, reflects a desire to release thespectator from the prison of habitual thought, to wake them up and elevate them into theworld of their imagination.

To create a work capable of transporting the spectator out of their automated modes ofthinking and into such an alert state of mind requires first turning the spotlight on their roteexpectations. The spectator is set up, lured into the work through the apparently familiar. This initial access is key; shock only estranges when the aim is to seduce. Once settledcomfortably into the work, be it a dance or a building, it unfolds in space and time,challenging our embodied experiences of the world by defying materiality, eliminating gravity, dissolving solidity, in short, by presenting the strangely familiar as the impossiblemade possible.

Such sublimation of the material realm relies on the ability of a work to shist thespectator’s attention away from the dancer’s or the architect’s virtuosity. A fundamentalcondition for this is extreme precision of crast. Gottfried Semper, the great 19th-centuryarchitect and theoretician, described the ability of materials, when handled expertly, to masktheir own physical presence and exude aura. The crast or technique, he argued, must beprecise and masterful but never foregrounded if the objective is evaporation. Think of themagician whose polished patter and practiced gestures successfully distract the spectator’sattention away from the supporting apparatus and toward his assistant levitating in midair.The audience is freed to believe in bodies released from the shackles of gravity, against allbetter judgment.

The success of this artistic aspiration can be measured in the extent to which thespectator is inspired to look beyond all they know about the world, to see beyond thevirtuosity of the dancer’s leaps and the engineer’s cantilevers, beyond the material richness of

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costumes and construction, and into their own bountiful imagination, where all things arepossible. What greater gist could a choreographer or an architect hope to give than suchfreedom?

Leslie Van Duzer, director of the UBC School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, moved toVancouver in 2010 aster teaching for 20 years in schools of architecture across the United States and Europe.Co-author of four books, she is currently working on two new publications: Thinking by Design and The Art ofDeception.

A Room and the BodyBy Annabel Vaughan

The room is the beginning of architecture. It is the place of mind. You in the room with itsdimensions, its structure, its light respond to its character, its spiritual aura, recognizing thatwhatever the human proposes and makes becomes a life.

Louis I. Kahn, “The Room, the Street, and Human Agreement”

The implicit connection between the body and space determines much of what an architectconsiders when designing a building. The built form is derived from the proportions of thebody, the relationship between physical materials and the body, and the phenomenon of abody as it negotiates volume. As a student of architecture, you become hyper-aware of thebody’s relationship to space, how it negotiates space, how the tectonic of space is read by thebody, and how the sublime proportions of the body can begin to manifest in the puremathematical space of a room and then a building.

In my second year of architecture school at the University of Waterloo, I had a professorwho studied dance before becoming an architect. The first exercise he led us through wasinfluenced by the work of Oskar Schlemmer, the Master of Form instructor responsible for theelaborate theatre and opera productions at the Bauhaus in the 1920s. Our professor had uspaint 12-foot-long two-by-twos red, drove us out to a field of soy beans that was home to aRichard Serra sculpture, and asked us to walk around the site in groups and documentourselves. The challenge was that we had to hold on to our red stick at all times; our bodieswere suddenly 12 feet wide and no longer our own. The limits of our interior reference hadbeen shisted by the simple extension of holding a stick. Negotiating and locating ourselves inthe site was transformed from the everyday experience of our familiar bodies into unfamiliarrelationships. It was a visceral way to inscribe the physical scale of our own bodies onto thesite.

It was also the moment that I came back to dance as an adult spectator. I have a vaguerecollection of going to the ballet as a young child: the lushness of the theatre, the hushanticipation of being an audience member and the spectacle unfolding on stage. I can’tremember the piece, maybe it was Swan Lake, but I do remember being swept up into thespace of the unfolding story. Over the years, drawn in by my experience at architectureschool, the parallels between dance and my own discipline became abundantly clear: they areboth fundamentally involved with the body and its negotiation of space. Both work with thephysical boundary of the body to crast space and both resolve the limitations imposed bygravity: one on the body, as in the case of dance, and one on materials, as in the case of architecture.

Dance has become a way for me to see and understand the occupation and creation ofspace in a medium that is not my own – it is a way to conceptualize and respond to the

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phenomenon of perception within the limits of space (the stage, a set, a room) throughmovement, time, projection and lighting. What draws me into a performance is the complexityof the relationship between the physical body and the way in which space is crasted throughmovement and light; the destness with which gravity disappears or is played with; and thetension and resolution that is created in this dissonance. When I get swept into a piece, danceis the life that becomes the room.

Annabel Vaughan is the Principal of publicLAB RESEARCH + DESIGN. Her work as an artist has beenexhibited at Artspeak Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, La Fonderie Darling in Montreal and The Other Galleryin Banff. She is a sessional instructor at UBC’s School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture.

Note:The opening quote is from Louis I. Kahn’s 1971 Gold Medal Acceptance Speech, published in AIA Journal,September 1971: 33-34.

Designing Scotiabank Dance Centre: Four StoriesBy Noel Best

Every architectural project has its unique stories, its defining issues. When Arthur Ericksonand I were lead architects for Scotiabank Dance Centre, which opened its doors in Vancouverin 2001, those issues were really at the heart of the design. We were very aware this was aspace for dance, and besides considering how to pack all the requested functions into thelimited building volume available, we thought about how the various spaces would feel for thedancers themselves, and how to reflect an image of the less tangible art form of dance in thearchitecture of the building.

OneThe first story has to do with the building section – an architectural term describing thevertical organization of the spaces – what you might see if you cut through the building like alayer cake. The Dance Centre (the organization behind the construction and now the runningof Scotiabank Dance Centre) had developed an ambitious architectural program, the list ofrequested spaces totaling over 33,000 square feet. It featured six rehearsal studios; thelargest, with the same dimensions as the Queen Elizabeth Theatre stage, would also serve asa performance space. There were two additional large studios, two medium and one smallstudio, each with a ceiling height appropriate to their size. There were also office and supportspaces with a standard eight or nine foot ceiling height.

The site was a heritage bank building at the corner of Granville and Davie Streets,donated by the Bank of Nova Scotia. One major design challenge was to fit all these spaceswithin the footprint of the site, the 50 foot x 120 foot lot of the original bank, and also withinthe 90 foot height limit established by City Planning. As the architectural cliché has it, it was“like putting ten pounds of wheat into a five pound bag.” Our solution was a complexcomposition of split levels.

Both public lobbies – the street level and the one below – together fit within the samevertical dimension as the performance space, the Faris Family Studio. The three stackedlevels of change rooms and lounge pair with the two levels of the large and mid-sized studios,and the top-floor offices share the same floor-to-ceiling dimension of the small studio. [In2012, a second small studio replaced part of the office space.]

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Consequently, a vertical line cut through the “cake” would at one point yield a four-storybuilding, at another point, six stories and at a third, seven stories. This explains why youcannot get to the Level Four studios by elevator.

TwoHow we resolved the contradictory messages of the vintage bank building with that ofcontemporary dance in Vancouver was another story. The bank building was a 1920sstandard design, replicated across the country – a two-story, neoclassical composition ingranite and brick. While it had not been functioning as a bank for some years, both theinterior and the exterior were relatively original and intact. It was regularly used as a periodfilm set.

The building had a Heritage B classification from the City, and the most contentious issuewas how much of the heritage building would be maintained. With the site a compact 6,000square feet, and The Dance Centre needing 33,000 square feet of building, a minimum heightof six stories was required. As the production studio was to be the full width of the site andtwo stories high, and two of the other studios were also 50 feet wide, saving much of theinterior was simply not an option. What was up for consideration was how much of thefaçade on Granville and Davie Streets would be retained.

In the end, faced with the dichotomy of the staid neoclassical façade and the free andlively nature of Vancouver dance, we elected to retain only the Granville façade, as a dramatic“Piranesi fragment” – almost like a stage set – while the Davie Street frontage, light,contemporary and transparent, became the defining image of Scotiabank Dance Centre.

The heritage community was not amused by this proposal and the City’s HeritageCommission recommended the design be rejected. The final decision rested with City Council.Faced with the choice between retaining the bank in its entirety or finally achieving the long-awaited Dance Centre, the Council unanimously chose dance.

ThreePerhaps my favourite part of Scotiabank Dance Centre is the top floor studio next to theterrace. Rather than having only administration on this uppermost level (the conventionalsolution), we wanted to give the prime users of the building – the dancers – the benefit of the

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light and view, and of the adjacent roostop terrace. Over a portion of this terrace, we provideda glass roof for sun and rain protection. A secondary, but important, consideration was thatthe studio and terrace could be used together for meetings and receptions.

For the terrace canopy Arthur suggested a single column in the corner, from which wouldbe suspended a quarter circle of glass made up of several radial segments. This idea of thecircular form presented some interesting design possibilities. Architecture and dance eachhave a variety of definitions and descriptions, but one they share is “movement through spaceand time.” It seemed to me that here was an opportunity, with this feature element, to givearchitectural expression to the movement of dance. Rather than having a continuous arc forthe perimeter of the roof, each segment of glass was given a larger radius, creating adramatic progression through space and time. My immediate inspiration was MarcelDuchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase. Other references that came to mind were EadweardMuybridge’s classic photographs of figures in motion and, and in a more contemporary vein, adancer captured in the frozen frames of a strobe light.

FourIn the design of a concert hall, the quality of the acoustics is the critical measure of success.In a dance studio, it is the quality of the floor. At Scotiabank Dance Centre, the floor designwas made more complex by the multiple groups that would be using the studios – some inpointe shoes, others in slippers, still others barefoot or in flamenco or tap shoes.

Such specialized floors were new territory for both Arthur and myself, so we started theresearch early on, studying the construction and qualities of existing floors in local venues,including commentary from the dance community. The research was extended to the floordesign of classical ballet studios in Russia and contemporary studios in Europe, and includedcommercial products for gymnasiums and stages.

We brought in Jay Gower Taylor, a former dancer with an expertise in the design andconstruction of dance floors, to develop the design and ultimately to supervise theconstruction of the studio floors. Jay produced a custom design for each studio, using either avinyl or wood surface, overlapping layers of plywood and rubber cushions of variable densityand spacing.

A group of dancers representing a variety of dance styles tested a mock-up assembled ina warehouse. Modifications were made based on their suggestions. When the construction ofthe building was nearing completion, one quadrant of one studio floor was installed and the

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test group of dancers invited back for a last review. Further refinements were then madeprior to the final installation.

The dancers love these floors. The Inuit apparently have more than 20 words to describethe different qualities of snow. Similarly Arthur and I were intrigued by the many descriptionsdancers have given of the floors at Scotiabank Dance Centre, my personal favourites beingwarm and intimate.

Noel Best is a Principal in Stantec Architecture, and was formerly a key player in Arthur Erickson’s firm. He hasmade a major contribution to the cultural life of Vancouver through involvement on projects including theVancouver Art Gallery, the Contemporary Art Gallery, Scotiabank Dance Centre and the recent addition to theMuseum of Anthropology.

Photos: page 3 Billy Marchenski and Danny Wild in Conversations, by Chris Randle; page 5 Clinton Draper, Daelik,Brett Owen, Chris Wright and Shay Kuebler in The Open Spaces Project, by Chris Randle; page 7 CatherineAndersen and Sadie in Imbolc {in the belly}, by Chris Randle; page 9 Paul-André Fortier and Rober Racine in Cabane,by Robert Etcheverry; page 11 Day Helesic and Susan Elliott in Volio, by David Cooper; page 13 Ron Stewart inProvincial Essays, by David Cooper; page 18 Giovanni Piranesi, Etching of the Villa Adriana, c 1770; ScotiabankDance Centre, by Gerry Kopelow, courtesy of Stantec; page 19 Eadweard Muybridge, Woman with a Vase, c 1880,courtesy of the Library of Congress; Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912; Scotiabank DanceCentre canopy, by Gerry Kopelow, courtesy of Stantec; page 20 Scotiabank Dance Centre building section model,by Noel Best.


© 2013 The Dance Centre and the authors

The VDC Dance Centre Society (The Dance Centre) is a non-profi t organization and a registered charity.

Scotiabank Dance CentreLevel 6, 677 Davie StreetVancouver BC V6B 2G6T 604.606.6400 F [email protected]

www.thedancecentre.ca

dance aesthetics: the significance of space

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