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349
The Journal
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Volume 10
Number 4
Collaboration between choreographers and architects still usually takes the traditional form
of the latter designing sets for the former, while research on the relationship between archi-
tecture and dance is scant. One of the few examples of a choreographer working with then-
current architectural concerns is William Forsythe and the Ballett Frankfurt in the late 1980s,
particularly in Enemy in the Figure (1989) and Limb’s Theorem (1990). These pieces show a
profound understanding of and engagement with architectural issues then being addressed
by Daniel Libeskind. Forsythe’s interest in Libeskind was not his ‘deconstruction’, as has
often been asserted, but in his operations on drawing. Their coincidence of intellectual inter-
ests and resulting friendship allows us to see clearly how concerns in architecture were also
explored through the medium of ballet. It is a reminder too of a period, postmodernism,
when architecture led theoretical discussions.
Research on the relationship between architecture Groningen Project in 1990), but their coincidence
and dance is not only scant but traditional. The lit- of intellectual interests and resulting friendship
erature from architecture tends to look at the use allows us to see clearly how concerns in architecture
of the space of the stage or at historical theories were also explored in the medium of ballet. It is also
of the body; that from dance tends to look at set a reminder of a time when architecture led theoreti-
design or to make facile comparisons between cal discussions in postmodernism (a term now often
so-called deconstructivist architecture and some substituted erroneously for historicism). A seminal
contemporary dance. Collaboration between chor- essay from that time, ‘Proliferation and Perfect Dis-
eographers and architects still usually takes the order: William Forsythe and the Architecture of Dis-
traditional form of the latter designing sets for the appearance’ by Patricia Baudoin and Heidi Gilpin,1
former. One of the few examples of a choreographer has often been reprinted and the phrase from the
working with then-current architectural concerns is title subsequently used by others. I will argue,
William Forsythe and the Ballett Frankfurt in the however, that Forsythe’s interest in Libeskind is not
late 1980s, particularly in Enemy in the Figure in his ‘deconstruction’ but in his operations on
(1989) and Limb’s Theorem (1990). These show a drawing, and that the consequences for ballet are
profound understanding of and engagement with not so much to valorise moments of disappearing
architectural issues then being addressed by Daniel but to make ballet’s highly evolved sense of counter-
Libeskind. Contrary to common understanding, point central.
Forsythe did not actually collaborate with Libeskind Forsythe’s particular engagement in the late 1980s
(though Forsythe did design a piece for Libeskind’s with then-current intellectual and cultural concerns,
and specifically with architectural ones, is most expli- The programme contains the usual list of credits
cit at the Reggio Emilia Festival Danza (1989), and works to be performed but unusually also past
devoted solely to the Ballett Frankfurt. Such an invi- reviews, drawings, assorted quotations, interviews,
tation after just five years of Forsythe’s artistic direc- and essays by, or on, amongst others, Rudolf von
torship, and the festival’s extent, demonstrate what Laban, Libeskind, Paul Virilio, and ontology (Heideg-
an important figure he had already become: the ger, Husserl, Gadamer, Derrida) that ambitiously set
company performed eight different pieces over six the intellectual context for the work. The pro-
nights in three venues, there was a four-volume gramme notes for Enemy in the Figure in volume
programme, a round table discussion in collaboration three are a reprint of the second half of Libeskind’s
with the University of Bologna and an installation of essay ‘End Space’.6 Of particular relevance for this
set designs by Michael Simon.2 Forsythe had been a paper is programme volume two, Il Disegno Che
freelance choreographer since 1980, was appointed Non Fa Il Ritratto. Danza, Architettura, Notazioni.
artistic director of the Ballett Frankfurt in 1984 and Its three essays deal explicitly with Forsythe’s
was renowned by the late 1980s, not least for drag- relationship to architecture, Libeskind in particular,
ging a reluctant ballet world into an engagement and notation. As we will see, one of Libeskind’s
with the intellectual concerns of the contemporary central concerns was in fact notation or drawing. It
world. Ballet is an art form that has been much opens with quotations from Libeskind and from
less affected by contemporary or even twentieth Laban, who devised an influential method of move-
century theoretical and cultural concerns than ment notation, Labanotation, and a theory of move-
most. Its ‘. . . inherent conservatism as a codified ment in the 1920s. The first essay is the previously
technique for movement evokes a conservatism of cited ‘Proliferation and Perfect Disorder: William
response, and allows it to remain . . . a marginal art Forsythe and the Architecture of Disappearance’,
form that fulfils the function of light entertainment which correctly asserts the influence of Laban and
rather than providing the kind of reflection and the questioning of balletic form.
stimulus that is expected of other theatrical or artis- Enemy in the Figure (Fig. 1) opens with a dancer
tic forms.’3 Forsythe’s explicit interest in such con- lying on her back in a far corner of the stage, the
cerns, ‘as part of a [then] current intellectual only part illuminated, with a second dancer crouched
preoccupation with the hierarchies of categories of beside her and moving the limbs of the first as if
thought and value in western culture that has arranging or experimenting with them. Beside them
become generally known under the all too embra- lies a heavy rope and there is a squiggly wooden
cing label of deconstruction,’4 is evident in pro- screen placed diagonally stage left. A brooding,
gramme notes, interviews and the productions ticking score is low and repetitive. Dancers period-
themselves. It has mostly been treated with ically emerge from and disappear behind the
dismay, disdain or regarded as radical within the screen. The rope is periodically snapped and operated
ballet world.5 by dancers so that it is straight, squiggles or pulses
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a line, movement on the side of the stage. The Figure 1. From Enemy
light comes up slowly to reveal what we had strained in the Figure, (1989),
#Dominik Mentzos;
to see. The line is the edge of a huge silver plane
used with permission.
poised on a single corner. Below twirling arms we
can now see dancers’ lower bodies. An insistent
low hum becomes fuller and louder. The stage
goes dark and then light again, the line of the
plane becomes a point, then a line and a plane
again. A man in trousers and a white shirt sits
demurely on a stool at the plane’s lowest corner
occasionally rotating it, changing the position of
the shadows and the space the dancers are in. It
defines the space of the stage so dominantly that
the dancers seem diminutive, relegated to the
space it leaves over, as they perform solos, duets,
in groups. When two dancers wrest control of the
rhythmically. The dancers push a mobile 5000W rectangle from him to turn it themselves he walks
floodlight about the stage illuminating areas, off and all the dancers fall flat on the stage to end
casting long shadows, making dancers who are part one. In the third act several of the stage
standing or performing in near darkness suddenly objects from the first two parts reappear as frag-
visible; in short, defining space. It becomes ments, and especially prominent is a segment of a
another player on the stage.7 There are periods of sphere, with its armature extending beyond it,
calm. There are scenes of seeming chaos as onto which are projected drawings on how to
dancers run wildly around, sometimes caught in draw perspectives. The number of dancers doubles
the spotlight. There is a figure in a fringed black and there are so many things going on that it is
costume whose movement is almost berserk. There impossible to watch everything, nor even to see
are levels of seeing and of disappearance and everything from any point in the theatre. In spite
multiple centres of activity. of this fragmentation, however, the piece presents
Enemy in the Figure almost immediately became a coherent theatrical experience of movement, light-
the middle section of the three-part Limb’s ing and music, which is part of Forsythe’s genius and
Theorem (although it has often been staged by his responsibility as artistic director of a large,
itself). It opens in such darkness that one isn’t sure municipal ballet company.
the curtain has come up. Only gradually do shapes There are obvious attractions for an architect in
and sounds emerge out of a seemingly primordial the two works, namely the geometric forms, the
state; we begin to make out ghostly limbs twirling, rope which becomes different kinds of lines, the
352
space-defining lighting. Architects might even intuit Frankfurt’s theatre during early performances of
that Limb’s Theorem was explicitly informed by Limb’s Theorem.) The diagnosis of the problem
architectural concerns. Gilpin did, as dramaturge, besetting their respective art forms is the same,
assemble a 107-page reader for the dancers, ‘Texts and goes much beyond the obvious fragmentation
for the Preparation of “Limb’s Theorem”’ and for of form. Libeskind declares in End Space that archi-
‘General Work and Play’ that is a collection of tecture has lost its authenticity and spirituality to the
mostly post-modern architecture theory.8 But the mechanics of its production. To revitalise it he con-
most architectural explorations in the two pieces centrates not on building, space or the ideological
are actually Forsythe’s permutations and explora- context of architecture’s production but on the
tions of the balletically trained body (Limb’s drawing itself. He bemoans the reduction of archi-
Theorem was originally called The Doctor’s Body 9), tectural drawings: ‘they have become fixed and
and subsequently of ways of generating move- silent accomplices in the overwhelming endeavour
ment.10 Forsythe defines what he does as organising of building and construction. In this way, their own
the body spatially: ‘Choreography is about organis- open and unknowable horizon has been reduced
ing bodies in space, or you’re organising bodies . . . in considering them as mere technical adjuncts,
with other bodies, or a body with other bodies in collaborating in the execution of a series made up
an environment that is organised.’11 Classical of self-evident steps, they have appeared as either
ballet connects coordinates in established ways, self-effacing materials or as pure formulations.’15
which has allowed it to develop a high degree of To get to that margin where ‘concepts and pre-
formal and technical complexity. By looking anew monitions overlap’,16 Libeskind submits drawing to
at conventions of turnout, placement, verticality, a process of ‘clarification’, ‘“purification” attempts,
balance, and spatial orientation,12 one can draw through a series of successive steps, to realise the
attention to these conventions and achieve startling elimination of intuitive content and numerical
results. His explorations or challenges to ballet come relations, and lead to ever more encompassing
from the fundamentals of the medium itself, its own (spherical) possibilities of configuration.’17 The
structure and form: ‘I use ballet, because I use ballet return to drawing was then not uncommon, but
dancers, and I use the knowledge in their bodies. instead of figurative, expressive or poetic drawing
I think ballet is a very, very good idea, which often to revitalise architecture, such as those of many
gets pooh-poohed . . . I see ballet as a point of depar- architects at the time (eg, Michael Graves, John
ture—it’s a body of knowledge, not an ideology.’13 Hejduk, Massimo Scolari), Libeskind’s are technical
When Forsythe saw the End Space drawings in an and projective while still trying to get to wonder
exhibition he had already created Enemy in the and vitality: ‘If we can go beyond the material
Figure and immediately recognised in them what carrier (sign) of the internal reality of a drawing,
he was trying to do with ballet (Fig. 2).14 (He sub- the reduction of representation to a formal
sequently exhibited them in the foyer of the Ballett system—seeming at first void and useless—begins
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Figure 2. ‘Little
Universe’, from Daniel
Libeskind, End Space
(1980), #Daniel
Libeskind; used with
permission.
to appear as an extension of reality which is quite the way ballet organises the human body. (This is
natural.’18 That is what he calls his ‘enigmatic an interest of his that is of long standing: ‘Okay,
reversal’.19 it’s good to know ballet, but the gist of the whole
While Libeskind’s quest for an authentic, pre- piece [France/Dance, (1983)] is the organisation of
rational architecture is romantic, getting there the human body as an art form.’20) It was abetted
through interrogating its own highly codified by reading, while in hospital with a knee injury,
drawing technique is modern and scientific, and a Laban’s Choreutics and extracting a simple but
similar starting point to Forsythe’s interrogation of powerful insight from the construction of the body
354
Figure 3. Drawing by
Rudolf Laban from the
Rudolf Laban Archive,
National Resource
Centre for Dance,
#NRCD; used with
permission.
Figure 4. Drawing by
Rudolf Laban from the
Rudolf Laban Archive,
National Resource
Centre for Dance,
#NRCD; used with
permission.
that is behind Laban’s notational system (Fig. 3). point and connects coordinates in rigidly established
(This influence of Laban is often cited.) Laban was ways. Forsythe then poses some simple but highly
one of those curious early twentieth century provocative questions of ballet’s construction of
figures who was both romantic and modern, the body, namely: ‘What if a movement does not
alchemical and scientific, and Forsythe explores his emanate from the body’s centre? What if there
geometric construct but not his metaphysics. (He were more than one centre? What if the source of
also rejects his turn to expressionism.) Laban postu- a movement were an entire line or plane, and not
lates a stable, vertical axis for the body around the simply a point? . . . Any point or line in the body or
centre of which is a three-dimensional kinesphere in space can become the kinespheric centre of a
marked by 27 points. As one moves the axis tilts particular movement.’21 As Forsythe puts it: ‘What
and rotates, the kinesphere moving with it (Fig. 4). I began to do was imagine a kind of serial movement
Forsythe recognised that this is well suited for inves- and, maintaining certain arm positions from ballet,
tigations of ballet, which also assumes a central move through this model, orienting the body
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towards the imaginary external points. It’s like ballet, the primal beginnings of dance, explicitly rep-
which also orients steps towards exterior points resented by a woman in historical costume and an
(croisé, effacé, . . .) but equal importance is given to Ur figure. It is the trap to be avoided between the
all points, non-linear movements can be incorpor- desiccation of classical ballet and the various twenti-
ated and different body parts can move towards eth century attempts to escape it, which include
the points at varied rates in time.’22 expressionism, free dance and Martha Graham’s
The result of this simple yet clever insight was to psychological musings. This position is shared by
challenge the very assumptions of ballet, the Libeskind and the excerpt from End Space in the
harmony, balance, and façade of effortlessness that Reggio Emilia programme begins by rejecting an
classical dance presents: ‘. . . the torso and arms either/or approach of abandoning formal structures
have lives of their own, contributing to the momen- in order to retrieve an intuitive understanding:
tum and direction of the movement instead of acces- I am interested in the profound relation which
sorising the lower limbs, and the entire body is used exists between the intuition of geometric struc-
with a disregard for the vertical planes to which ture as it manifests itself in a pre-objective
classical technique adheres, pitching the dancer sphere of experience and the possibility of forma-
into unknown extensions and astonishing muscular lisation which tries to overtake it in the objective
articulations, changing the dynamics of partnering, realm. In fact, these seemingly exclusive attitudes
and introducing a notion of disequilibrium that clas- polarise the movement of imagination and give an
sical ballet has traditionally spurned as anathema.’23 impression of discontinuity, when in reality they
But ballet is still the basis for linking movement in are different and reciprocal moments . . . We
Forsythe’s choreography, for ‘the reflexes that cannot simply oppose the formal to the non-
we’ve learned in classical ballet [to] maintain a kind formal without at the same time destroying the
of residual coordination . . . This elasticity is derived mobility, variation and effectiveness incarnated
from the mechanics of torsion inherent in épaule- in the very nature of formalism.26
ment’, which for Forsythe is the ‘crowning accom- Libeskind writes further that drawing must seek ‘to
plishment of great ballet dancers.’24 It is also of reflect . . . the inner life of geometrical order whose
great help for another key device in linking move- nucleus is the conflict between the Voluntary and
ments, namely counterpoint.25 the Involuntary.’27 Indeed, the End Space drawings,
Forsythe’s operations, as he calls them, on classical while technical and cool, were drawn in a kind of
ballet are a challenge to classicism but also a rejec- altered state, to the extent that Libeskind cannot
tion of expressionism, the two poles the twentieth remember the method for making them.28
century tiresomely bounced between. This central Another of Forsythe and Libeskind’s shared con-
problem is explored already in Forsythe’s Artifact cerns and approaches is their interest in mathe-
(1984), where the beauty, rigour, artifice and organ- matics and specifically geometry. (Libeskind came to
isational possibilities of classical ballet are set against study architecture from music and with a developed
356
interest in mathematics.) Forsythe says that ‘I enjoy 1980s and most of the 1990s are filled with
the geometric inscriptive qualities that [ballet] has. geometric drawings—intersecting geometric frag-
So I just think of ballet as a geometric inscriptive ments, projections and spatial layering, and notes
art form.’29 In Gilpin’s previously cited ‘Texts for on mathematical and geometric processes (Fig. 5).30
the Preparation of “Limb’s Theorem”’ there are Indeed the programme for the first season of
eight pages from a book on how to construct per- Limb’s Theorem at the Städtische Bühnen Frankfurt
spectives. Forsythe’s notebooks from the late am Theatreplatz has replications of such kinds of
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Figure 6. ‘imagining
lines’, from William
Forsythe: Improvisation
Technologies,
screenshots #ZKM
Karlsruhe and William
Forsythe; used with
permission.
358
drawings (though drawn with a knife) as well as beautiful this kind of journey.’33
fragments from writings by Aldo Rossi (about (Arctic exploration is a reference to his work, ‘die
fragments) and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Befragung des Robert Scott’, 1986, 1990.)
This understanding of the body in space as a geo- Getting dancers to understand the spatial and
metric construct (‘I could see your hand as a gesture formal knowledge of ballet through geometry
. . . but I simply see it as a configuration and the best gives Forsythe a vocabulary by which to set them
way to describe that configuration for me is from a any number of operations, as he calls them, on
mathematical point of view.’31) is made explicit in ballet. Rather than tightly focused and formal geo-
Forsythe’s instructional CD-Rom ‘Improvisation Tech- metric exercises or steps he has created improvi-
nologies. A Tool for the Analytic Dance Eye’ (2003, sational processes. This was an especially strong
1999, prototype 1997). Created to help him teach interest of his in the late 1980s and the 1990s. At
his movement vocabulary and way of thinking to its most basic Forsythe would change details,
dancers new to the company, some of the demon- music or the order of sequences at the last minute.
strations could fruitfully be used with architecture But more fundamentally he experimented with
students. For example, starting with two points, methods of improvisation that empower the
drawing a line from them, moving that line dancers to generate movement, though always
through space and extruding a plane from it within prescribed parameters. This is not just
(Fig. 6). A ballet dancer is already trained to dancing around. For Limb’s Theorem there were
imagine lines, planes, and vectors in order always two main improvisational techniques: room writing,
to know precisely where he or she is in three- which involved working directly with Libeskind’s
dimensional space.32 drawings, and DAT time. Then Frankfurt Ballett
Forsythe’s interest in mathematics is not only dancer Nik Haffner describes being given one of
manifest through a geometric understanding of the End Space drawings and being asked to trans-
ballet but more theoretically through limit. As with late it into movement, to go from two to three
that mathematical term, ballet can be understood dimensions: ‘The same drawing on a sheet of
as an idealised construction which a dancer is paper is translated in a different and individual way
always approaching but can never reach: by each dancer. The timing of the movement is
Arabesque is a prescription in space, a projection determined by the manner and speed with which
that dancers move towards. They imagine it and I, let us say, “read” a drawing. It is a matter of
try to embody it and occupy it although it is absol- how much time it takes to go through certain
utely impossible. It is not supposed to be done it is parts of the drawing.’34 This is an unravelling and
only supposed to be approached . . . It’s a bit like then translation of what Libeskind had done. For
arctic exploration where people move towards while his drawings are dramatic representations of
nowhere assuming they are going to arrive space they are after all two-dimensional and static.
somewhere but that can’t be described. It is very Furthermore, they are analytic in their technique
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and while composed of recognisable architectural two points. So I have this imaginary doorknob in
elements they are only ambiguously represen- front of me and with room writing, in one case,
tational. Like the dancer’s translation of that material we’re going to take this doorknob and knock it
into movement, the drawings are both highly off the door. Now the purpose of doing this is
personal and improvised, and operate within a simply to take me off place.’36
strict order, though one we cannot quite fathom. The dancer must be playful with the process:
The technique for interpreting Libeskind’s draw- You can establish a line with a gesture . . . I can
ings is named room writing, and again the process establish a line by making a crumbling gesture.
resembles the ambiguity in the End Space drawings I can establish a line on the floor with little hops.
between their universal and personal meanings. I can establish it by rubbing it into the floor . . . by
‘The task during the piece [“Limb’s Theorem”] was making little tiny dots, or between two dots . . . I
to translate the architectural information into move- could probably smear it, slide it, tap it, swat it,
ments. This information is available as an offer to kick it. A line or a point is there in space and
every dancer when improvising, the dancer decides how you establish it or how you manifest it is
what to select . . . In Limb’s Theorem it got as far really up to you. It is very important that this
as us working from our memories with the archi- part of the process remain extremely playful and
tecture we know from home—be it our kitchen, extremely imaginative. Don’t restrict yourself to
bedroom or living room, any room of which we strict drawing of lines like you’re drawing with a
had a clear picture.’35 The dancers were also knife or a pen for that matter. You have to use
given eleven pages of directives called U-lines from the surface of your body and your imagination
which to generate movement phrases. These are about how lines could form and how you could
short phrases to interpret (eg, I’m not talking to manifest these things with your body . . .37
you, You meet yourself, Cheers you up, To spite Another improvisational method that became used
you), mathematical terms (eg, divides, delineates, often but was first used on stage with Limb’s
functions, planes), verbs and adjectives (eg, Theorem, is DAT time. ‘It is based on the fact that
deviate, follow, reject, implode, partial), and the music to Limb’s Theorem provides very few
playful or almost nonsensical phrases (eg, U invert clues regarding the timing of the movement. For
difference, U arc indivisibly, U project solids, U soli- this reason, a “time code” is displayed on monitors
dify angles, U extend impulse). Such methods are for the chronological orientation of the dancers
later explicated in ‘Improvisation Technologies’: throughout the entire piece . . . It can be used to
In ‘room writing’ you’re going to imagine a room, fix the time at which a certain action is to place,
its architecture and its contents, and you’re going for example, that I, as a dancer have to go over
to analyse the architecture and the contents for its there after 10 minutes, 6 seconds and carry out
geometric content. In other words, a doorknob is such and such a task, or that the entire group has
a circle, for example, so I might describe this with to do this and that.’38 In Self Meant to Govern
360
(1994), for example, six clocks on the stage, each Forsythe’s fellowship with Libeskind’s work devel-
with twelve letters representing a combination of oped into a friendship and they gave talks to each
movements, instruct the dancers what combination other’s dancers or students, sometimes publicly,
of movement they must perform and how long it sometimes together. They never actually worked
should take. The sequence of the combinations is together except for Libeskind ‘s project to celebrate
variable. Groningen’s 950th anniversary in December, 1990,
This invention and use of improvisational tech- ‘Marking the City Boundaries’.42 Libeskind was
niques became a regular part of Forsythe’s choreo- appointed in the Spring of 1989 to draw up a
graphic process. Sometimes he continued to work master plan for his proposal to mark the city’s
with drawings, such as those of Tiepolo for the boundaries, which he called The Books of Gronin-
making of Hypothetical Stream (1996): ‘There are gen, with ‘emblems whose marks outline the spiri-
all these human knots that Tiepolo had floating tual destiny of the City’. Nine signs for the city
about as sketches. I drew vectors from these were related to the letters of its old name, Cruo-
figures and said, these are hypothetical solutions ninga. Each letter of that name was linked to a
to these human knots. Are these possible? And so muse and other themes, and assigned to a particular
Hypothetical Stream is simply people trying to site of the nine arranged clockwise around the city.
solve these problems, unravel these knots . . . [But] Forsythe was invited to design site ‘N’, with the
we are departing from Tiepolo. The initial tableaus given characteristics being dance, mechanics,
he had drawn are irrelevant.’39 Many of Forsythe’s 3 pm, streets, red, flame, erato (Fig. 7).43 The
systems for generating movement are re-generative, design is a long line of trees bent over so that they
making variations on themselves like algorithms (the gracefully arch over the canal, bending as if in a
dictionary definition of which can be found in permanent wind, or sheltering the canal, or even
Forsythe’s notebooks from the early 1990s). The like the arm en haut in ballet’s fourth position. The
first piece that used recursive algorithms was Alien design process was strikingly similar to what was
Action (1992).40 For example, a dancer might be common in progressive architecture schools at the
asked to generate a movement alphabet by conjur- time and included using the photocopier to abstract
ing alphabet figures—small, short, gestural move- drawings by changing their scale or making them
ments that are intuitively associated with a letter.41 scaleless, and drawing with a knife and then
These become the basis of a phrase and the physical scrunching the paper from the sides to create
configurations or operations that make up that form.44
phrase become what the dancer’s body remembers. The relationship between Libeskind’s End Space
They become the building blocks for further choreo- and Forsythe’s work of the late 1980s and early
graphy, duos, group dances, or become altered to 1990s, especially Limb’s Theorem, is based on a
inform the choices dancers make in a structured similar set of concerns and perceived crises. Both
improvisational setting. artists worked within the highly formal constructions
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of Architecture
Volume 10
Number 4
Downloaded By: [Canadian Research Knowledge Network] At: 17:53 14 September 2010
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 10
Number 4
Downloaded By: [Canadian Research Knowledge Network] At: 17:53 14 September 2010
1989); Elizabeth Dempster, ‘Women Writing the Body: 13. R. Sulcas, ‘Kinetic Isometries: William Forsythe on his
Let’s Watch a Little How She Dances’, in Grafts: Fem- “continuous rethinking of the ways in which move-
inist Cultural Criticism, ed., Susan Sheridan (London/ ment can be engendered and composed”’, Dance
New York, Verso, 1988); Kent Bloomer and Charles International (Summer, 1995), p. 9.
Moore, Body, Memory and Architecture (New 14. Interview with the author, 17 April, 2004, Frankfurt
Haven/London, Yale University Press, 1977); Michel am Main.
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Dis- 15. Daniel Libeskind, End Space, op. cit., p. 18.
course on Language, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith 16. Ibid., p. 24.
(New York, Pantheon, 1972); Susan Sontag, ‘The Aes- 17. Ibid., p. 24.
thetics of Silence’ and ‘Against Interpretation’ in A 18. Ibid., p. 20. (Also quoted by Forsythe at the interview
Susan Sontag Reader (New York, Vintage Books, with the author, 17 April, 2004, Frankfurt am Main.)
1983); Bernard Tschumi, ‘De-, Dis-, Ex-’, in Remaking 19. Ibid., p. 26.
History. Dia Art Foundation Discussions in Contempor- 20. S. Driver and the editors of Ballet Review, ‘A Conver-
ary Culture, no. 4, Barbara Kruger and Phil Mariani, sation with William Forsythe’, Ballet Review, 18.1
eds (Seattle, Bay Press, 1989); Craig Owens, ‘The (Spring, 1990), p. 96.
Discourse of Others: Feminists and Postmodernism’, 21. Patricia Baudoin and Heidi Gilpin, ‘Proliferation and
in The Anti-Aesthetic (op. cit.); and Frederic Jameson, Perfect Disorder: William Forsythe and the Architecture
‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’ in The of Disappearance’, in Il Disegno che Non Fa il Ritratto:
Anti-Aesthetic (op. cit.). Danza, Architettura, Notazioni, a cura di Marinella
9. Kathryn Bennets, long-term ballet mistress with the Guatterini, Volume II (I Teatri di Reggio Emilia, 1989),
Ballett Frankfurt, telephone conversation with the p. 74.
author, 24 July, 2003. 22. R. Sulcas, ‘Desire to Dance’, op. cit., p. 56.
10. For a general discussion of this topic see my 23. Sulcas, Ibid., p. 56.
article, ‘Engendering and Composing Movement: 24. Kaiser, Paul, ‘Dance Geometry. William Forsythe in
William Forsythe and the Ballett Frankfurt’, Dialogue with Paul Kaiser.’ Performance Research, 2
The Journal of Architecture, 3 (Summer, 1998), (1999), p. 65.
pp. 135 –146. 25. Caspersen and Forsythe, interview with the author,
11. ‘A Conversation between Dana Caspersen, William London, 1997; and, Caspersen, interview with the
Forsythe and the architect Daniel Libeskind’ at the author, Brussels, 1999.
Royal Geographical Society, London, 7 March, 1997. 26. Daniel Libeskind, End Space, op. cit., pp. 22 –24. This
Peter Cook substituted for an ill Libeskind. See also long quotation was picked out of End Space by For-
M. Figgis (Director), ‘Just Dancing Around?: Bill For- sythe and read aloud during our interview in Frankfurt
sythe’, Channel Four Version, Euphoria Films, 50’59”, am Main, 17 April, 2004.
1996; broadcast 27 December, 1996, Channel Four, 27. Ibid., p. 30. This was quoted to me by Forsythe
19.30. during our interview in Frankfurt am Main, 17 April,
12. R. Sulcas, ‘William Forsythe: Channels for the Desire 2004 and earlier by him in my interview with Dana
to Dance’, Dance Magazine, LXIX, 1 (September, Caspersen and William Forsythe, 25 March, 1997,
1995), p. 52. London.
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