Publication

  • Architecture + Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space, and Time
    Beth Weinstein
    Author
    Routledge, 2023
  • GRANTEE
    Beth Weinstein
    GRANT YEAR
    2022

Lucinda Childs and Frank O. Gehry, "Available Light," September 29-October 2, 1983 (performance view, The Temporary Contemporary). Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). Photo: @ Tom Vinetz

Architecture + Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space, and Time establishes the field of archi-choreographic experiments—an underrecognized project type and form of creative act generated through collaborations between architects and choreographers. Through forty case studies spanning forty years, this book investigates the motivations instigating these collaborations, the enquiries these encounters afforded, and the ways these archi-choreographic experiments challenged and expanded participants’ practices. Three pairs of essays frame larger themes. The first foregrounds space, examining the role of structure and hidden site conditions as conceptual driver. The second addresses disciplinarity through works that critically reflect upon their discipline’s tools, techniques, and conventions in dialogue with projects that draw upon other art-forms and cultural phenomena. The third asks who and what dances, finding a spectrum from mobilized architectural bodies to more-than-human corps. Architecture + Choreography reveals timely questions arisings from interdisciplinary collaborations as well as their compelling spatial and performative outcomes.

Beth Weinstein is an architect and associate professor at University of Arizona’s School of Architecture. Her practice and research move between the spatial and performative, and across scales from drawing to installations and urban interventions to render invisible conditions “sensible.” Her publications on choreography and performativity in and of space include chapters in Performing Architectures (Methuen, 2018), Critical Practices in Architecture (Cambridge, 2020), The Routledge Companion to Scenography (Routledge, 2017), Architecture as a Performing Art (Ashgate, 2013), and Disappearing Stage (The Theater Institute, 2012). She is published in the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of Artistic Research, Performance Research, and Places, and serves on the advisory board of the Journal of Theater + Performance Design. Her research culminating in the Collaborative Legacy of Merce Cunningham Exhibition (2011–14) forms the springboard for her current book project, Architecture + Choreography: Collaborations in Dance, Space, and Time (Routledge, 2023).