Dancing and Drawing, Choreography and Architecture

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 architecture and choreography is scant. One of the few examples of a choreographer working with then-current architectural concerns is William and the Ballett Frankfurt in the late 1980s, particularly in Enemy in the Figure (1989) andLimb'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 Libeksind was not his 'deconstruction', as has often been asserted, but in his operations on drawing. Their coincidence of intellectual interests 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 discussion in the arts.