How can I relate architecture to dance?

by Kristel Farah
(Lebanon, Beirut)

Hello,

I am currently in my senior year as an architecture student. I am also a contemporary dancer. I decided for my senior project to design a dance academy in a historical city located on the seashore of Lebanon called Byblos. It is a very active city, culturally, historically, socially. Along with the academy I will be proposing an urban structure that will allow people to experience the city through the eyes of a dancer, meaning I want people when visiting Byblos to have the opportunity to dance even if they haven't taken any dance classes or even been interested in dance at all. It is just a structure that makes them dance without even knowing or putting an effort to it.
After a long site analysis, I am currently stuck in the theoretical part of my intervention. I feel that whatever the theory I decide to follow in my architecture, I can relate it to dance. However, the dance academy is not related to a specific type of dance. I consider it an academy for experimenting with dance and movement. I chose this topic for my senior project because in Lebanon we do not have any higher education in dance. We have very few dance schools that actually know what they are doing, and few dance troupes that are fighting in order to get people respect, participate, exposed to dance. Simply Lebanese dancers do not have the opportunity to have a dance career, or professional training....

My question is the following:
Can you help me find a theory that relates to dance that I can design my architecture upon? I need some guidelines in order to begin. I have proposed the theory of Labanotation to my teachers (I already have some knowledge about it and I already read about it in your blog) but I am confused of how to implement it in architecture. I already saw an example of the University of Arizona where the implemented Labanotation on architecture but I found it a bit silly and unclear because they used the positions used in a choreography and tried to graphically dissect them and represent them. I need to dig deeper in theory in order to come up with a more interesting process of designing space for/through/by movement rather than a movement in space.

Thank you in advance!

Kindly,

Kristel