Deconstructivists Frank Gehry and William Forsythe: De-Signs of the Times

Abstract

Why choreography and architecture? Both are visual art forms based on three-dimensional design. Both create vocabularies in space in order to express or communicate. Both are highly collaborative: in architecture there is the marriage of site and structure, in choreography, of music and movement. Perhaps these intertwined relations are seen most clearly in Fallingwater's majestic cantilever over Bear Run Creek, and in Martha Graham's powerful response to Aaron Copland's score, Appalachian Spring. Both Fallingwater and Appalachian Spring are bound to their settings, yet each enriches the site or score immeasurably.The similarities between choreography and architecture oscillate between the obvious and the contrived. Unlike architecture, dance is ephemeral and subject to human variables which are, by nature, unpredictable. Choreography is dependent on the human dancer and therefore subject to multitudinous interpretations and manifestations. The architect's product is as solid as the building, but the architect's design is no less spontaneous than the choreographer's. Both art forms are subject to gravity, to expression and to structure—for the choreographer, structure involves both the dancer's individual body and the group's compositional organization. Both are collaborative forms: music and dance, costume and movement partner one another as structural engineering must support the design, the site, the building.