Abstract:

The URBAN CHOREOGRAPHIES project intends to broach a reflection about the way in which we interact with built-up spaces through the practice of dance. The way we move, inhabit or traverse the space implies gestures, habits and culturally educated ways of perceiving and thinking about space. It constitutes a particular way of subjectivizing and incorporating the uses of space.

The project proposes an interdisciplinary journey through the poetics of space initiated by the writer Georges Perec (Species of spaces, 1974) and through his singular method of constrictions, in which the writer tried to make explicit the conditions of the creative process. For this, the proposal starts from the ​​Henri Lefebvre’s idea (The production of space, 1974), where the constructed space is a projection on a specific area of a certain socio-cultural organization in order to guide the analysis of the devices included in it. From the use of the architectural and urban space to the mainstream thinking and other discourses about space.

Consequently, the work methodology consists in experiencing the space as a text that preserves the traces of the thought that have created this space, as well as the uses and functions to which they have been destined to. Discourse analysis provides conceptual and procedural tools to investigate the spatial components, as well as the types of social relations that they promote, enabling his reconstruction in choreographic terms from the perspective of the design and production of a chorea or movement in common.

The experience starts from raising an awareness of the urban environment through the perception, recognition and documentation of the resources included in it. In addition to it, movements, gestures and social interactions are fostered by this space, in order to connect it, through an itinerary, with other differentiated urban locations, such as a square, a crossroad or a park, among others. From this fieldwork, the students propose choreographic scores based on the characteristics of the built spaces and citizens movements. These scores establish proposals for artistic and choreographic intervention in space.

This methodology is inspired by the choreo-urban procedures of Lawrence and Anna Halprin, who experiment with interdisciplinary approaches to urban landscaping and dance. They developed the so-called RSVP Cycles (Resources, Scores, Valuation, Performance) of action-research of urban space. In this way, after exploring the Resources of the environment, itineraries where designed by means of the scores. They linked certain urban events, consisting in interventions in built-up spaces that had been segregated from the urban and citizen network, in order to rebuild social, ethnic and cultural ties that had been deteriorated. The e-Valuation implies the assessment of these interventions with the aim of generating new Performances and interventions.

Following this methodology, the project proposes an exploration and intervention guide in the school environment, as well as evaluation criteria to improve meaningful learning in the environment.

Keywords:

City, urban space, choreography, dance, action-research.