Dynamic Cartography: Body, Architecture, and Performative Space

Dynamic Cartography analyses the works of Rudolf Laban, Lawrence Halprin, Anne Bogart, Adolphe Appia, Cedric Price, Joan Littlewood, and Hélio Oiticica. They are practitioners who have worked on different areas of enquiry from the existing relations between body and space through movement, events, or actions but whose work has never been presented from this perspective or in this context. The work and methodologies set up by these practitioners enable us to develop a practice-based exploration. Some of the experiments in the book – Micro-actions I and II – explore the presence of the body in the space. In Kinetography I and II, Laban’s dance notation system – kinetography – is used to create these dynamic cartographies. Kinetography III proposes the analysis of an urban public space through the transcription of the body movement contained on it. The series Dynamic Cartographies I, II, and III analyses movement in geometrically controlled spaces through the Viewpoints techniques by Anne Bogart. Finally, Wooosh! and Trellick Tales present two projects in which performance is applied in order to analyse and understand urban and architectural space.

María José Martínez Sánchez is a lecturer the Birmingham School of Architecture and Design (BCU), UK, and a researcher at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Performing Arts at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, UK. Her work has been published in international journals and presented at the Dance Biennale of Venice, the Biennale of Architecture in Venice, the Spanish National Theatre (CDN), and the Prague Quadrennial of Scenography.