Dance as Architecture

This work draws from the modernist legacy of the Bauhaus, particularly Oskar Schlemmer’s exploration of the body as a geometric instrument within space and Willi Baumeister’s constructivist approach to form. Both artists understood the human figure not simply as a subject, but as a structural element capable of activating architecture.

Following this lineage, I approach the moving body as a form of photographic construction — a living geometry that reveals spatial tension, rhythm, and proportion. Through photography, I aim to translate ephemeral gestures into composed visual structures, where movement becomes a way of drawing within space.

Rather than documenting dance, my practice investigates how the body can temporarily build architecture: lines appear, planes intersect, balance emerges, and dissolves again. The camera becomes a tool for stabilizing these fleeting constructions, transforming motion into image

and space into composition.

Having lived in Germany and shaped by a design education grounded in modernist principles, I am particularly attentive to order, reduction, and the expressive potential of form. This project extends my ongoing interest in geometry and the relationship between bodies and built environments, positioning dance as a living, temporal architecture. The work continues to evolve through ongoing explorations of movement, space, and photographic form.

As an ongoing body of research, the current series establishes the conceptual framework, the project remains open — evolving through experimentation, collaboration, and a deeper exploration of the body as an architectural instrument within space.

Special Thanks to:

Dancers: Michael Bodel & Cara Lewis

The Hodgson Family Dance Studio at The Hopkins Arts Center - Dartmouth College

R E G U L A T I N G L I N E S

An inevitable element of Architecture.

The necessity for order. The regulating line is a guarantee against wilfulness. It brings satisfaction to the understanding.

The regulating line is a means to an end; it is not a recipe. Its choice and the modalities of expression given to it are an integral part of architectural creation.

— Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture.

“Klee’s statement speaks to envisioning dance in terms of forms and geometries, for he includes no mentions of Palucca’s body, body parts, or personality; he decorporealized and depersonalized the dance, thereby also un-gendering it.

— Elizabeth Otto, Paul Klee and the New Woman Dancer, in Bauhaus Bodies

Dancers: Michael Bodel & Cara Lewis - The Hodgson Family Dance Studio at The Hopkins Arts Center - Dartmouth College