In an increasingly formless and placeless world dominated by digital technology, architecture can learn from contemporary dance, which, through its resistance to the disappearance of the body, raises a new awareness of physicality in space and time. The space of dance is one of endless possibility. Through dance, space loses its shapelessness and becomes a dense, tangible substance that the body carves through and comes in direct contact with via movement. The ambiguity between substance and space, presence and absence, solid and void, illustrates how movement is an extension of form in space and how space and built form in architecture are inseparably intertwined and depend on each other to define limits.

The relationship between the ephemeral and the physical is an intimate one. Movement is marked by the displacement in a medium caused by an object passing through it; the resistance of the medium makes possible the recording of movement over time. Therefore, by virtue of the ability of movement through time to inform space, architecture can be informed by the type of movement characteristic of contemporary dance, since it is one that reflects the symptoms of our culture today.

As life becomes more ethereal, dance responds by becoming more physical. Throughout the course of the 20th century, there has been a growing interest in the exploration of the inherent nature and possibilities of the human body. Contemporary dance experiments with speed, shock value, aggressive, electronically inspired movement; there seems to be a move towards an opening up of natural human physicality free of social taboo. This is also found in other areas of our society, in its obsessions with violence, sex, and bodily functions, as made explicit by the media. The corporeality of the human body is a relevant issue today in a world where computer and media technology is developing at an exponentially rapid pace and rendering the body obsolete, action on stage reminding us of our physical nature. Hence, contemporary dance exposes a suppressed yet real humanity of roughness and physical imperfection hidden beneath the glossy finish of society. Through this resistance to an increasingly formless and placeless world, dance can inform architecture in raising a new awareness of physicality in space, time, and motion, and striving to create balance in the environment.

The space of dance is one of endless possibility, full of potential structures, conjectures, and desires. It constitutes multiple and simultaneous centers and fields of action. However, dance, as moving sculpture, also shows how space is not empty but, in fact, full of trace paths. Through dance, space loses its shapelessness and becomes a dense, tangible substance that the body carves through and comes in direct contact with via movement. This ambiguity between substance and space, presence and absence, solid and void, illustrates how movement is an extension of form in space and how space and built form in architecture are inseparably intertwined and depend on each other to define limits.

This relationship, as well as studies in perception of movement in different dimensions, explores the back and forth shifting between continuity and discontinuity, materialization and dematerialization, surface and volume, smooth and striated space, motion and stillness. As a result, there emerges an engagement in the process of unveiling through experiential perception as well as the peripatetic view.

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