Spacescapes ; dance and drawing since 1962

Dance and drawing are intimately linked to the gesture that performs them. The dancing body creates a figure in space and leaves an impact on site, while the action of the artist sets a point into motion and captures an ephemeral event, which is reproduced in graphic or visual form. Throughout the 20th century, the performing and visual arts thus converged on many occasions. While visual artists investigated the embodied and energetic value of form, dancers and choreographers experimented with the interfaces between sign and action, between notation and improvisation, between a spatial sense of self and an architectural configuration of movement. The hybridization of dance and drawing quickened from mid-century onward, as performance art introduced innovative practices and as borders between disciplines were worn thin, causing interdisciplinary forms to emerge. The body of the artist—whether a dancer or a visual artist—is thus shared by these practices and has become the instrument of their simultaneous realization. Drawing has indeed collided with dance in opening up to three-dimensional space, incorporating surfaces (floor, ceiling, walls) as well as volumes into its process.