Getting down to size

OK, so my visit to The Place was a bust… A change in schedule and busy busy people mean I’ll need to come back to London en route to Halifax. What I can say is that, walking into their office (fewer square feet than what Live Art Dance Productions occupies with our staff of 2.5) I encountered a bustling little hive. It would seem that everyone has a PA, which is quite nice when you think about it. I really wish I had a PA

Seeing the space in which these people are working reminded me of an interesting conversation that took place between a group of people trying to come to agreement on the dimensions of a room. In Canada, we have a lot of space relative to the number of people inhabiting it, and I think this gets translated into an everyday reality that is quite different from European standards. From the size of our cars, homes, shopping malls, and dance studios, we like things big.

Now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, in terms of dance studios, if we’ve got the space let’s revel in it. Dance is in so many ways about physical architecture, and the dance studio is the palette upon, or rather, within which it’s created. In this line of thought, freedom to move abundantly and the ability to stand back and gain perspective are of paramount importance. As dance artists usually have such limited time onstage where dimensions and perspective abound, it is important that the creation studio’s dimensions bear reasonable resemblance. This facilitates translating the work from the studio to the stage. The closer the former resembles the latter, the easier the translation.

As this blog is ultimately about designing and building a purpose-built dance/theatre facility for Halifax, I think it’s worthwhile identifying our end objectives, namely the creation of two performance venues and a series of creation/training studios. The first performance venue should provide artists with a stage that offers performance dimensions of 40’ X 40’ (just shy of 13 meters square), and the second will be a black box capable of a variety of configurations. Ideally our studios will facilitate easy translation between spaces.

But dimensions are but a part of the equation... ask anyone who's worked in a windowless bunker how inspiring they find it. Natural light and textures are so positive but so too are intangibles like accumulated history. Where do you find inspiration?

I write this while on the train from London to Nottingham where I’ll meet with the Director of Dance4 who produce Nott Dance. Don’t let the name confuse you, they ARE about dance! The English countryside sure is pretty!