Handout from one of my dance courses

**I retyped this from a handout my dance professor handed out in class fall of 2006. I'd saved it and found it today while going through random things. I think it is relevant.. though I too am still trying to understand elements of this.

Space is the distance between two objects.
Space is produced rather than given
and hence political from the start"
It is composed of intersections of mobile elements.
It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble
of movements
deployed
within it'

Lucinda Childs' performance Street Dance (1964) required spectators to stand at a window and direct their attention to the sidewalk below, while a "taped minutely detailed description of the view was synchronized exactly to their actions" Sally Banes commented that "the performers acted as markers, not altering the environment, but
facilitating the spectator's discovery of it.

Space occurs
as the effect
produced by the operations
that orient it, situate it, temporalize it"

In Trisha Brown's performance, Roof Top (1973) dancers were scattered across so many rooftops that no viewer could possibly see all of them. Spectators had to choose where to direct their focus, in this way actively participated in the construction of the space.

"space is practiced place".

"an area provided for a particular purpose"

"A blank or empty area: the spaces between words."