Dance is the oldest form of nonverbal expressions that evolved into a finer mode of communication over time all across the globe. Such evolution took place through persistent research and cultivation of dance, and for that matter dance schools were also formed, which too have evolved over time to match the dynamism of the subject that is greatly influenced by the developments of civilisation. It is here the great role of architecture can be underpinned, as it provides the required setting for not only developing the practice and performance of this ancient human activity, but also works towards popularizing it among others to maintain the flow of heritage. This brings the question in mind Is architecture both a facilitator and a chronicler of human endeavour to excel in aesthetics
Though it is virtually impossible to underpin the chronology of the evolution of dance and the architecture that helped it to develop, yet the findings from archaeological surveys show that the culture of organized dance existed way back in prehistoric times, which gradually became more reflective in archaeological evidences like Bhimbetka rock shelters paintings in India or in the tomb paintings in Egypt that depicted dancing figures belonging to the period 3300 BC (Origins, 2010).
Egypt example (Gascoigne, 2001)
According to the researchers, dance emanated from human desire to display their passion and emotion, besides their need to convey messages of choice in a remarkable manner. They suggest that dance became a part of ritualistic activities as well as an instrument to convey passion for intimate relationship in earlier times (Gascoigne, 2001). On the other hand, it is also assumed that people belonging to primitive cultures drew inspiration from the transition periods of human life where the sufferings associated with each transition searched their way-out through nonverbal ways of expression, which led to two major types of dance - one, social dance, and two religious dance. While the former wasis used to celebrate seasonal issues or to commemorate death or other significant event, the later wasis associated with humans faith in miracle that invokes them to fear or respect the mythical characters and the supernatural power (History, 2005).
There is no denying to the fact that with the development of the civilization, cultivation of dance too gained momentum and consequently it is now treated as a fine instrument of refined expression, quality entertainment and thought provocation, where it can depict the heritage or provoke to think about future. There is hardly any place in the world today that has no dance form in its cultural or social curriculum to depict its ethos.
Such state of affairs resulted into distinctive styles of dance that required specific arrangements to practice or perform, which on the other hand, highly influenced the architects to meet such demands. For example, if it is a tap dance floor, the architects would have to specially design it to facilitate the movement of the tap dance, to arrange the acoustics of the hall in a way so that it reverberates the tapping sound, and to arrange even lighting and the space designing of the floor to facilitate the tap dancers to exploit the nuances of tap dance to the full. The ancient time was no exception too when dance events mostly took place in daytime and the architects had to create dance spaces under open sky. Further development of civilization resulted into a boom in dance theatre making all parts of the globe accommodated its aesthetic and entertainment value and wanted exploit it as a mascot of their culture. Consequently, different styles of dance influenced their architectures too with their special needs of space or design. A brief map of such boom in ancient Greek and Roman periods would corroborate the fact easily
The Ancient Theatre Archive in European Region (Hines, 2003)
Such distribution clearly serves a clue that different styles of dance across the above region have influenced the architectural designs of the dance-theatres too.
The then Asia Minor too carried innumerable evidences of DRA, as countries like India too were engaged in institutionalize their gods and goddesses from mythology, who even found a Lord of Dance in one of their gods Siva and cultivated the dance culture as part of their religious and social affairs and reinforced its value by including it as a detailed subject in their religious books. Resultantly, various parts of India have produced a good many classical dance styles under different settings to please certain deities or to promote local culture and accordingly that reflected in their dance-related architecture too.
Ancient Indian DRA (Ancient, 2009)
Thus it can be seen that in each instance architecture has been involved with dance and it too has ramified into many directions. This study thus explores the evolution of dance-related architecture (henceforth will be referred to as DRA) to evaluate the validity of the proposition that architecture is both a facilitator and a chronicler of human endeavour to excel in aesthetics under the present context, where the information age has eliminated all physical boundaries and opened a new horizon of cosmopolitan culture by enabling anyone to learn any form of dance from any part of globe.
II.0 Background
Though dance took two forms at the beginning, such as social dance and ritualistic dance, it did not take much time to add a branch like artistic dance. Accordingly, DRA too had started accommodating its needs. A brief description of the three would further explain the same.
II.1. Social Dance
Social dance generated from the human desire to feel the joy of collective living and to share its situations together. From this perspective, social dance can be identified as traditional, functional and recreational (Social, 2005). Accordingly societies have been carrying the same tradition today with ballroom dancing or street-samba and the alike to draw spirit of living out of dance.
Social Dance Scene couples taking part before the royal assemblage of Versailles in 1668 (Coeyman, 1998)
The above instance fairly indicates that social status too appears to be a big factor in dance style and setting for example, ballroom dance evolved between 16th and 17th centuries in Europe to meet the dancing desire of the elite class who wanted more privacy and comfort from the ambience, while Latin American Samba dance proved to be a style cut out for general people and thus needed open space or street corners. The craze for Samba invoked the Brazilians to form places like Samba City where they hold carnivals now. Thus how the dance style influences DRA can be described by comparing the architecture of ballroom dancing hall and Samba dance place
Left Samba City (Samba, 2010) Right European Ballroom (David, 2009)
The contrasting architectures of the above also bring some points to the fore such as, the architects of the above had enough talent and skill to create right ambience for Samba and Ballroom dance, where the in the first instance the creator had to provide appropriate settings for mass activity, and in the second instance the creator had to apply the sense of justification in creating an opulent ambience for a few rich people.
Around 19th century quite of few social dance styles originating from Europe, such as minuets, quadrilles, polka or waltz gain became globally popular, later joined by Tango dance from South America around World War I, besides other dances like Tap dancing (an American version of Irelands Clog dance) , Swing, Jitterbug, Twist, Boogie, or Disco Dancing (Social, 2005).
By that time the other parts of the world too had developed a very many social dance styles. For example, India alone offered a plethora of social dances from most of its states like the Dandiya and Garba (Gujrat), Bhangra (Punjab), Samyai (Goa), Ghoomer, Chhari and Gair (Rajasthan), Lambadi and Digaru Mishmi Buiya (Andhra Pradesh), and Bihu (Assam), etc (Radhika, 2008).
China came up with their folk dances like XingJiang Drum Dance, Taiwanese Folk dance, Kung-Fu Fan Dance, Yunan Dai folk dance, Duhuang Aesthetic dance, Dragon dance, Ribbon dance, sword dance, etc (Chinese, 2009). Japanese, who have dedicated special ceremonial dances like Kagura and Shinto to God, also produced several other dance-forms like Sarugaku (circus-like dance), Gigaku and Kabuki (masked dance-drama), and their derivatives like Shosagoto or Shinbuyo (Overview, 2010).
Muslim world too showed their imagination through their dance styles such as Mindanao and Lanao originated in Philippines (Muslim, 2010), while Pakistans Khattak and Atan (Pakhtun military dances) and Sufi dance became popular (Dance, 2009).
There is no denying to the fact that all of the above dance styles carry the essence of regional culture and custom, and architecture associated with them also had to accommodate the same while creating their settings.
II. 2. Dance as an Art of Expressions
The human quest for aesthetics could be traced even in the Egyptian golden period, when dance rose from the rank of a tool for mitigating fear or expressing personal desires with body language. Though dance in Egypt mostly evolved with the ritualistic offerings to their main god Osiris, yet they eventually showed how dance could also be a way life, by developing it as an art of expression, where they added many acrobatic movements in it, which could only be mastered after years of practice. Same state of affairs took place in
Greece too, where the Greeks dance culture evolved around Dionysus and became a social hobby and eventually prepared no less than 200 dance-forms and recognized it as a form art by 5th century BC. Romans were no less influenced by the Greek culture and accordingly dance too pervaded in their society, resulting into several dancedrama halls (Dance (2), 2005).
It is now assumed that the famous Belly dance, which was originated in Arab countries during the heydays of Babylon, was imported there and eventually developed its Egyptian version, though they banned it once in the 1950s on the grounds of obscenity (Dhanyasree, (2010).
Figure 6 Tribal Belly Dance (Heavy, 2004)
Dance as an art of expression gained momentum in the early Christian era with improvisation of ballet countries like Italy or France fostered its growth and resultantly, the first half of the 18th century saw a boom in opera-ballet (Dance (2), 2005) with newer movements and expressions.
Dance as an Expression of Art in Egypt Greek, Roman Italy France
(Dance (2), 2005).
On the other hand, Bharatanatyam, one of the oldest dance forms of India, presents a great example of converting dance to an expression of art, that developed through thousands of years practice in the temples belonging to the southern part of India. There was a clan of exponents of this dance-form, would exclusively dance before the idols of gods and goddesses and would spend their entire lives within the confines of the temple. They were called Devdasis (Gods maid) (Rajan, 1998).
II. 3. Dance as an Instrument of Ethnic Culture
Ethnic dance can be defined as the mother of folk dance, as it contains all the nuances of the core culture of a particular group of people belonging to a particular region. Accordingly no social dance can fully escape their ethnic origin. This fact too influences the overall settings of dance for example, if a dance is to remind about the native dance of Africa, it cannot have Victorian setting or a landscape setting of Sherwood Forest, though that would serve a perfect foil for the native dance of UK. Similarly it is impossible to imagine Zulus dancing in a setting of Parthenon. Thus here too the dance has to resort to an appropriate architectural planning to align the dance with its inherent message. Three DRA belonging to three different regions, such as Roman Theatre, Indian Temple, and Polynesian Dance Setting would further explain the issue
The Roman Theatre at Arelate Hines (Hines, 2003)
Temple of India (Ancient, 2009) and Polynesian Ethnic Dance Setting (Polynasian, 2006).
II.4. Popular Dance-forms of the Modern World
It will result into a baroque book if one wants to write about all dance-forms and their prevalent derivatives, since all cultures of all regions have their own dance-forms, which got ramified over the years. However, one can narrow down such list by filtering the most popular dance-forms across the globe.
Ballroom dancing This is one of the most popular dance-forms across the globe, though Latin Americans have more inclinations with it. This dance form has several popular variations under its fold. This is a step-oriented dance and contains some intricate steps, though freestyle dancing is allowed to some extent. In all this dance-form is relatively easy to learn in comparison with complicated dance-forms like Ballet or
Bharatanatya. As mentioned earlier, the elite class due to its grace and scope to perform among ones chosen group and ambience, favoured this dance. Though originated in Germany, Americans added more style to it through incorporating other dance styles. Today there are 10 such styles that are categorized under ballroom dance
Tango It always takes two persons to perform this dance, which led to the adage like it takes two to tango. This dance-form comes from the Americans, where the male has to lead the proceedings and the woman has to follow the same with deft movements.
Waltz This is relatively a dance-form with slow movements and is based on the depiction of rhythmic grace. This dance exudes the ethos of the era of knights.
Viennese Waltz This is considered to be the original version of waltz dance emerging from Vienna region at around 18th century.
Foxtrot Named after Harry Fox, the popular dancer and comedian of America around 1914 (Harry, 2010This dance-form combines both fast and slow movements.
Quicksteps This dance-form originated in 1920s and includes steps with quick momentum.
Cha-Cha-Cha This Latin American dance banks more on rhythm than anything else, and contains both slow and fast body movements.
Rumba This dance-form depicts sensuality with its slow hip movement coupled with rhythmic stepping. This one is considered to be the contribution of America.
Samba This is mostly a free form, rhythm oriented dance originated in Latin America as peoples dance, before making its way to ballroom.
Jive This too emerged from Latin America before making its mark globally with its feline grace and charm.
Paso Doble This dance-form reminds the movements of Spanish bullfight scenes where its measured, rhythmic steps are its main attraction.
Apart from the above major styles, there are other styles too that are now part of ballroom dancing and thus deserve mentioning
Bolero A slow dance-form from Spain, which can be performed both individually and with a partner.
Mambo This Latin dance-form contains complex steps and considered the mother of Salsa, another famous dance -form.
East Coast Swing This dance-form takes two persons and has simple steps based on Lindy Hop, the style behind Swing dance.
Salsa Originating from the regions covering Cuba, Puerto Rico and Latin America, this partner dance contains sensual steps and body movements, besides intimate dancing in a short space, all the while maintaining grace in its actions. This dance-form is becoming increasingly popular all across the globe and accordingly it has acquired several styles, such New York style, Cuban style, Colombian style, and Los Angeles style.
Merengue This dance-form includes circular movements, where the partners tend to move away from each other in a sideway fashion with intricate steps and frequent handholding.
Bachata Originating from Dominican Republic, this dance gained popularity due its romantic style.
Lambada This Brazilian dance-form can be performed in partners or in groups, which gained popularity for its rhythmic presentation. This dance-form is also considered stylish and sexy.
Polka This fast and lively dance-form emerged from Central Europe in 19th century and covered the regions like Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Germany, Hungary, Austria, Ukraine, Russia, and Poland. The word Polka carries two connotations - one, half steps in the dance and two, Polish woman.
Hustle This has become a popular dance-form in the nightclubs especially after the movie Saturday Night Fever featuring John Travolta Karen Lynn Gomey as dancing pairs, won the hearts of millions by performing this dance-form (Saturday, 2010).
Swing Dance This dance-form evolved between 1920s and 1930s in Europe and carries many versions like Boogie Woogie, West Coast Swing, Rock n Roll etc., out of which Rock n Roll gained much popularity worldwide due to its sporty form.
Tap Dance This American dance-form focuses on the rhythmic movement of feet and steps to create not only dance-expressions, but also rhythmic sounds by tapping on the floor. Flamenco This Spanish dance-form is a part of Spanish culture that uses songs, guitar, and colourful costumes to depict its expressions.
While the above can be considered as the Ballroom series of dance-forms, there are more forms which require special mention for their appeals to people all over the world
Ballet This dance form emerged from Europe after developing its techniques over centuries, and it is considered as the backbone of many other dance styles. It strictly follows the grammar made for it and exploits both music and dance to create a magical story-session with its action, where every movement tend to express a specific emotion in a flawless manner. Understandably, this form of dance requires a very fit and flexible body, which its dancers acquire only after years of rigorous practice.
Jazz To some of the dance lovers, this gracious dance-form covers most of the other dance forms in the process. Though it is not solely based on dancing grammar, it too requires above-average fitness and grace. Unlike Ballet, Jazz is basically a fun dance and is open to accommodate other styles in it. The main actions of it involve bold and dramatic body movements with body isolations and contractions.
Hip-Hop Emanated from HIp-hop culture that includes moves like breaking, popping, locking and crumpling. This dance-form also depicts fun instead of any serious theme, and is one of the most favourite dances of the teenagers. It has an easy style to follow, though personal interpretation of action adds more to its impact.
Break Dance This can be considered as an improvised form of Hip-hop dance form with stances and movements reminding that of a gymnast, since moves like cartwheels, head spins, splits and jumps are integral part of this dance. It was basically a street-dance, before breaking into fame with Michael Jacksons stunning performance that combined dance moves and plenty of attitudes. This style commands breaking any part of the body into motion with expression, a style that is also used in some other dance-forms like Hip-hop.
Modern dance Though based on the format of Ballet, this dance-form leaves aside the strict grammar of Ballet and instead focuses more on expressing the inner feelings through improvised choreography.
Contra Dance This is a derivative of American folk dance, where the dancers assemble in two parallel lines and produce a sequence of dance movements with partners to create a collective, harmonic dance of a group of people.
Country and Western Dance This dance-form is a combination of other dance-forms and takes country-western music to perform, reminding the era of western cowboys.
Belly Dance As mentioned earlier, this dance has its origin in Arab region, but was improvised by Egyptians. This dance-form focuses on all possible movements of the abdomen and hips and is accompanied with appropriate music.
Latin Dance Latin Americans love fast-paced dance-forms and this dance corroborates the same with its speedy hip gyration and deft movements. This too basically a partner dance.
Folk Dance It would be a task of lifetime to track out how many folk dances and their derivates are there in the world, as every community has a their own group-dance forms. However some of the popular versions of them are English country dance, International folk dance, Irish Dance with bagpipe, Maypole dance, Morris dance, Nordic Polka dance, square dance, etc.
Bharatanatyam This Indian dance-form originated in its southern part and gained popularity due to its poise and grace expressed through very strenuous and complex movements. Though it was initially a holistic dance, later it added expressions of other emotions too.
Kabuki Dance This dance-form of Japan depicts any real-life event through gracious movements and other expressions.
Chinese Drum Dance This is a popular dance-form of China that involves rhythmical drum sound and graceful movement. It mostly depicts an expression of happy and passionate feelings.
III. 0. Dance Schools Now and Then
There is almost no literature that underpinned and detailed the dance schools of early times, but it is assumed that the baroque dance theatres with rooms were used as the dance schools in Europe (Mapwala site reference). In India mostly the temples housed the students. Equally in the Christian era, churches and chapels ran the special dance teaching sessions. (References). Roman Theatre at Alexandria in Egypt, which was restored in 1980, could be sited as an example of old dance school architecture. This building carries typical Roman architecture (Roman, 1980).
Short glimpse of old dance theatres
The notable academies of ancient India like Nalanda which flourished between 427 and 1197 AD (Altekar, 1965), and Takshashila, which too flourished at about same time (Scharle, 2002), conducted dance training programmes, but they were demolished in the wars, which make it impossible to identify the architecture associated with dance training in those institutions.
Apart from that various reports speak about the existence of many residential dance schools in medieval India that followed one or the other traditional dance-forms, and where the teachers would pass on their skills to their disciples through years of training. Various schools of dance-forms were known as Gharanas. According to the available reports, seven years of age was considered ideal to initiate dance training to a child in India, and accordingly the trainers would initiate the young students into dance training through a special ceremony (Gajendra, 2008).
However, there is some scope to compare between the remains of the old architecture of ancient dance theatres and the modern dance studios.
III.1.Example 1
Old Dance Theatre at Pompeii, Italy
The Roman Theatre at Pompeii (Hines, 2003)
The above dance theatre provides enough hints that it contains residential provisions. At the same time it banks on a fixed, outdoor ground with no provision for adequate lighting. Such state of affairs serves the clue that both the practice and performance of dance used to take place under broad daylight. Typical Roman architecture of its period, i.e., late 3rd century to 2nd century BC dominates the scene with the combination of amphitheatre and gladiator blocks. Overall it appeared clearly to cater to Roman taste (Hines, 2003).
Zagreb Dance Centre (Croatia) New Dance Theatre in the same Region
Glimpse of Zagreb Dance Studio (Zagreb, 2009)
Built between 2003-2009, this dance studio was built after demolishing the local cinema hall named Lika, which faced huge loss with the advent of big movieplex cinemas in Zagreb. This dance studio was built with an aim to provide cultural facilities to the residents of Zagreb, besides providing the much-needed modern dance centre in an area, which holds fifty years of contemporary dance culture and has produced no less than 40 dance troops. This project aimed to house them all at the heart of the city, since this dance studio is only 100 meters away from the Zagrebs main square (Zagreb, 2009).
This studio is now ready to house numerous dancers, choreographers, art troops and companies, besides providing three multipurpose studios (one large studio with 150 telescopic seats and two smaller training studios), three spacious dressing rooms, bathrooms, storages for props and technology, besides office spaces. The new architectural element of this studio is its new entrance lobby, which provide scopes for multiple activities like meeting people in a cafe, communicating people from cyber cafe, browsing new titles from video store, or to study in the library. Another architectural feature worth mentioning is its design, where both its volume and broken form suggest dance movement.
Altogether, the approach of this new architecture clearly suggestive of aligning with the demand of the time, that asks provisions for multitasking, besides provisions for accommodating multiculturalism that is gradually pervading in dance-forms.
III.2. Example 2
Acinipo Roman Theatre Old Dance Theatre of Spain
Ancient Roman Theatre (World, 2009)
Placed in the city created for retired soldiers, this dance theatre was built in 59-53 BC, and had a streak of renovation between 27BC -19AD (Acinipo, 2009). This too appears to be heavily affected by the Roman period architecture with the assembly of orchestra and gallery. One might be doubtful whether this theatre held training or learning session.
New Dance Theatre in Spain Flamenco Splash
Flamenco Splash (World, 2009)
Built in 2007, this dance studio intends to sustain and develop Flamenco music. This studio has the provision of both indoor and outdoor performance. Its auditorium contains 56 seats and it also provides separate practice space. In addition it has one all-purpose shop and one liquor shop, toilet segment, kitchen and dinning room for 16 people, besides10 individual rooms and one flat on top-floor for the caretaker family.
It would be difficult for anyone to identify them together as the architectures belonging to the same region, since there is not even any faintest resemblance between them in terms of style, spacing and execution. Again, the daylight factor comes to the fore, as the old dance theatre had to create an open space for performance and practice, besides creating the building to house the trainee dancers or others.
III.3. Example 3
Herodes Atticus Theatre Old Athens Dance Theatre
(Hines, 2003)
Placed on the south slope of Acropolis the Herodes Atticus Theatre was once considered the hub of ancient Athenian culture. From the architectural point of view, it is the first Pan-Hellenic as wells as global role model for infrastructural synthesis in united complexes or art and exhibition sites (Panagiotis, 2010). The theatre was built around 6 century BC around the circular orchestra space, and housed a good many historic events like the presentations of Aeschylos, Sophocles, Evripides and Aristophanes. In all this creation appears to be a part of the entire cultural package of Acropolis, of which dance and theatre hold major positions. This dance theatre could accommodate 30,000 people for a single event. However, this too does not have any provision to hold indoor events on a mega-scale, understandably due to the lack of adequate lighting systems that were unavailable in those days.
New Dance school at Athens (World, 2009)
This dance studio was built in 2006 with the aim of providing a not only a place for learning and performing dance, but also to provide a place for cultural networking. The geometrical elements of space here is indicative of the synthetic process aligning with functional needs and the morphological objectives. Alongside it appears to be in motion due its 2D projection. Altogether this too is a classic example of the evolution of architecture with the evolution of the subject, which it wanted to cater (World, 2009).
This design takes no less than 180-degree turn from what is found in Herodes Atticus Theatre, thereby once again reinstating the fact that architecture is always eager to match the dynamism of time.
III.4. Changes taking Place in Asia
The Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) at the Centre for Dance Research, Roe Hampton University, London and PRASADA, Faculty of Art and Design, De Montfort University, Leicester, undertook a research project in 2002-2003 with the aims like exploring the correlation between dance and architecture, two dance disciplines which deal with space in analogical and complementary ways, and taking the Hindu temple and Indian classical dance as a starting point for the comparison with the modern state of architecture (Dance, 2006).
Their research findings found several alignments between the placement, shape and postures of the deities with the architecture of the temple, which together aligned with dance-forms as well as with the canonical texts of Indian dance, the Natyasastra, and resultantly, most of the temple appeared to be exuding a sense of rhythm and movement. These temples once housed dance students as well as special dancers like Devdasis, who would only dance to please the goddesses.
The culture of residential dance academies is also on the wane, since the wave of globalization has also anchored in this ancient country. The same can be said about China or Japan, the other major cultural giants of Asia. Instead, it is the culture of multiplex that is becoming hugely popular like other parts of the globe, where people can do something more over and above the main purpose, and the architecture too is following the current footsteps of civilization. The impact of globalisation can be felt in the approaches of the general education institutions too, which are now bent on providing as much as possible combinations of study, which includes dance as well. Accordingly, the institutions too are coming up with features that facilitate all dance-related activities.
Altogether some basic differences between the old and new DRA emerge from the above review
The early DRAs had more space and less technology
The modern DRAs have more technology and less space
Early DRAs were influenced by local culture and religion, where they intended to air the dominance of any particular culture
The modern DRAs are breaking free from such influence and banking on culturally neutral motifs or symbols
The aims and purposes of the old DRAs were limited in sustaining and developing the nuances of mostly one culture
The aims and puposes of the new DRAs have expanded to the extent of accommodating sustaining and developing the nuances of all possible culture.
The modern dance theatres provide all to perform more activities apart from dance, which mostly was not a practice in earlier DRAs.
IV.0. Integrated Discussion
As Foucalt said,
We are at a moment, I believe, when our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein ... In any case I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, no doubt a great deal more than with time (Foucault, 1998, pp. 23-26).
The journey of architecture through dance theatres and modern dance studios looks like a unique game of recreating spaces to accommodate the order of time in it. In other words it can be said that space is socially constructed, of which architecture becomes reflection (Hatch, 1997). In the case of DRA, architecture also appears as a solid science that makes big buildings with lots of experiments, and eventually translating the ideas into structures (Cooper and Law, 1995). Accordingly, the architectural plans and executions are being heavily impacted by post-modernism and now are showing their growing affinity with what can be termed as multiculturalism. Yet, what appears to remain as common and fascinating element between the architectures of different time is the power of planning that led to systematically shape a structure - where the plans seemingly proceeded from within to without, thereby justifying the view that an architectural piece can be considered as an organism comparable to a living being, or at least a planned machine (Le Corbusier, 1923, p. 180).
However, Le Corbusiers comment, As we move higher in the scale of creation, so we move towards a more perfect order, (Le Corbusier, 1923, p.23) here appears to be a bit confusing in the sense that modern dance theatres have given a free rein of human ideas with an aim to cater modern humans with varied tastes. Thus, it cannot always be ascertained whether the modern forms are following the intended functions of architecture totally, which in turn may generate an argument like whether the modern dance schools are truly matching the demands of the time, or they are yet to catch up the main ethos of it. However, going by Nietzsche (1974), who commented that usefulness is ultimately only a belief, a fancy and the most fatal stupidity by which we shall one day be ruined (p. 301).
On the other hand, if strategy proves to be the key driver of determining the structure and form is created to follow most of the intended functions, then there is the risk of producing a terminal architecture (Pawley, 1998) that could also be bereft of aesthetics and sore to the eyes. Interestingly, the modern dance studios as reviewed provides a mixed reaction, where some of them provides sense of joy while some generates a sense of uncertainty regarding the justification of the orders as well as its relation with the intended functionality.
Admittedly, the modern architects have applied their understanding of the nature of correlation between spatial organization and social life, before taking the hard task of re-socializing the space (Hillier and Hanson, 1984, p. ix), yet there remains a scope to evaluate whether one is ruling over the other - because the danger lies in the premonition that nobody knows what could be the outcome of this newfound orientation of the society with heterogeneous population - whether they would want to keep the new architectures over a long period, or would opt to recreate them to satiate their quest for the new. On the other hand, the same anxiety plays in the mind when one is confronted with the thought that architecture is a powerful means to direct and redirect human attention, feelings and thoughts to a great extent, and therefore, a handful of architect could break the secured thought process of people and influence them to go for what they do not need from practical point of view.
However, the modern multiplexes speak in favour of the rationality of the modern architects, if the increasing popularity of these multi-functional buildings have anything to go by (Abaza, 2001). No one can deny the fact that architecture has created newer competences in the modern dance centres, thereby substantiating the views of several contemporary researchers (Gomart and Hennion, 1999 Fox, 200 Lee and Brown, 1994).
From the architectural point of view both the old and the new DRAs can be classified as a combination of three major types of space utilization, such as shaping the human beings (through learning or confinement), producing knowledge (libraries and museums) and exchanging things or ideas. From this perspective, modern dance schools are more powerful and competent than their early counterparts with their enhanced ability of controlling the human behaviour by providing more freedom for their actions. Thus, in all, it would not be wrong to hope that the current flow of creative architecture that are depicted in those modern dance theatres, would prove that they carry a balance between predictability and randomness over time and they are capable of combining both order and chaos (Cooper, 1990).
From another point of view, the modern dance studios can be describes as examples of liquid architecture, which does not seek to impose a hierarchy like baroque or other medieval structures, but aims to compose creative forces to flow, stream and move in space (Mol and Law, 1994). Here the influence of multiculturalism comes to the fore, since, it is the multiculturalism that has visibly influenced the architecture of those dance studios to refrain from any overt cultural or religious motifs, which had been a mandatory practice even in the recent past. Altogether it is a clear indication from breaking out from the confines of past and creating a new order of thinking which would accommodate all kinds of dynamism in it.
The advent of information age has resulted into globalization, which in turn brought multiculturalism in both real and virtual life. Accordingly humans are now free to come out from their cultural confines influenced by regional customs resultantly, a Chinese is showing interest in Salsa, while a European showing interest in Bharatanatyam. The modern day information highway is encouraging all to know about other cultures, and consequently the Chinese or the European would not need to change their base and to enroll in a residential dance academy to learn Salsa or Bharatanatyam.
The above state of affairs has brought in a great shift in social architectural style, where the architects are asked to invent what it requires to meet the challenge of multiculturalism, the challenge of grabbing attention in shorter span of time and at the same time adding multiple option of utilizing a space. The temples of India or the early dance theatres were built to meet the needs of only one or two dance styles, while the emerging multiculturalism is pressing all learning centers to become equipped for handling multiple disciplines of art, science and humanities.
From the above perspective, the concept of having more space in a dance academy than a conventional academic school is also making way for the emerging concept of exploiting space for all kind of human development in any institution. The buildings created even in the heartland of ancient dance academies like Athens or Pompeii simply corroborate the above facts, as they carry a completely different connotation of social architecture that is increasingly gearing up to accommodate multiculturalism and multiple events of multiple dimensions. Accordingly, they are not only totally free from the influence of classicism, baroque, romanticism or modern style, but also are free from the influence of early post-modernism. In all, this study arrives into a conclusion that architecture acts both as a facilitator and a chronicler of human endeavours towards excelling in aesthetics.
