Filling the ‘empty space’: Site-specific dance in a techno club

ABSTRACT

While organisational space has received broad scholarly attention, movement in organisational spaces remains under-researched. This paper introduces the notion of site-specific dance from dance theory to consider the dynamic relationship between space and people, emphasising that movements are a response to a space, its materiality and context. Berghain, in Berlin and one of the world’s most famous techno clubs, is discussed as a case. An interdisciplinary analysis shows how a site-specific performance is created through the interplay of the architecture, the sound and the music organised by the DJ, and the dancing crowd. Methodologically, the dance and performance studies approach develops suggestions for how to analyse movement interaction in organisational space. Reference to dance theory broadens our understanding of how organisational spaces and human interaction enable, produce and negotiate experiences that are transitory, embodied and difficult to pin down.

KEYWORDS:

• aesthetics
• dance studies
• organisational space
• site-specificity
• techno music

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the Editor-in-Chief Jo Brewis and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. My thanks go to Dr Anke Strauß, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, and Dr Mai Kawabata, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh College of Art, UK, for their participation on site and their contribution to an earlier version of a related paper and for Kawabata's reference to Chilly Gonzales.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 The term Kraftwerk is also the name of a famous German electronic music group.

2 ‘Berliner Luft’ (transl.: Berliner air) is a piece of music created by the German composer Paul Lincke in 1904, which came to represent the free spirit of life in the city of Berlin with regard to entertainment, sexual and culinary pleasures, and today is still traditionally played at different occasions, also by the Berlin Philharmonic orchestra.