Dancing bodies. Anna Halprin and her workshops at Dance Deck and beyond

During this conference and, specificaly, in the session named "Conceived", I decided to tell about an American dancer, whose work has contributed to changing the perception of scenic and performance space, and also about the workshops she organised with her husband, Lawrence Halprin, in order to reflect on the body-space relationship mediated by theoretical and experiential elaboration. When they moved from San Francisco to Kentfield, Lawrence built a wooden platform for her, where she could perform, free, in her domestic space and in the natural space. So Anna moved all her dance classes to the Dance Deck in 1955 and founded the San Francisco Dancers' Workshop. Dancers were asked to only indulge their senses and to walk, observe, touch and feel, undress and finally dance. Halprins also organized other workshops there known as "Experiments in Environment" during which architects (Moore, Reynold, Subotnick, Leistiko, Ehreth, Hickey and Stauffacher) also participated to take advantage of the interaction between these two arts, dance and architecture.