Dance x Architecture

Panel Discussion and Performance

TUE 3 OCT 18:45

Architecture and dance specialists from Switzerland and the UK come together in a panel discussion to open new perspectives on the RIBA Stirling Prize-winning Laban Centre by Herzog & de Meuron. A live performance by students on Trinity Laban’s MA/MFA Dance Performance programme will close this event marking the 20-year anniversary of the building.

In 2003, the Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron opened the Laban Dance Centre with the promise of providing dancers with a working space embracing the city. Twenty years later, the RIBA Stirling Prize-winning Laban Centre – now the Laban Building, part of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance – has become a key architectural feature in Deptford, south-east London, and plays an important role in the training of numerous dancers and choreographers.

One element of this success lies in the encounter between dance and architecture. The event will look back at the concept and use of the Laban Building and investigate how architecture and dance sit at the intersection of body, movement and space through a panel discussion alongside live performance by students on Trinity Laban’s MA/MFA Dance Performance programme.

Presented by the Embassy of Switzerland in the UK and the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, the event brings together:

Professor Anthony Bowne, Principal, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance

Anthony Bowne led the project to realise the Stirling Prize-winning Laban Building. Anthony Bowne’s education in dance at (then) Laban in the early 1980s is complemented by an honours degree in Economics from the University of Southampton and an MSc from the Bartlett School of Architecture at University College London. An experienced educator, Anthony Bowne also developed creative expertise as a lighting designer for both theatre and architecture. He joined the executive team of Laban in 1994 and made major contributions to the development of the institution towards the distinctive, world-leading and revered presence it is today.

Jean-Paul Jaccaud, architect EPF FAS SIA

Jean-Paul Jaccaud collaborated with Herzog & de Meuron from 1999 to 2003 when he worked as Project Architect on the Laban Dance Centre. He founded Jean-Paul Jaccaud Architects in Geneva in 2004 (today Jaccaud + Associés). Jean-Paul Jaccaud taught as Visiting Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) from 2006 to 2010 and at the UCLouvain in Belgium in 2012 and 2016.

Elias Kurth, performer, choreographer and architect

Elias Kurth uses movement as a thinking tool and develops intersections between performance, architecture and visual arts. After graduating from London Contemporary Dance School ‘The Place’ (2009) and working with Lea Anderson and Requardt & Rosenberg among others, Elias Kurth set out to explore other perspectives on the body and studied architecture at the University of the Arts in Berlin. Living between Berlin, Germany, and Aarau, Switzerland, Elias Kurth has developed a performative spatial practice testing the relationship of space, identity and perception.

Professor Stanislaus von Moos, art historian

Stanislaus von Moos is a Swiss art historian, Professor of Modern Art at the University of Zurich (1983-2005), and more recently Visiting Professor at Yale University (2010-2014) and at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne. Recipient of the 2023 Swiss Grand Prix for Art, he has curated and co-curated exhibitions on Venturi, Scott Brown & Ass., Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and others. His publications include monographs on Le Corbusier (1968), on Political Iconography in Italian Renaissance Architecture (1976), on Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates (1987,1999), on the history of Industrial Design in Switzerland (1992), as well as on Herzog & de Meuron (forthcoming).

The panel discussion is hosted by Vicky Richardson, Head of Architecture, Drue Heinz, Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts and co-curator of the Herzog & de Meuron exhibition now on show at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Following the panel discussion there will be performances by:

MA/MFA Dance Performance - Trinity Laban Dance Collective
Jekaterina Bikova
Kaya Blumenthal-Rothschild
Yuwei Cheng
Katie Kelly
Sungmin Kim
Yuqiao Kong
Nina Sun
Mary Sweetnam
Rosie Taylor
Zoe Wheal
Hoi Shan Yip

Programme Leader Hilary Stainsby
Sound Words by the students edited by AV Graduate Trainee Molly Black
Costume Trinity Laban Costume Department

Supported by Presence Switzerland.

Laban Building
Free, ticket required