The Design Plot functions simultaneously as documentation and iteration — a book that extends Shelley Lasica's decades-long choreographic inquiry into what dance is and what it can become as art, tracing ten versions of a single collaborative work across architectural time and space.
About This Book
Lasica's debut publication takes the collaborative dance work of the same name as its subject and its structural logic. Rather than a conventional archive, the book behaves more like a performance itself: image sequences that fracture and fold, gestures accumulating into a measured, amorphous flow. At its core is the relationship between the body and architectural space — between what is performed, where it is performed, and what remains after. Texts by project producer Zoe Theodore, curator Pip Wallis, and writer Megan Payne expand the enquiry beyond documentation into the territory of choreography as ongoing self-interpretation. Essential reading for those working across performance, spatial practice, and contemporary art.
Key Features
- Contributors include texts by Zoe Theodore, Pip Wallis, and Megan Payne
- Documents ten iterations of the collaborative dance work The Design Plot, performed with dancers Ellen Davies, Timothy Harvey, Louella Hogan, Daniel Newell, Lilian Steiner, and Jo White
- Published by Perimeter Books, 2022
What You'll Discover
- How choreography can operate as a spatial and architectural proposition, testing the limits of dance as a medium beyond the theatre context
- The logic of durational and cumulative performance — how each iteration of a work carries and transforms the memory of those before it
- The book's formal structure mirrors the work it documents: image sequences that fracture and refold rather than present a linear record
- How sustained collaboration between choreographers and visual artists — including Tony Clark, Callum Morton, and Kathy Temin — generates dialogues across distinct modes of presentation
About the Author
Shelley Lasica is a Melbourne-based artist whose practice has spanned more than thirty decades, consistently placing the creative and processual dimensions of dance and choreography in dialogue with visual and spatial art. Her choreographic works have been presented at institutions including the National Gallery of Victoria, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Centre Nationale de la Danse in Paris, and Siobhan Davies Studios in London. She has undertaken residencies at Gertrude Contemporary, Artspace Sydney, and PFERD in Vienna, among others.
Specifications
- Format: Softcover
- Pages: [Details available upon request]
- Dimensions: [Details available upon request]
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780648680178
- Publisher: Perimeter Books
- Publication Date: 2022
Perfect For: Architects and spatial practitioners interested in the body's relationship to built space; choreographers, performance artists, and curators working across disciplinary boundaries; researchers in contemporary dance, visual art, and performance documentation.