Welcome to Living Forms, a series of improvisational responses to sculpture. 

Improvisational response is the act of creative and spontaneous dialogue with a specific something. As a dynamic mode of creation, it finds meaning through the combination of uncertainty and structure. Responses can take many forms, such as music, dance, and art, and live many lives as they evolve over time and inform new responses.

Living Forms is the result of a semester-long exploration of site-specific dance work in Rebecca Lazier’s Site, Off-Site, Site-Responsive Dance and Choreography class as part of the Princeton Dance Festival: Reimagined 2020. This website is an evolving collection of the embedded layers that inform improvisational response that often do not find their way into the ‘final product’. You are encouraged to browse the scores, videos, recordings, links, images, and texts that are tethered to each site in the hopes that you create an improvisational response to sculpture of your own.

This project proposes that improvisation with/in/on sculpture that is with/in/on the land can make room for discovery, wonder, and deeper relationship to our communities and the land that we live on. 

What happens when we physically situate our bodies in/on a site? How does this affect the way that we relate to one another and to the land?

If you would like to add an improvisational response to any of the existing sculptures or submit an improvisational response of your own to this website, leave a comment below or email yayala@princeton.edu.

Hover over the pins in the map below to see the growing series of improvisational responses.